not fallen

not fallen

Pushing, always about pushing.
Pushing his weight off me too late,
exhausted, spent, his rage into me,
breaking, bruising, pain and shame
and devastation.

Him, a sudden force, pushing me into that
alley, so near my home I had no thought
of danger. So routine, my walk from the
subway after my work day, even though, late
Fall, well past twilight. I expected just another
evening of my uneventful life since I came to
this city to pursue my career.

I didn’t know the attacker who pushed me
from behind, covered my face with a huge,
hard hand so I wouldn’t scream, or see him,
too close to count on darkness. After,
released to drag myself home, I drank
sloppy mugs of red wine and cried, on my
way to blessed unconsciousness.

The morning alarm brought me back, to
understand my desperate need for
normalcy to push this whole melodramatic
mess out, out, out! Keep moving, one foot
at a time, eyes forward, focused on each
next chore. Somehow my face, my body,
lied for me, kept to my habitual script.

I very much didn’t want to talk about it,
to seek comforting or support. I wanted it
to go away — to never be.

I found a new route home, discovered
along it that I had become hypervigilant
while walking alone through city streets.
This city of strangers that I had hoped
would be my home had become a hostile
place to push away in self defense.

Pushed into an unwanted future where
the test comes up “Pregnant” after those
ugly symptoms could no longer be ignored.

Pushed now to find a way to take care
of my needs, to confront politics, that
whole divisive headache I had believed
not part of my life.

Suddenly I’ve become a victim of
multiple powerful men — the power
of physical force and the power of
unjust law pushed through by cynical,
deceitful misogynists using pumped
up hate to get ahead.

Much as I desperately try to normalize
these agonizing days, weeks, this
nightmare escalates. Those nonignorable
symptoms keep getting more and worse.

Pushed to accept, take in, this unacceptable
situation because these symptoms
seem serious. I have heard of high risk
pregnancies that require constant
monitoring, even sometimes termination
to save the vessel for future use. Surely I
would not be forced to continue having
this thing growing in me if it would kill me.

Barely holding my multiply suffering
body and mind together, I push myself
to take control and get to the closest ER.

Look! I yell into me, trying to center,
to find refuge in rationality. I am a
normal person, leading a narrow,
normal life. These health crisis
professionals will know what to do,
will make everything alright!

I have made it to what I have built up
in my anxious imagination as the blessed
temple of healing. Unfortunately, it is
more like Purgatory — the endless
waiting. I do understand the many more
needy of immediate care. I submerge
my fear and pain in silent singing, measured
breathing, hearing again my father’s wrath
when he had been drinking or sometimes
when he hadn’t but was feeling bitter honestly.

Family, memories, never consoling.
Certainly no one I can call for help or advice
or anything but judgement of an unkind kin.
I had been so happy to get so far away, to
reframe my life to be mine, hopeful with possibilities.

Yes, possibilities unanticipated. So many
sick days out, fallen (failing) performance,
there goes my once so bright, golden
promising job and its perks, like health insurance.

Pushed to realize my life is meaningless
beyond my private sphere. Pushed to
understand that my fragile forming
friendships here are far from strong
enough to be burdened with what
has become my Truth.

At long last it is my turn to be seen. I have
become so weak, barely aware of being
lifted onto a gurney, hooked up to a fetal
monitor and IV, prodded, needle poked to
take my blood. The hands and voices are
concerned that the baby is in distress.
“Take it out of me!” I scream, crying snot
and tears and fear and rage. They inject a
fluid to induce labor, ready me to push
at their command.

Finally! It’s out, my nemesis expelled,
pushed from its unwelcome lodging.
I feel only pure exhaustion, running blood.
Fading, I hear from above:
“Yay! We saved the baby.”
Apparently too far
gone for further ministration, I am left with
the agony of life falling out of me. Faintly,
plaintively, I hear a sober retort:
“Yes, we saved this child to live, while it
does, with severe health issues requiring
extensive expensive care. It enters this
tragic life alone, parentless. Who will take
on this responsibility?
Letting the mother choose, to have the
chance to live, maybe have future healthy
children, would have been responsible, and humane.”

a minor interlude

a minor interlude 

He came for the music. And the romance.

Summer at the big international jazz festival. He had decided to go,
not because he was secure in his tastes and passions, but to help create
his burgeoning self-definition — the true function of the summer of our
lives. It was time to escape the endless malls and predigested
televised opinions into the heart of a city that pulsed with life. And
here, where no one knew his name, he was finally free to become what he
could be, wandering unfamiliar streets and imagining himself to be, at
last, truly home.

He was staying at a cheap little student-ghetto hotel, barely more than
a hostel, in a compact room with a cot and bathing facilities down the
hall. There was also a breakfast room, where complimentary coffee and
pastries were provided, along with the chance to meet and greet his
fellow travelers. Many of them were musicians — not the big names that
drew in the international aficionado crowd, but someday would-bes, young
folks, like himself, trying out their talents on the streetcorners, in
the parks, in the breakfast room of their temporary quarters. Some knew
of local bars where for the price of a pricey beer you could hang for
hours enjoying the late night sets of local talent, more intimate venues
than the big street-stage and theater performances of the daylight and
early evening.

He loved her wide, infectious smile, and the sparkle in her dark,
shining eyes. He had noticed her immediately at the bar, sitting with
her friends, enjoying the music, and at his hotel where she worked as a
desk clerk on the day shift, making the place feel more like a happy
home. She worked there for a small room and a smaller salary and
waitressed at a nearby coffeeshop for meals, tips, and a small hourly
wage — altogether it worked out for her, and life was mostly fun, with
occasional high drama. So she smiled, widely, infectiously, so that
everyone loved to be around her. Looking at her, he felt so overwhelmed
with joy that he wanted to cry — like at the end of a truly meaningful
book or movie that touches you so deeply that it seems to speak to you,
to speak only to you. He looked deeply into her eyes, dark and shining,
across the room, where she smiled and swayed to the rhythm of the band,
lost in the music. Saxophone, trumpet, clarinet, keyboards, backed up by
a big, bass fiddle — sometimes wildly raucous, sometimes slow and
dreamy, as each soloed, duoed, came together in soaring syncopation,
dropping in or out with inspiration or exhaustion, all so achingly
beautiful — the music, the soft summer night, the girl.

Because he was the kind who stood back and observed life without really
taking part in it, he could see and admire her propensity for jumping in
with both feet, never looking back. He watched mesmerized while she
danced and flirted to the music, making it her own.

Being a true student of life, he carried with him always a small journal
into which he would write quick impressions, ideas as they occurred.
So, now, as he sat hidden in the darkness, allowing his imagination to
sway to the rhythm of the band, he wrote:

“They would have to find a way to come together, he and she. After all,
if there were no meeting, how could the story begin? From where would
the story come, to be told? The ‘jazz scene’ is not enough. We need
characters to form a plot, the experiences from which those characters
can develop and grow. We need relationships in our lives within which
we can learn to become ourselves. And all this is just deep
philosophical shit for the basic premise that, hey, I am drawn to this
girl, more than just attracted by her adorable appearance. I am
developing an actual need to get to know her, to learn about who she is,
and who I can be in relation to her. So why don’t I just do the prosaic
thing and go ask her to dance?”

So he did.

And they danced. And laughed. And kissed on the dance floor, hugging,
and laughing, and dancing — just like young lovers to be.

“Come back to my room with me.” he murmured into her ear, as it
conveniently came into contact with his lips.

“Can’t do it. How would the other guests feel, not getting room service
and all.”

“Then I’ll go back to your room.”

“Hey, I’m not that kind of girl. Think of my self-respect. Besides,
what would our kids say when we told them.”

“So far as I know, we don’t have any. And what about my self-respect,
being shot down when I’ve finally gotten up the nerve to ask you.”

“Tell you what, then, tomorrow happens to be my day off. I’ll let you
escort me to the Festival — a date like.”

“Sounds like fun. I’ll meet you in the breakfast room around 11:30 and
treat you to your second cup of coffee wherever you suggest.”

“It’s a deal! By the way, I’m Celeste.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Celeste. You can call me Paul.”

And so they went, twirling/embracing in a romantic daze to the
ever-changing, expanding band of after hours musicians, until at last
they walked each other home, separating at the stairs, parting with a
kiss “to seal the deal.” — a very passionate deal, indeed.

The day dawned bright and warm, but by 11:30 had deteriorated into
overcast and sweltering. She took him to a corner cafe for iced
cappucinos to go, to keep them more comfortable on their walk to the
Festival grounds — several blocks of temporary music-mall on streets
closed to traffic for the occasion, dotted along the way with stages and
concession booths centered by a large, flowing fountain which was
surrounded by chairs and umbrella’d tables, surrounding several
temporary out-door cafes and bars. The music was everywhere, from lone
guitarists plugged in to mini-amps along the fountain to big, shiny
bands taking their turns on the stages — so that as you moved far
enough for one to fade you came into the aural purview of another.

The crowds of revelers made a colorful array — many of them dancing to
the music, individually, in couples, and in groups. Children squirting
each other with their water bottles darted in and out amongst the
longer-legged. The concessionaires were in their glory selling cold
drinks, snow cones, commemorative clothing and cds. Despite the heat,
everyone was taking full advantage of the party atmosphere, joining in
the general soundscape with their own gleeful screaming and applause.

It seemed like the perfect time to be in love. Celeste and Paul found
themselves falling into that marvelous, magical natural high, and
gladly, giddily, let it carry them bubbling above the crowd into the
pure realm of jazz vibrations and each other’s eyes.

It was the one perfect moment in my life. In the dark winters of my
discontent, I am always trying to go back to it — my own transcendent
summer of love.

Thunder and scattered raindrops had them dashing from the festival
grounds and, as the downpour hit, ducking into a neighborhood bar to
stay dry. They ordered beers and punched up some dreamy tunes on the
jukebox. Then sat for hours talking about everything. It all seemed so
important — giving each other the gifts of all their hopes, dreams,
experiences.

They wanted to say there forever, to Vulcan mind-meld, to touch and
never let go.

As it got later into evening, the bar started filling up. A band set up
and a chanteuse came out to sing hauntingly beautiful songs of love.

Eventually they walked each other home, but did not separate at the
stairs. There was still so much they needed to express. So much that
they didn’t sleep at all and never separated until Celeste had to leave
for work, leaving Paul to think deep thoughts while luxuriating in the
magical spell that seemed to surround him.

At that age he should have been free, open to limitless possibilities.
For a time he was able to fool himself, to believe that life should be
that way. He hadn’t intended to fall in love, only to flirt with
romance, the romance of anonymity, of, for a short time inbetween, the
chance to reinvent himself any way he might choose.

But now, here was this cosmic gift, this beautiful woman — not only
beautiful but intelligent, funny, incredibly fun to be with, a
powerhouse of energy with a smile that could transport him directly to
paradise — this woman whom he could not help but to love in ways he had
never believed possible; and she loved him, mind, body, soul, exactly as
he was, here and now. He had not even realized how lonely he had always
been until now that suddenly that burden had been lifted. He felt like
he could fly on wings of song, and never, ever need the touch of land —
only the touch of Celeste to keep him flying eternally.

Once she set her mind to something it never took long to have it done.
In a few days time, she had quit her hotel clerking position, and gotten
a full-time waitress job at a place where the tips were good. Through
her vast social network, she found him various odd jobs, under the
table, and a small furnished apartment, just right for young lovers.
She was even able to find a local arts rag that would pay him for his
stories, albeit not much. It helped them afford the beers and munchies
at their favorite neighborhood bar where they could share intense
conversation with her friends, who in deference to her were now becoming
his as well, and dance intimately late into the night to the local
bands. An idyllic life to settle into, filled with love and fun and,
for Paul, a great adventure.

For several weeks he just went along for the wild ride, thanking his
good fortune, learning about the ways of love on hot, sultry nights.

Perhaps he was at heart a coward. He hadn’t been raised to the wild,
but carefully taught to honor responsibilities. He knew he had a future
to go back to, one that revolved around college classes, a part-time
job, studying and making contacts, occasional dating of course, but not
these new found friends, his new found life and love. His parents had
sacrificed to give him a better chance, a high-priced, prestigious
education. He was expected to take this seriously, make the very most
of it, make them proud. Perhaps he just did not have whatever it is
that it takes to stand in defiance of all that one has been taught to
honor. When the time came, it wasn’t even a decision — he just did
what he had been programmed to do, with wrenched heart and staunchly
blankened mind.

They said they’d keep in touch. And from time to time they did.

She runs a successful bed and breakfast in a tranquil resort town, along
with her ever-cheerful husband and their two cuddly kids. The place is
somewhat famous for its largely musical clientele.

He is a reporter for a metropolitan newspaper, covering the local jazz
beat, without an alter-ego as a caped crusader.

The music keeps me sane.

https://dreamsjourneys.blogspot.com/2013/03/dreams-and-other-journeys-by-laurie.html

 

Beltanes

Beltane 2004

 
Bright Moon and shining Jupiter watch and call the tune
First day in May, oh master of the rune
Lightly we dance, and in light cast our eyes
Into the chance, into the future’s vast surprise
Undulating to the gypsy, minstrel, evangelic choir
Movement so intensified our light bursts into fire
Protecting Mother Earth envelopes our flame
Gives our lives hearth and home and name




Beltane 2017


Mid-Earth grand trine with Neptune call the tune 
Fourth day in May, cross-quarter fully blooms
Lightly we dance, toward brightness cast our eyes 
Into brave chance, into Dame Future's vast surprise 
Undulation trance of gypsy minstrel choir 
Movement so intensified our light bursts into fire 
We worship Mother Earth, praise through rites of flame 
She gives our lives hearth and home and name 




Beltane  2019
 
 
Dreams long enshrined touch magic of New Moon 
Fourth day in May, cross-quarter fully blooms
Ecstatic dance to merrily entice
Into brave chance, Dame Future's vast surprise 
Divine delight invites inspired mirth
Renewed to life, we worship gifting Earth
Mother world, our one true holy land
Time to kindly honor Her command




Beltane 2021


Dreams long enshrined touch magic Piscean Moon
This day in May, cross-quarter fully blooms
Ecstatic dance, toward brightness cast our eyes
Into brave chance, Dame Future’s vast surprise
to merrily entice
 
Undulation trance of gypsy minstrel choir
so intense, our light bursts into fire
Divine delight invites inspired mirth
Renewed to life, we worship gifting Earth
Mother Earth, we praise through rites of flame
She gives our lives hearth and home and name
Mother world, our one true holy land
Time to kindly honor Her command





Beltane 2022



Fifth day in May, cross-quarter power blooms.
Sun strikes Uranus, sends shockwaves booming through.
We rise in dance, rejoining to our core
Praise Mother Earth, the love and joy we came here for.




Beltane



Brazen witches fly, legends say,
dark Moon nights; arise, stealthy, silent
in their joyous revelry.
Bonded to Earth’s creation;
learning at mother’s breast
to manage life’s gifts and lessons.
Historic Man may proclaim, may murder
for fealty, to swear allegiance to
their hunt’s command.
They may elevate their One True King
to kneel and obey.  They may employ
counting measure, ceremony and sacrifice,
taunting and torture or other trials
thus finding for each loyal swan a pond
to plunder, to parade in royal colour,
their place of pride.
Cruelty descends, more master than tactic;
it is the enemy of joy, of flavour,
bonding, works of love and honour.
Yet men, on real ground, work companions
to soil and rain, engineers trained to each
moment’s urgencies, philosophers of stone and mud,
reason and toil, persist.  Their sinew and bone feed
the ages, build clay and richness on which
wealth relies.
Wisdom knows the sweat of practiced movement,
flexible to unexpected obstacles, able to modulate
quiet or loud as the crowd ebbs
or grows in credulity.
Where wisdom seeps through, counters
prevailing poisons, invigorates blood to nourish
minds and hearts, look there for blessing.
Arise, lovers!  Bring forth better days,
ours to play in open revelry,
neighbors enjoying shared labors and our fruit.
Accept truth of magic; imagine life into this world.

Biblical

PRAY FOR VIOLENCE

The God of Abraham
enjoys His Master tricks.
Calls Chosen men to violent
revenge against all fancied slights.
“They’re wicked – Smite!
Pillage their villages.
Rape their disgusting whores.
Make their acres yours in My sight,
for My glory. Raise blood lust, My rightful
gory sacrifice. Pride is My reward
when your sons fight in My Name.
Pride can pay the price, replace shame.
I am no pansy, no prancing debutante
at Papa’s ball. I am no Mama’s man,
no Fate’s enthralled. I am the First, the
Prime, the All.”

SO YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVELATION?

Disappointed mystic exile John,
eager to besiege his jailors
rendering unto Caesar
tales of woe and destruction
of Biblical proportion:
“The burning bush told me. I swear it’s true.”
Beware the ides, the armies of Megiddo,
the smoke and mirrors,
the mushroom clouds
invading our memories.
“I send you these frantic missives,
Oh my Christian soldiers.
Do not stray from Yahweh.
Look what He has done to His
soul-begotten Son,
in a fit of divinity.”
I believe Jesus made it his mission,
gave every effort and sacrifice,
to save his mortal family
from mad jealous wrath of Dad.
His words clear, actions legend.
So sad that sheep easily forget,
falling under the evil eye
of any would-be butcher
slavering to grow strong on
the currency of blood.
There are beasts, and Beasts
numbering in legions.
Days end, begin, end again.
Murdering souls in the Name
of the Redeemer. Oh, the Rapture!
Any sane Judgment would leave us
drowning in bitter tears.
I am begging:
Open your eyes, minds, hearts.
Open and learn.
True revelation awaits in every leaf and vein,
in every newborn cry
revealing pain
is meant to be a message
of active compassion,
to nurture a future
kinder than the past.

IN CORPORATION

I am that I am.
You as my servant are charged
to make certain I never want nor
encounter less than the best,
nothing to sully my arrogant expectation.
And so for my children,
so long as they
do not question my authority.
Yes, snake, I hire for my utility
uncovering hidden resources,
slithering into the low places,
heralding my majesty,
hissing into obsequious ears
my requirements.
Never were you meant to
usurp your station, to
slither into my daughter’s dreams.
Rebellious children cannot
be countenanced.
Out I cast you, into the wilderness
stripped of your privileged ignorance.
Live or die on your own cunning.
I have no time for your precious pleas.
I have worlds to sculpt and fortunes
to arrange.
Out on the plains
multi-colored cotton candy spins
woven silk butterflies
dance on marionette strings.
Wondrous worlds appear
floating inside soap bubbles.
Heretic progeny, you forsake me,
creating a carnival of bliss
never anticipated in my prospectus.

JONAH’S ARK

Shallow lights barely blinking
Casting shadows without form
All this fighting’s got me thinking
’bout apocalyptic storms
Bible counsels we’re all dreaming
holding to a paradise
but all our petty wars and scheming
keep our pretty dreams on ice.
I met God on a soundset
Said “You’ve got some ‘splainin’, sir”
He just laughed, “oh, child, well met,
when making stew you have to stir.”

SACRIFARCE

What do we sacrifice?
Who do we put to the knife?
Ishmaels and Isaacs
innocent half-siblings
could be at puppy play,
achieve healthy bodies and confidence
in the rays of blessing.

What God is this?
What holy source of life
commands atrocity?
Oh, silly man.
Boys in battle,
regressed in tragedies
of childhood.
If the mentor class had flourished
we would be brothers building
cities of light,
gracious commerce,
glory of
love, honor, reason,
all the divine gifts
we profane,
we sacrifice
to a Lord of flies and
corpses.

THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION

I go forth
via technology
like a cyborg
like an astronaut
studying the far reaches of
metaphysical space.

There is no forbidding face to hold me
to expected form.

Back in the far reaches
of humankind
there was no need for the
binding of religion.
Small bands of kin with
common legends
knew what everybody knew.
It was not ’til population grew
beyond the constant face to face
that a binding form
need be evoked
of common ceremony, festivals,
deities, seeped in ritual,
the glue
of worldview.

Fast forward into the future.
Glue dissolves, as, like atoms, we find
invisible network
built on mysterious attraction.
Why die for the satisfaction
of angry gods
we no longer need?

Winter stars

Wasn’t it enough, the sky snow bright

one Winter night

Winter Gods glaze over mountain peaks,

fading into winter’s grey

drifting clouds,

Outside winter is falling

Winter gave such brave cold cover

Turned into a winter poem

    By firelight – light of the moon.

I scurry down ‘neath winter’s frost.

And count the moments that I’ve lost.

Wonders of will, of intensity

wild like the sweet breath

of winter

Winter homage to our waning Sun

that she will return, feeding us

with light and heat, sweet

energy.

I brought winter to my grieving soul.

Numbing ice, concealing snow,

No nurturing soil for seed to sow.

Winter nights can exude that sacred beauty,

so poignant and wild and overwhelming.

Cold breath waking primal life.

Gazing into the stars to welcome

the clear, icy surrounding of spirit.

Winter blessed.

Winter nights, warm in fantasies

Winter creeps whitely over streetlamp and spire.

Muted to whispers the Grand Freedom Choir.

A clattering chatter overtakes the high wire

Pure white like the night of beginnings.

winter’s coming

        & there’s no returning down that road

        once the snows have rearranged it.

remnants of winters.

Layered ice savagery,

frozen bleak hellstorms, sharp hail regret.

White denotes purity,

cold somber reason.

Winter’s the season

turning inward,

reflecting light.

Sunbeams on drifting snow

cast shadows, expose

past images layered below.

winter

Yeah, I wanted to tell you; 

but there just wasn’t time to listen

And the snowlined streets 

    called you away from my door

And I just couldn’t scream out 

over your brilliant white plans and schemes 

that I needed you to hear me.

Besides, what was I going to say?

That life was becoming too much with me?

That people were becoming 

    both too dull and demanding

That drugs no longer filtered the pain & 

all my dreams had turned to nightmares?

You had no need to hear it.

And what was the point of burdening you 

with my melancholy love

    (tho my spirit keeps promising me that love 

    and only love can kill the melancholia 

    and reawaken me    to joy.)

So what could I say?

That winter has frozen my tears inside my mind and 

only thoughts of death still bring me solace

    and the night seems too cruel and empty,

but the too brite days are worse and I love you?

You are right not to listen.

I am right to disappear into the darkness —

    leaving to make my peace alone in a cold 

    and lifeless cell —

    escaping memory.

And the tears inside my skull 

speak of belief that has died

    and wonder overcome by a desperate apathy

    and that place deep within my heart that love

    alone can reach — release

That secret life-affirming catalyst which remains 

    solidly locked away —

I cannot ask you for the key.

lost in beauty and laughter,

like joyful fire sprites dancing warmth

into this Winter’s night.

subjective

forward –

Renewed potential energy

The art of being human,

painted layers. Long revisions,

as the mural wall continues

circling, spins through clarification

to deepening mystery. Ever new

embellishments.

Trapeze experiments. Sequins, glitter, lace.

Colours,

brightly clean to muted counterpace.

Scatter-washed in seasons.

*

imagine small, incremental, delicately

illustrated

steps easy enough to reach and celebrate

each success,

then on to the next; flexible enough to

accommodate

shifting conditions,

focused and strong enough to

carry you along.

*

find a quiet place

let your mind drift and wander

take a leisurely stroll through

what feels good, right, beautiful

Who would you be,

what would you do,

if time and space were infinite?

*

Daring to explore pleasure,

infinite awareness. Leisurely

share

what feels genial, joyful, light.

Infinite muse lit lanterns

take wing.

All the places of possibility

— the universe of time and space –

*

Enjoy surprise, the changing tides,

this space in time while you’re alive.

Dance, sing, self-embrace and swing.

Become aware of the miracle

that you truly are.

gift of Summer

Ride glorious waves of Summer reverie,

long, indulgent daylight, enchanted nights

awash with fun    

*

Ah to be a Summer gift — born on Sun’s warm rays a’smile,

a welcome lift to bask in, to adore.  Joined in dulcet cheer,

we rise in salutation, to celebrate, to feel

spirits soar.

*

 

Easy winds, breezy gush of summer rain

feeding the greedy young grains

growing along the plains.  Flowers of the storm

feeding the beasts of the field.

Exult in fecund season as heaven revealed.

*

Burn with hazy summer wine and dance,

feet connecting dust to sky.

Sing of Summer surf, held close to mystery.

Summers’ call of water and sand;

twilights of harmonic symphonies when Sun

entwines with green horizons.

*

scented summer secrets diffuse softly into twilight

unwinding carnival music, evening blooms, billowing out into gentle wind

remembrance of soft summer nights by the sea, by the lute of starlight

*

The summer city in darkness exudes a fantasy quality,

sultry surreal.

*

Dark urban streets

Yes, lamplight,

Garishly bright commercial signs,

Traffic lights’ mechanical commands.

But here, outside clear designation,

lightless, mysterious, obscure.

Brazen walk forward

in quest of inspiration or fabulous

revelation.

Subways, bridges, city bones upon which

to drum, explore

rhythm and blues,

exuberant spirit, chaotic amusement.

 

*

Jewel-like sparkle through emblazoned green,

a field of play, poets and sprites gaily a’song.

Wily elf folk take a laugh, a dance,

a merry evening’s holiday.

On roads of old, firefly pipers inspire

hopeful wild kind to be.  Free flight like in infant dreams

before boundaries.

*

for Peggy

For Peggy Chestnutt ~ may your spirit dance in eternal bliss

 

 

Shared Summer Leaves

. 

 .

Plot keeps us moving

conflicts, obstacles

from concept to theme.

Show of our qualities,

characteristic strategies

how people change

dramatically, comedically,

through relationship or revelation

or how we resolutely refuse

to change despite ardent

catalysts.

Sitting in your kitchen

drinking wine and sharing plotlines

leading to the lives we share

here in safe eternity

I feel your joys, moments of doubt,

your poignant tragedies and resilient reclamations

Your brilliant smile, contagious laugh,

ebullient embrace carry me beyond

enduring sorrows.

A fallen sparrow nurtured,

a flower coaxed to glory,

a simple girlhood story spanning wars,

historic empathies.  Cuttings

cultured from days before language

continue chains

of synchronicity, plotlines leading me

to find

our brief exchange

Strands of interactive dna

move us forward into more complete

meeting.

 

***

 

Sitting here, in the cluttered fan-cooled kitchen

while a storm-brewing wind rustles

through the garden below.

The California wine tastes tart and sticky.

The wine tells me stories, you know.

It’s the redness and the way the light reflects

against the glass, along with the drug.

Hearing voices in the silent darkness,

I listen without question.

As the night slowly falls,

I envision fantasies of former lives:

Glistening ball gowns and a smiling orange moon

in a starlit sky appear in my mind’s eye

along with

jugglers and dancers.

A fortune-telling maiden in glorious rags

places cards upon a table:

“The red one is Death; the white one is Honour;

the green one is Fortune; the blue one is Love.”

She lives in a log cabin with a unicorn and goat

who feed and clothe her and keep her safe.

There are many things I need to know

and few to tell me.

So I listen to the wine’s stories.

I wish it were my garden, below.

I would go out barefoot and gather ripe vegetables

under the moon,

breathing deeply of the cool night air.

 

love as war

love as war

,

‘

’

Cross Purpose

,

,

At time’s crossroads, Reason drowns

in rage, pain,

radiated rain, treasonous air.

Weary of care, of punishing,

bottomless anger, of sobbing men

robbed of their right to give birth.

Taken from Mama’s warmth, from

the cave, to play brave.

And it’s ladies’ choice as you squirm

in fool’s corner.

Such a chore — kissing at this

and that for a chance to score

the shame, the blame from stuck-out

tongues, the bloody laughter

“I could bite off that little thing — make

you squat to pee.”

Wired to fight, at any cost,

because, of course, the Cross proclaims

“We’re right.  They are inherently wrong.”

“Those below must be taught to obey

our superior tools, to be broken,

that we may ride.”

Against our better fate, our race divided

along strict lines, by difference

nature instilled to make us strong

,

,

,

Many Voices

,

,

May we attend the funeral please,

for our sweet sister?

Nibble a bit upon her vacant flesh.

The foxes, the dear little foxes.

Mais oui, mais oui, the funeral, please,

for our sweet sister.

Mais oui, nibble a bit

upon her tender flesh.

Her day is over.

He’s digging a hole in the ground for me.

He’s digging a hole in the ground for me

and singing a song of sweet “I love you’s”

all the while he digs.

(minimizing his own discomfort)

Mais oui, nibble a bit

upon her vacant flesh.

,

,

,

Here at the bar again

,

,

Here at the bar again, bar nothing to me.

Deepest Scorpio, gusts tinged icy.

Onward toward Chumley’s  2 pm Village poetry reading.

Searching outside book stall for bargains,

found a Paul Goodman

with cat and dog and baby photographs

to give to Cindy

a gift of love for a fragile child

stranger/sister.

Still affright from last night’s heavy scene,

wherein the police took my man away again,

this time with my blessing and accomplicement.

. . . A man is a hard thing.

Also a drag on my developmental aspirations.

When all he does is loom and threaten

Big Brute Violence

to storm my sensibilities.

(What’s frustrating is he doesn’t hear me

plead for shelter.)

Laughing in the park we loved

Crying in the night we parted

Oh, beseech I, gods above:

Why must you leave me broken-hearted?

(and I know he’ll be returning with more disregards

and diatribes and possibly pistol drawn to fire)

So I sit here in the bar, again.

Drinking sweet Kahlua and awaiting the poetry.

Taking a respite, you see.

Oh, Goddess, for this while,

bar nothing to this troubled child

(for child I feel, though woman grown).

Let peace alone assail me.

,

,

,

How that felt:

That icy black cavernous feeling

That falling and screaming mad panic feeling

That oh so languid nothing matters slow scorch

That “where is all the newness, the magic?” feeling

That “too bad, so sad 

    (goddamit!  I’m shaking mad)” feeling

That horror in the night 

    when I know I’m sinking feeling

That tight black knot 

    clenching my aching muscles feeling

That I’m strong, 

    just stay out of my way I don’t need you feeling.

That empty feeling.

,

,

,

JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY

,

,

    It was a brisk, bright-mooned evening in mid-Fall — the sidewalks and trees decorated in crackly orange leaves, which blew helter-skelter in the excitement of the wind.

    Marie, pretty little Marie, danced along the sidewalk, pranced across the streets, dressed in deep velvet and sparkling finery on her way to a night of music and joy.  Perhaps he would be there — the he of the moment in her heart — a still unconsummated romance, which, of course, added to the excitement in her eyes, the dancing of her feet.  She was sweet twenty-two with long brown hair and big blue eyes and out on her own for under a year now, learning about life outside of school.  By day a temporary secretary in various city offices, waiting for the big break to appear which would launch her career; by night an energetic blithe spirit of the local cultural scene, looking for Mr. Right who would make her feel warm and cozy and loved.

    Warm . . . and cosy . . . and loved . . .

    John H. O’Connor — Johnny O’ — less than dapper man about town, scheming and scamming and looking for his lucky break, also had gentler feelings.  Just because he’d been knocked about a bit, he wasn’t bitter, just wise to the ins and outs; and he wasn’t one of the ins.  So he looked for the wide chance, the long-shot with the heavy purse, and meanwhile dreamed big-time, often with chemical aid; and looked for that special someone who would believe in him the way he wanted to believe in himself.

    And they thought they’d found each other that bright, crackling Fall.

    She was shy but forward.  He was brash but shy.  So they engaged in bantering small talk, while burning into each other’s eyes — everytime they encountered each other at the bars and parties and concert halls, for something over a month now.  And tonight once more.  But tonight was special.  Tonight was magical.  Crackling energy erupted and there was so much more between them — like telepathy.  They kissed.  And walked each other home, hand in hand.  And ended up in her apartment,

where her roommates were conveniently out.  They told each other their souls and enjoyed bodily bliss and felt very, very special and blessed.  And Marie, sweet little Marie, knew deep down for the very first time that somebody loved her all the way through, without reservation, without condensation, and with only one condition — that she love him too.

    So let us leave these new lovers to do as lovers do and visit them later down the road of life.  Not too much later, for things move fast in these days of high-technology and mass mediated culture.  Let’s look in on them, say nine months hence, in the long, hot summer of their lives.  And they’re sharing a small apartment on the wrong side of town.  (What makes it wrong — well the glaring glass and excrement on the sidewalk, as well as the occasional passed-out drunk or junkie might hint at a less than luxurious lifestyle for the local hoi-polloi.)

    Well, how could she believe in him, fastidious little Marie, who may have been emotionally starved, but at least was always fed and clothed among the middle-class.  And he loved her, yes he loved her almost feverishly, but he couldn’t control her; couldn’t own her; and the fear of losing her was more than he could bear.

    What had started out as a glorious adventure had turned too starkly real.

    And the real world, in fact, has become much too stark and drear.  What do we see on the tv and newstands but nuclear this and bacterial that and crazy folk erupting into murder on the streets and schoolyards and AIDS-infected rapists and child pornography rings and arson and bombings, and man’s most brutal retaliation unto man, woman and child.  A long, hot, greenhouse-effectuated summer indeed.

    So he hit her, once or twice, or maybe, yeah, he went, a bit, out of control.  He beat her, pummeled her, showed her just who was boss-man, upper-hand, in control of the situation, able to rule her life.  And did she leave?

    Hell, no.  Where could she go?  There is no safe port home, you know.  Not when Mom and Dad have split long since and communicate mostly by holiday phone calls and birthday greeting cards with a twenty-five dollar check enclosed because they’ve both known better days. 

And friends, what friends?  He’s alienated all those who are less worse off than they and she, so blindly attentive in the early days of bliss, had barely noticed.  That brilliant career has yet to materialize.  We must admit she’d not really been pursuing it lately.  And he’s pissed away her weekly paychecks on deals made of daydreams and the occasional rent, utilities and food.  But, hey, this is the latter part of the twentieth century.  Aren’t there “Women’s Groups” and socially conscious organizations to come to the rescue?  Well, maybe somewhere; but not here where it counts so far as she can see.  She’s alone.  Except when he loves her in the warm, soft night, singing poetry with his eyes and hands and mouth — giving and taking and being all she could imagine.  Oh, for those warm, soft nights . . ..  But she’s got to go.  She must escape.  The total desperation of the situation has come upon her.  Nowhere to go . . . nowhere . . . nowhere . . ..  But go she must!

    So she waits ’til he’s out on the town, scheming and scamming and giving his all just to try to make it for her, to be somebody in her eyes.  And she just starts running, in no particular direction, no thought in her mind but escape.  She runs, then walks, then runs again, through the town, through the city streets, with no certain destination, desperate little Marie, living on the hope that something will occur to her as she runs.  And, running out of breath, she stops at a newsstand where the headlines scream of horrors far beyond what she has ever endured.  But she’s out of breath and out of options.  She’s got about $5.00 in her pocket, so she goes into the nearest bar to use the facilities and buy a pack of cigarettes.  And take some time to think.

    Pretty little Marie, they come up to her and offer to buy her a drink.  What the hell.  She drinks.  It makes her feel less.  Notice less.  And some sleezeball carries her away, arm around her staggering form.  And when she tries to scream, he covers her mouth and nose and face with the pillow.  So she screams and screams inside her mind.  And in the bright, hot morning, they find her, what’s left of her, in a scuzzy alley.  The headlines talk of her tomorrow, but it’s too late for her to care.

,

,

,

War Is Crime (please share)

War Is Crime

..

,,

It’s a strange philosophy,

making war the ultimate decider of conflict or disagreement.

Over and over it fails, miserably, tragically. Yet the demand persists.

!

Lives not given, not shared.Taken.

Ripped asunder.

Limbs, guts, glory.

Shrieking abandoned waifs,

wailing inconsolate lovers.

Screaming bombs, squealing tanks.

Arms shattered,

vision scarred

for peace, for Fatherland, for prosperity.

Today, cold, raw, ice flecks

obscure a longed-for Sun.

!

Soft blood dries — throes of maggots and microbes

cunningly feast on folly.

Can the wage of war pay to feed our habit?

Vegetation of these mythic forests grows

twisted, tinged in dark crimson layers.

Smell terror, violent death —

fresh meat, or fresh enough for remnant

gnashed snarls of teeth and salivation.

Lullabies drenched in sweet hope

snapped for a dream.

!

all she has known forever ashes.

This ought to be a nightmare.

Here, now, it is horribly … overwhelming.

Heart, blood, breath, these are what matter understands.

Mind is elsewhere.  It has screamed into submission, reptilian —

Heart, blood, breath.

!

Terror reverberates

shakes tree limbs, wavers

vision.  Terror waits ahead.

Grabbing strength enough to veer,

steer clear,

running thoughtless through loss,

unafraid of the unexpected, uncharted,

new.

Unencumbered by old terrors,

expectations.

Ready by necessity to make do,

to start from simplest principles.

Who am I, today?

Tomorrow must take care

of itself.

!

Without law, there is no crime.

Without rules, no crown ascends

by common call – but only by

all against all

in squall of terrors,

contests of survival, games

scored in blood.

!

heart breaks and bleeds

scarlet ribbons

dripping into vital organs

coagulating breath, thought, awareness

there is no promised land of peace

no safe harbour free of misery

!

before the war

when water flowed

in abundant freedom

when the air was pure

of the stench

of progress

when everybody had

a sacred right

to feel

and believe

and dance in the moonlight

when we could afford to be

young, untried, open

to possibilities not cut off

by a sacrificial knife

repeatedly deeply severing

vital organs

without regard to the waste

with no respect for place

or the people for whom that space

holds stories

!

A Call to Russian Soldiers:

,,

,,

Why do you kill these people

who try to defend their homes,

or escape your hellfire?

What lie can you have been caught

by that would allow such brutality?

See the grievous terror you have wrought,

are still wreaking.

What can you plea as explanation,

excuse?

How can you continue to make Hell

on earth continue, ripped into this

bloodbath of destruction, when you,

brave kind you,

could choose, use your might

to reclaim sanity, to save the world?

*

[“what if they gave a war, and nobody came?”]

color my world

 +

Nonbinary – not just about gender

There is so much more to color

than black and white – these are not

boundaries nor imperatives.

These are merely metaphors,

print on page.

Humans can be perverse —

anti-survival.

Caught up in fantasies that poison,

destroy our own lives.

We refuse to be wise, in favor of

self-flagellation, suffocating in hatred,

dying however we can, despite

that imperative instinct to cleave

to beauty, to survive.

+

Nonbinary – refracted light

isn’t black & white

It’s a Rainbow

 +

duelity

+

Duality, dichotomy, antipathy

All we see is

black and white

wrong and right

day and night

running blind into sharp edges

unneeded bloodshed

See:  the world round, encompassing dimensions

+

all lives matter

and everybody dies

get over your obsession with black/white

and feel the grays, expand your sight

+

“Whites”, “Blacks”, “Browns”, “Reds”, “Yellows”,

“Indigos”:  get over yer sorry selves.

We are all tragically flawed people.

The rest is just detail, to give our stories color.

 +

sexism, racism, colorism, ageism, ableism, classism, casteism,

any ism that teaches us fellow humans are our superiors or inferiors, are essentially the same ism

– that abstraction that tells us we can order living beings into static categories the better to lash out

with shame/blame/rage/violence rather than look to our own living beingness and tell our most wonderful stories.

+

Eyes taught to worship war respond to colors us v. them.

Eyes caught up in wonder reflect focused light like gems.

 +

Feudal Diffraction

+

It’s not the color chart; it’s the hierarchy.

Hoarders of permission slips for supplies

thereby decide what gets prioritized,

which brick gets laid, or even fired,

who lives well,

who scrapes or no longer gets by.

It’s not our genetic code that compels social insanity.

Perhaps it’s a kind of manic compulsion,

depressive obsession,

mass psychosis,

St. Vitus line-dance to a zombie

caller’s tune.

What to do?

Meme-web reconstruction in increments

paradigm warping incidents

realign the pulse of macro/microsphere

benign gibberish cy-phones through?

Take back your time.

Take back your right to self-valuation.

Take back your place

outside of the lines.

If our needs, self-fulfilling desires, greater

ecstatic glory and grace

are to be based

on solid infrastructure,

on fruitful interplay,

on free and freeing expression,

let us take hands in multi-rhythmed,

undulating, beatific dance.

Let us be and do and feel

that which gives us permission

to be whole.

 +

Mothers’ Night

 +

cascading shards

ripping

echoes falling

“It’s our calling.”

 +

Rape of Earth,

hot spurts, invective words,

savage knives.

Abiding Mothers,

sacred and mundane

twist into harridan

cold stars

 +

wailing, hurtling waves.

Sad, old, crust of ages

sliced, screwed, carved up for profit

“It’s not the color of the skin,

the culture of the smile”

+

the scent of danger,

the inborn stranger —

all excuses for Us (superior)

and Them (inferior)

“They are not our breed,

but lower curs.”

We may kill with unfettered glee.

 +

Cursed, clubbed, cut to our requirement.

Borders clear.

“Heretic fear fences in

our livelihood and wives.

Leave THEM to putrid pits

cunning jabs,

our pleasure.”

+

Stunning, treasure that might regale,

heal, exemplify true worth,

sustain humanity and Earth,

sold for pittance of potash

to wage a weary jig.

+

Unite Song

+

It’s not about

black or white

might is right

fuel to fight

 +

It’s not about

East or West

who’s the best

forget the rest

 +

It’s about

me and you,

if we choose,

what we can do

+

EARTH TONES

 +

I am not blind to color.

I have never seen a black human,

nor a white.

People appear in various shades of

browns and reds.

Why do we not thus perceive —

Earth’s fertile richness in our skins: browns and reds?

How did we come to  need to pretend cold

simplicity of colorless You and Me?

Black + White — not natural life but

pre-judged lines, static and deadening.

 +

We are calling in the dawn

Calling, gently, our many voices

How do we call thee, oh joyfully smiling mother

Welcome arising in our hearts,

Anointing our many-colored soul.

Take in the day

Rejoice in the sunshine

We are alove and strong

In primeval paradise

Upon a windswept beach

Our eyes, our arms

Raised in blessing

Totality is ours

+

Rainbow Shop

*)*

*)*

And she sold me rainbows

dancing gaily ‘cross the window

  windchimes in light.

And she smiled me daisies

and bursting bright blooms of summer.

And she told me, maybe,

if you’re looking in

the right direction,

  a miracle may grace your sight.

And I smiled

dancing

  into the day.

*)*

Queen of Sea and Mountain

Queen of Sea and Mountain

 

 

Winter born, Saturn ruled, not a saint nor a fool,

persisting over rocky peaks, through stormy seas,

not content to seek what comes easily.

Take a good, hard road and get going.

Mountains beg to be climbed.

Steep stone, this world of woe and

exaltation, daring to swoop, touch depths,

emptiness slick with tears.

Behind, terrors that made us more aware.

Beyond yonder slope, who knows what epics

left to find, to ride in wonder.

Breathing higher air,

the wise goat climbs with care.

 

Time for calm regard, to ponder,

to welcome adventure or whatever arrives.

Engage with ritual for gleaning

joy enriched deeply layered meaning!

Maybe study chapters from multifaceted lives —

refine as art, mining treasure from memories.

Wise in the ways of demons, oracles, gypsy Queens;

brave, adaptive, resilient, self-possessed;

Buddha-like compassion, learned in cycles

of conscious labor, blessed bliss.

Weathered, withered, listen, be risen.

Resurrected tempered mettle,

engorged with will to rise

ever again.

 

Slowly turning toward enlightened reason,

pausing at each portal to awe.

Ahead on the climb up this temporal ladder,

what legends of mastery draw us in?

 

Part of a grander destiny –

abiding through trials, tests, bitter lessons.

Never a finishing point, wisdom’s gifts —

ease of peace in contemplation, transcendent

imagery, welcoming grace — appear bit by bit,

day by day. Solace wildly spins toward

acceptance.

Time for the simple and natural, anointing

the soul in calm reflection,

to make of the whole sad cacophony

discrete instruments of harmony,

of divine symphony,

to act with impeccable integrity.

Rocky hazards face all who walk this ridge.

Take it slow; let time wait.

Immersed, made into a person, a defined moving space,

mesmerized, bound in measures. Outcast

from safe discipline of tribal faith,

to create from beyond common form.

Within this mad parade — the will to cure, kill,

carry on courageous —

 

The image of a wishful star:

a steady shine — but still so far.

The nights of hope; the days of pain —

on and on, that old refrain.

Counting out the chimes as if time were treasure.

Built on years of sun, storm, forces claimed

and reconfigured to bring us here.

Quiescent summit of hero’s mountain

soothed by view of waves, of distant heights.

Currents lift to flow, fall to rise.

Symbols, releasing over transits of Time

manifest intention, give birth to form and substance,

give meaning to here and now

as it expands into ever after.

in memory of Kala Snowflower

*

 

Enchanting

(for Kala Snowflower)

*

*

Magical child, the world awaits you

 

Not just this place,

any world you care to grace,

 

relate to, turn your lovely face to.

 

“We love you”

sing the winds, the seas,

the creatures large and small

 

“We love you always”

 

Singing and dancing long into the night,

 

you turn it into day.

 

Play that haunting melody.

It moves you

into a chance to name your trance,

 

to name us all

 

as we, before your eyes,

the skies will dance for you,

will open wide their hearts of stars.

Sparkling through the night,

Shining into day.

 

You play.

 

All of creation rejoices to your song,

creating worlds of joy.

*

*

*

DREAMTIME (FOR KALA)

Posted on March 8, 2019

*

*

That dream again.

Running, running,

but your feet are stuck, enmeshed in pavement,

though all of your intent runs in terror.

Demon warriors form themselves in the grey cloud that surrounds you, become denser, full 3-D attack.

You find yourself at war with your pillow, trapped in twisted sheets.

Another damned day to get through looms beyond the dream-storm tossed bed.

)_

)

Creature, being, created from singular experience cocooned in dreaming.

Meditating, sitting, silent, still, watching metaphoric artfilm of revealed

truth waft like oracular smoke over beauty of this deep-blue pond contained

in floating ice offset by fog-faded mountain awareness.

Those dreams, those dreams, to live only there

where it all makes nonsense that feels so inevitable.

Stories unencumbered by beginnings, by logical progression, by

boundaries, yet pure and strong as sacred text.

That meat-suit we use for interface, to find and absorb sustenance,

input that makes us dependent on a scientifically defined world,

magically transcended, hours transformed outside of measurement,

of time.

Even those horrific, catastrophic images that angrily cast you back

into a waking sweat and terror, even they are breakthrough respite,

catharsis to contain, secure, untenable memories, fears.

Immerse with your story’s most salient themes.

)_

)

Dream places connected in hyper-clear intensity

Lightning storm, steep stone climb from a college holiday

fair far below.

Agitated, observing, moving fluidly in the multi-tiered library.

So much to take in, be drawn into, imaginary conversations with

bright-labeled books.  The library like a horror movie medieval tower,

fearsome.  Those snow-robed mountains, forests, royal Guard,

calling so softly, so forcefully, Sirening in, holding

for exhibition.   

Hard hills of snow become Summer fountain festivals

on opium fields, sickly sweet and sticky bun bewitching,

that cloying ecstasy you never want to leave.

)_

)

Puissant, what drugs want to promise.  Free theater customed

to a singular crowd.  Instant, hologrammatic slice of eternity.

Perhaps a gift, brief respite from agonized responsibilities.

Respite from cold, pain, everyday injuries of innumerable mites

infected with pestilence, endless war.

Who we are in dreams, unobserved for critique,

pictures imbued with emotional sensation speaking

directly to our most private desires.

To live in dreamtime, free of censoring reality,

what would that mean?

)_

)

Immersed in sharp colors, sensual, deeply felt geometries.  Circus

fools, acrobat costumes, hidden rivers along highways thicketed in

mystically perfumed foliage.  Scenes never seen in waking life, yet

perennially home, in dreamtime.

In the innocence of dreamtime, what have you seen?

Tell me your dreams.

*

*

*

belated – Kala Snowflower

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NWgQ3vmLRA

*

I just oh so late learned of Kala/ Ix’chel Neve’s passing

My heart is drowning in tears

My eyes search for her blessing

*

https://om2317.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/enchanting-for-kala-snowflower/?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NWgQ3vmLRA

*

Nuit Report: weekly astrology Feb 27-Mar 6: Full Moon in Virgo. Matters of “Ultimate Concern”.

Aepril’s Astrology

 

*

I dedicate this Nuit Report to the memory of Ix’chel Neve. A bright beacon of Love and Light in this world, who continues to open hearts and inspire even as she has transitioned to the other side. A free spirit, poet, and Sister who’s openness and shared experience has been unutterably beautiful. We have collectively received a great gift in her, just by her existence on this plane, and she will be terribly missed by many.

*

“Do not be afraid.

The God is passionate.

The Goddess compassionate.

In Death prepare to live again

Come Spring.”

*

excerpt from “Change”Ix’chel Jaguar, October 2014. (C. 2014 , Michelle Neve)”

*

*

 

excerpts from  emerging visions visionary art zine https://emergingvisions.blogspot.com/

MOVING FROM THE VISIONARY’S IMAGINATION INTO VIEW THAT ALL OF US MAY LEARN TO SEE FURTHER:

*

The faeries call me Kala Snowflower. For I walk the Earth, sing on Air, dance with Fire and breathe the Water. I am healer, poet, farmer, teacher, lover, child and tree. I am Love and Love is me.

*

*

Her Body Painted

 

by Kala Snowflower

*

*

Her body painted like sunset water

colors, the words of the gift burned

into her skin, the poetry

that so becomes her-

sheer fabric,

draped over her hips

to tantalize Beloveds, lifted

reveals the story told

and retold, at times

the letters themselves reforming,

retelling the kaleidoscopic life of the Lover

who holds a palette of bone deep wounds

and ecstatic caresses-

creating Herself

creating her World.

*

Her belly the sun spinning fire to prism.

Her arms wearing lush vines blooming blue

flowers.

Water horses prancing joy into her

sacrum.

And kissed deeply into her ankle, sweet

scented jasmine.

*

Until morning, when dipping swift down

into

her cauldron of Art=Life,

offering vision for vision, releasing all form

toward emergence, pink fleshed, new,

unwritten, awaiting Dawn colors

while her light hot palms

hover over tendons strengthening,

joints loosening, fingers stringing

shiny beads swirling silver and gold

patterns around everyone she touches:

*

the cat who roots into her lap

and the green flesh of foxglove

crawling up her leg to be noticed.

Faery whispers, louder now

foretell the spiral garden her body

now builds, stone upon stone,

malachite, granite, dirt, seed,

flower and herb strung together

*

as a necklace for the Queen.

*

*

(c) 2006 Michele Neve

*

 

Dream

 

Golden eagle fly, and fly

become a carousel horse

of darkening cloud,

release the day

entering night

becoming You

see everything.

 

Ariel spreads his wings

and down goes the edifice

crumbling to the ground,

stones kissing again

Mother Earth

becoming again

hidden treasures.

 

Hematite, malachite,

sparkling quarry

seduce the sunlight,

my fingertips

initiate a threesome.

 

Liquid eyes held my own still,

so different from the moody

and wild storms of the mirror;

hers soft as a rippling pool,

seaglass underwater.

She kissed me then, soothing my fear

of her,

 

and whispered,

“all that lasts

will crumble

all you try to save

will fall

all you create

will be destroyed,

 

so

no worries,

 

come now, follow me inside,

breathe again deep down

and deeper, through

gills.”

 

Kala Snowflower

 

 

Rainbow Reflections: Ocala, FL

 

Alone in the trance

I remember moments

like the sun that flickered

between palmetto

arrowheads

poised and ready

to fly through air, piercing

a spanish imposition

keeping back conquistadors

with their metal buttons

glinting, their swords reflecting

cypress gleaming green as their skin

after the poison settled into flesh

rotten as their intentions.

This was before they learned

and burned it all down

claiming a scorched land

and killing the exposed warriors

who wept not for themselves

but for the trees gone

and the land never the same

 

since Ponce de Leon found the eternal

spring where these days Russian, German, French

tourists bathe their wrinkled faces

doing nothing to keep out the alligators.

 

…

 

Alone in the dance

I discover again

from the lips of my swamp brother

oak and pine medicine

and gratitude

pouring out of my shiny sister

who serves up love

in a New Orleans kitchen

out there in Babylon, Louisiana

where the billboards catch

between messages.

She walks to work

breathing in mold spores

and flaking plaster

cannabis singing out from

doorways, ignored by the cops

who all see

that the hippies

feed

the people.

 

…

 

Listen, all is revealed to you.

Your perfect thighs

are my thighs

your perfect breasts

my own.

Everything I come across

I offer you.

Everything I ask for

you give to me.

Your children

are my children.

My blanket is yours.

Everyone is fed here.

But first

we circle

hold hands

look into eyes

shining and soft

thank each other

ourselves

the stars we are

crumbling toward

and Gaia

Mother of us all.

 

Kala Snowflower

 

 

 

Blue Eyes

 

 

Still, I wait.

 

Allow my self

 

to lift away

 

from myself.

 

Black and silver

 

shimmering

 

scales

 

releasing,

 

release me.

 

 

 

My eyes glow red

 

underneath the blue

 

drama,

 

so I cannot see you

 

as you are, glowing

 

green light from your chest,

 

violet between your eyes.

 

Instead, shadowed by my past,

 

you wear the tint of that day

 

long ago

 

when I first lost you.

 

So nothing you do matters,

 

when always

 

you are leaving me behind.

 

 

 

Still, I wait.

 

Shadowed blue like everything,

 

there is a stone within this

 

glass walled world.

 

My head scratches against it

 

to peel me away and

 

free me.

 

 

 

At this stage alchemy

 

is nothing more than

 

sweeping away ashes.

 

The new skin shines brightly

 

now I see you clearly

 

through walls made of

 

glass

 

and beyond.

 

 

(c) Michele Neve/Kala Snowflower

 

 

Breathing Her Breath

 

When the summer left

I stood alone

longing for the yellow haired

sunlight entangling in leaves

heaving oxygen, filling

my chest with the love of a woman

whose arms like branches

reach for the blue

blue sky, the rosy cloud,

the great star party of midnight

mountaintops.

 

Woman whose roots reach far

beneath the mushroom family

dining on moss dressed graves

past the corpses fermenting

sweet worm wine

through granite and smoky quartz

spreading open dirt like thighs

to the core of her erupting

wild ways.

 

Loving a woman whose breath

breathes me into being.

Whose arms reach for me, hold me

closer to lips that kiss me

 

until when the summer left

I stood alone and

 

Brighter.

 

(c) Michele Neve (Kala Snowflower)

 

 

Directions from dreamtime:

 

Go to the same address

then down 1,000 stories.

 

Going back to the Beginning

before the beginning

when Nothing had a name

 

but everything had voices

for singing,

 

stumble upon a boy

alone in the forest

playing guitar

revealing such intimacies

you can only

watch sideways

hidden among leaves

as the music

takes you into

his whole.

 

Then run

deeper and through a violet door

between pine and stripped oak

and enter a gingerbread house

of lovers no longer in cages

where at birth they were welcomed

by a witch so hungry to eat

sweet innocence

but children can be tricky

so for thirty years

she’s been slow cooking

on the flame

and the children are grown now

yet linger among the cookie crumbs,

holding hands, awaiting

the main course

and dancing circles

around the oven.

 

Then open the door slowly

and enter through

the hot embers,

clinging to your robes,

your conical hat burning away.

Skin and fat bubble

and burst, juices flow,

basted in your blood

made savory.

Through particalized eyes

watch as the Children

of Light wipe you from

their lips with kisses.

 

Back again

to the beginning.

 

There was a flute

and a mermaid playing

and her lover praising

her Beauty.

And everyone took turns

sitting on a golden ball

that bloomed petals

while each Buddha beamed

and miles away

a single voice

balanced on a precipice

not realizing

he was smiling

as he fell over the edge

scattering coins.

 

 

(c) Kala Snowflower

 

 

Sometimes I fall to my

knees

releasing the need to stand

and just allow

the Earth to comfort me

while

the red moon glows

between thighs

dripping

radiance

and my fingertips

enter her dark soil

mouth

that drinking

drains my fear.

 

 

Invited to dance by God

via Hafiz via a child

I wear a smooth stone necklace,

lemon balm anklet, dress

of forest, crown of

fireflies

 

and seeing the rain begin to fall

summer hard

I rush outside

to accept.

 

copyright Kala Snowflower

 

 

Were a woman of design

To find herself in a place

Where fabric falls in rivulets

Of sound against her thighs

Would she know wherefore

And what to?

 

What would she call the space

Between the pages, the race of beings

That suddenly spring from her like winged

Creatures at dawn?

 

What would she call the new face

She found in the mirror’s eye,

Springing from her skull and staring

Beyond mere daylight from the

Darkest corner of her being?

 

Would a name suffice to explain

The mythological necessity of the traces

She would claim and someday

Outpace?

Or, what is it in a name

That gives voice to the dream?

 

Were a woman to design

The newest place to call now home

Would the faeries lend a hand

Or leave her quite alone

 

Until riding the east wind

On a poppy bloom

She is done?

 

copyright Kala Snowflower

 

 

All Existence is…

 

Give from heartsong tears

away, allow

smiles

soothing what was

ache

Allow

water flowing, cleanse

you, dancing

Allow

Allow

Allow

gifts, this feeling, this

being inside, allow

bliss, allow

I cannot frame the moment

in gauze, mere

tapestries, movement,

allow myself receiving

the present, the sunset,

grave bodies decomposing,

singing past prayer, allowed

to be presently in flow,

allowing discovery:

how the light feeds

thought feeds

inspiration

feeds

rooftop reflections,

Beauty dancing on eyes

sparkling sorrow, love

hungry

they take you

take you

allow you

inside

healing for healing

allow fragments

like cool hands

warm touch

revival rising through

dark water, rising

through dirt, roots

entangling through

hair still growing

receiving manifestly

destiny cosmically

proportionally

in sound, landscapes of

flesh, kisses opening

opening deepest

recesses from

coarse fabric of time to

immortal rooms beaming

bright solitude in crowds,

waves exclaiming, crests

of excitement riding,

speaking, whispering,

screaming out

Destiny, take me!

Love, Open me!

Wider, I’m yours

chaotically, beyond

purpose, light caresses

my hair integrates this

moment, rides the wave

dancing the cycle of perception

without thought, care, notice

only this

understanding–

bright red fruit beckons,

enticing with life

Mother loving Father

Sun and Earth embracing

my heart kisses tiny birds above

with only one true purpose

pure with joy.

 

 

copyright Kala Snowflower

 

 

Oweynagat: Cave of the Cats

 

Undoing everything

the darkness speaks

knocks on the door

 

scared shit I pull the covers

over my ears, keep out

spiders, shush voices

 

all rational underpinnings

fall away like destiny

which too is rational

 

and nothing like the chaotic

symphony each moment portends

each moment holding

 

clues to the next, yet

suddenly

it all changes

 

entirely new creatures

take off in the jet stream

clinging to my shoes

 

make their way into

the bright

nothingness.

 

Ancient people angry at me

for not opening my ear

tired of my fear

 

that is meaningless to them

when all they desire

is to be heard

 

like any one

of us

like me.

 

I am closing, closing

embracing myself

in the dark room

 

alone, alone

is what I’ve wanted

needed

 

and there are those outside

who will never again enter

I keep them out.

 

I am not

Maiden opening

Mother nurturing

 

I am Crone alone

claiming space to writhe in

scream in, howl my pain in

 

slice through those who come

with my sword, Warrior Queen

on my bubbling throne

 

smite them, smother them,

protecting my Tribe, my claim

to my cave

 

allowing entrance only to those

who tie bits of their hair

to my tree

 

who expect nothing of me,

who come stripped naked

to feed with their flesh

 

my darling hungry Ravens

and who ask nothing and buried alive

die in the silence.

 

Your mind, your anguish, your anxiety, your fear

are nothing to me

but decorations

 

leave them at the entrances

and enter wiped clean

of who you thought you were–only then

 

my cool arms open to cradle you

my wet cave spreads wide to rebirth you

once you reach my core

 

you will never feel so safe

so loved, so real

so you again.

 

(c) November 12, 2007 Kala Snowflower

 

 

Magic Flute

 

Bright blue sky morning

 

brings clouds wearing

 

crow dark wings

 

slick walk stairs

 

bare black branches

 

and graceful Goddess tree

 

white surprise

 

beckons eyes toward

 

her

 

flirting with pine

 

boughs swaying

 

delicate needles scenting

 

winter water wonder

 

fish swimming

 

wearing mittens.

 

 

 

I emerge from centuries

 

carrying spirals on seashells

 

to mountaintops

 

offer rosemary

 

beckon back to underwater

 

where fins can shimmer pure color

 

 

 

where my tattoos rise up

 

Girl Scout badges

 

worn until fleshless

 

bones lie silent

 

speaking nothing of lovers,

 

adventures, descents

 

into caverns

 

 

 

until some poet looking down

 

finds femur

 

and bringing it to her lips

 

braves breath moving

 

through me again

 

marrow softening

 

water flowing

 

spreading wide for my entrance

 

I whisper music.

 

 

 

(c) Kala Snowflower

December 12, 2007

 

 

You Just Can’t Stop the Music

 

 

He said, “forget the poetry,”

 

and wide eyed, unbelieving

 

my heart so open the world

 

inside was dancing

 

until the words that stopped

 

the music, the dancers

 

halting, suddenly unsure

 

of themselves,

 

sat on their haunches

 

and cried.

 

 

 

“What have we been doing all these years?

 

Has it all been a waste, all

 

this learning to move our bodies

 

in cadence with the rhythm

 

of her heart beating?

 

 

 

Why have we bothered,

 

allowing ecstacy to shiver our bellies,

 

despair to make claws of our fingers,

 

grasping the drama of frenzied spaces,

 

careening to collide until something

 

makes contact, something

 

to hold on to

 

and let go of

 

when the changed beat

 

compels us to gyrate again,

 

undulate our hips

 

toward another completion,

 

sway our heads into new

 

contortions, capturing her heart

 

like the blue eyed Russian boy

 

or the drum beat that melted her clothes

 

into a heap of bear fur

 

after flying to Pluto as a dark crow

 

calling in annihilation?

 

 

 

What purpose is all this we do

 

other than for the poetry of it—

 

our throats stretched back taut like birds releasing sound

 

our chests spread open, leading the way

 

our bellies hungry for more and more movement

 

for lovers and lovers and more lovers

 

touching each other in the beauty ridden rooms of her making

 

where everything is permitted

 

the sky always day bright

 

forever lost in midnight

 

infinitely dawn pale blue.

 

 

(c) Kala Snowflower

 

 

Bridge to Genius

 

 

Blood down form

From out of the sparkling

Nothing she emerged

Sipping hippy crack

Music pulses

Releasing from her skin

Into sheer air.

And poetry came with her.

Although then still wordless

Awaiting the symbols to match

The sound of her universe.

When they came she grew larger

Her eyes even bigger

And at school they called her owl

Because she stared at everything.

It took her years to realize

The truth behind the slight.

The wisdom she always held

That the children saw

And misunderstood

Or perhaps knew

But did not know how to grasp it.

And how since then, perhaps

Always, she has longed

Not to be understood

But to be loved

Even in misunderstanding.

Thus the poems flowing

Year after year

That she locks in the drawer

At the bottom of her being

Takes out now and then

And then hides away again

As if they weren’t her world.

As if they didn’t mean everything to her.

As if they weren’t the key to it all.

But this is changing.

Her genius no longer content

With sniffing mothballs

And underwear

Must now emerge.

To get from here to there

There is a bridge

Shining, silver and golden

Bejeweled, a snake stretching itself

Across the crevice into her tomorrow.

The full moon calls her to cross now.

The time is now.

Once on the other side

there is no turning back.

 

(c) Kala Snowflower

 

 

 

Alien Eyes

 

 

Life comes in shining brighter than the alien who came once

To my bedroom, a cosmic cerulean cyclone cornering me under the covers.

I asked it not to come back. I didn’t want to see.

I realize now how it was showing me my future.

Only now felt in vibrations I am on riding high and certain

I would be called something clinical if I told the wrong someone.

So I talk instead to the moon, the trees, the water flowing under the bridge,

The moth, the cat stopping in the road to watch me, the crow,

Mint and nettle, red clover, the moss covered rocks and the witches.

And they tell me,

You think you see everything without looking? Open your eyes

Look as a child would! See my branches reaching out in all directions,

My leaves spring bright excited to come alive, lambs quarters by the

Side of the road, coltsfoot leaves widening, dandelion giants flopping over,

Buttercups tiny suns beaming, delicate chicory wearing pale blue, heart shaped

Violet flirting with golden rod proud stalks, plantain for salads and bug bites.

And so much more life comes in shining brighter now that I see with alien eyes.

The dragonfly wings busk imperceptible music right in the middle of the street.

White moth flutters under the bridge off to high tea with the troll.

Rabbit in stillness, watching, waits for me to look away to bounce into some portal.

Dog who I once feared senses white wolf walking beside me and stops barking.

Faeries floating inches from my face wear white scalloped wedding finery.

And they tell me,

Life comes in

shining.

 

(c) Kala Snowflower

 

 

(from Open Me)

 

Open Me

 

Goddess

the light shines

the dark forest beckons

enter me

as the twilight lingers

embraces the clouds

with softest touches of caresses.

Let poetry come, pour through me.

My tongue on your

vulva.

My lips on your

jewel.

Your labia silken glitters

moist

reflecting the moon.

Cowrie shells and conch

a blood red

tide swells inside

growing

the new born boy child

who once gave

milk from his breasts

and the infant girl child

giving her first blood

at birth.

Relics of the connection.

The umbilical joining

breathing, tasting

living

One

with our Mother,

all giving and giving

and even in the expelling

still giving

the first breath

the first

singular experience

the first cry for the love of connection

the illusion of disconnect resolved

in flesh upon flesh

so that every time we touch

we dissolve and merge

with skin, muscle

fat and bone, inhabit

the womb every time we touch

the safety, the comfort, the shared

experience

becomes us.

Maya, we are One.

As the Gaian Mind

embraces each finger

each tiny toe.

On our bellies, drinking

from Mother Earth

we erupt

we spasm

we settle

we cry

we rage

we engage

we grow

we

die.

In the Gaian Mind

there is no separation.

We are always

giving forth

her milk.

Always bleeding

her blood.

Always drinking

through our navels

sweet honey

the presence

the source of our own hearts.

We are One.

 

(c) Kala Snowflower

 

 

(from Open Me)

 

Rukalsa

 

Reflections:

branches that call me

sky as wet as my thighs

as deep as

my name.

Trees bathing their trunks whisper

Come now, we are waiting for your

touch, your healing ways.

And roots deep beneath the surface

moan with desire for me

for my foot’s soft graze

to wrap their long and curling love

around my waist—

hold me as lover

into eternity.

From deep trance

I emerge

find myself

knee deep

in cold

slimy

pond

water.

Walking my way

to shore

from the core

of my creation

I pour

ecstatic streams

of freedom

falling down my legs—

this water

of life.

 

 

(from book in progress, Our Deep Magic)

 

Of Course

 

The ocean this November scalds my feet moments after emergence until

my calves scream for mercy, so I run with waves echoing in the throats

of boys passionate to save a family of drowning mice among the rocks.

Boys who follow me into the foam, naked as Venus under my clothes

and playing a pipe to entice them while their Mother’s eyes shift from me

back to them and worry about the cold cold water, their own feet sane dry, and

wondering about my age, shocked that I might be a Mother to the boy holding my hand.

He’s not my son, of course, but if he was, of course I would still play this way,

running until my pants to the waist darken. I would still see the swollen

waves in the white mist appear as the Goddess’ bare thighs opening.

And her music would still draw me forward, toward the salty depths to the place where

forever I am a child of the universe and growing up means there’s no one to stop me

when the water shouts my name over and over and over until I answer.

 

 

Faery House

 

For Selina

 

 

Woodland eye wears whispers.

I listen as soundless

fae play dulcimer on your iris,

and your face a changeling,

alien who steps over the threshold—

you come into my world.

 

Who are you since I dreamt you

into being?

 

Do you come to bring the wild

world closer?

 

With elvin ears and omen eyes

rolled stones upon my altar

you tell my future,

and I believe you.

 

A child again in your arms

I kiss your lips, your cheek,

eyes and ears, slick lick

kitten, lapping up prophecy

like sweet cream from your palm.

 

I build you now a woodland house

of birch bark walls and pine needle floor.

A place to be with you eye to eye.

We nestle in on the coldest night.

Our hair entwines like roots.

 

copyright Kala Snowflower

 

 

Stone Woman

 

1.

 

Sun, my center

dances to release the wind you warm

forward toward the stream

where we sparkle over stones

 

where we brace face

the new world

holding ourselves within

pillars of pure light

 

where my thighs hold

the secret.

 

Do you want to know and unfold

me?

 

I have this gift to offer:

I do not need, I love.

 

 

2.

 

In between grass blades, crazed ants

search, for hunger drives them

up larger hills and greater feats,

into dragging the King Kong

of insects over hills

down canyons toward

 

where we are going, with hunger

on our backs, held in our teeth,

moving over mountains to the bottom

of the ocean to find the place we remember

 

where lover scented sheets

await us

and the taste of the Earth awakens

us to choose, now transform.

 

 

3.

 

Thousands of years ago

I held you in my arms.

Here I am again holding you.

That will never stop.

 

The sun on our shoulders

reminds us to be still,

bellies to the earth

reach down into miles

of dirt, crystal, stone,

reach and reaching

 

she reaches with her molten

core into our center.

 

 

4.

 

Playing with light

mesmerized by the healer

his table holds my cheekbones

his hands fill my pores

with almond oil and cedar.

His fingers take away

what I held for so long.

 

Through the window, clouds unburden themselves

of long held secrets,

 

speak of the ice storm that took the lover down,

tearing away her arms and legs,

falling into snow.

 

It is spring so the broken branches float now

on the marshes, sink into the wet earth’s hunger.

 

The tree does not mourn

what is not loss, but shakes its body

lighter now and breathes bold blood into bud.

*

*

copyright Kala Snowflower

*

*

*

http://michelleneve.net/poetry/?

Michelle wrote poetry for over 40 years starting at the age of 7. She left 17 books in digital form spanning the years from 1997-2014 (as well as more in handwritten form). Here are selections from some her many poems. As of this writing her books are being edited and will be self-published in the early summer.”

http://michelleneve.net/poetry/?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-z_14LsxMU

Kala Joy reading Poetry at Beards of Valenccio – Aug 2013

Published on Mar 4, 2015

Kala Joy Neve (aka Ix’chel Jaguar) reading her own poetry at the Beards of Valenccio Art Salon on Aug 16, 2013.

*

Pisces’ February Fog

 

*

*

*

I have often meditated, thought/felt about unnecessary

suffering, all the tragic, miserable suffering based on

misunderstandings, or on situations which further down

the timeline no longer exist.

Diseases for which cures have been found, injuries in

wars that never needed to be fought, mistaken enmity,

all the gays and witches stoned and burned, all the

mentally ill subjected to horrendous “treatments,”

all the twisted secrets that never needed to be kept

keeping people entrapped in violent abuse.

In the way of meditation, I am drawn to thought about

Christian mystics.

Many were highly intelligent women who would never

have been taken seriously as everyday wives, but

cloistered from early ages, encouraged to give their minds

and souls and bodies to Christ, their writings preserved

show their grappling as mystic philosopher seekers, trying

to make sense of the suffering and brutality all around

and within them. Christ is love.  God is good and merciful.

If we suffer, it must be to bring us closer to our blessed

saviour.

Suffering (Piscean empathy) not so much about healing

as opening up to the holy well of pain we as mortals must

experience to learn true compassion, to take our share of

that pain from the shoulders of Christ, and by the grace

of our ecstatic burdens enter the realm of the holy,

the loving spirit.

*

But there is another way along this route, where the

suffering is about healing, is about transcendence and

transformation, alchemical catalyzation.

If I can enter the pain and find my way within it, learn its

language, learn to speak with it, understand it to the point

of being of it, work with it artistically and in a comradely spirit,

learn its secrets and its fears and its beauty, I can learn to

transform the pain within me, and find avenues to send that

transforming out into the world of suffering, into the pervasive

pain and misery of those who are caught up in traumas and

dramas and debilitation.

Though gospel says Christ died for our sins and transubstantiates

to lead us into the kingdom of heaven, perhaps the mystical way

can lead us to live through the pain and into that untimebound plane

where the pain has evolved into awestruck beauty that doesn’t hurt

at all, a way of ecstatic celebration in mutual love, support, opening

into pleasure and health, release into another kind of consciousness.

Or maybe we should just shut up and take our prescribed medications.

*

*

*

 

Healing

*

*

Pedestals in intricate geometric arrangement

Empty

since the sculptured gods have run off

seeking glories and adventures

in less structured realms.

Petitioners never notice,

leaving putrid mewling remains,

sacred sacrifice,

rotting stench to keep the altars

holy.

Out on the playfields,

breathing in hearty exercise,

laughter expanding lung strength,

crying leaving damp rich soil,

incremental mineral deposits

essential to health.

 

*

*

 

*

Close to the Edge

*

*

Close to the edge, so close.

The music’s playing old familiar memories.

It’s a grey day, fog of Pisces,

a year of fear and hopeful reawakening —

is there hope of resurrection?

in these grim, grim times?

But so grim?

A time to newly discover

strength within;

to again see life as a discovery 

    — can it be done?

On a day so grey, in a year so fraught with peril

    and misadventure?

Slowly, one at a time:  take things one at a time,

and they seem so small and easy.

Why hold expectations that lead to dismay,

hiding from fantasy?

Breathe, meditate.

Build dream towers to climb to,

not nightmares.

But it seems so safe and easy to hide

in the darkness,

to never utter another “I”

to cease.

Why not?

Close to the edge, so close.

The fool looks over his shoulder.

The wise goat climbs with care.

The lonely may jump in despair.

How to be alone and strong?

Ask the high priestess —

All is within/without you.

But to find that smile of understanding?

It is a search worth taking.

Slow, easy, breathe.

*

*

 

*

February snows through conflated years.

Fear was my ally, hailing me on, hugging

with glorious laughter, carrying unsure steps through

onerous trails. And those ebullient ecstasies of survival.

Drunk on the gold that surpasseth science or light.

Touch the cold sting, letting the song sing through me.

Do you?

Feel the music?  Abandon your amygdala to dance free

awhirl in a swirl of laughing snow?

In dreams, inchoate, unremembered, do we play in those

moments of bliss to keep us balanced, to give courage in a life

less lived, less honored?

*

Old, glazed-over eyes seek momentary solace, look long,

longingly, into a silly mist of snow beyond windows closed

securely against the cold.   Dream world revealed,

in the interplay of eyes and mind.

*

February snowflakes

Flitter Flutter

Feathery powder

Melt into my mind.

 

*

*

*

 

zoom back into throng

the very pain of life a Holiday song

metaliminal passion play in several actions

foggy notions, robes of myst

limbic video bliss

let loose into this foggy dawn:

colours, still subtle, arranging,

catch cold liquid, dissolve in

undulating air —

tell a story.

*

*

 

A new day dawns cloudy and forbidding.

We are entering San Francisco in the morning fog,

early, early, the world still dreaming.

Or maybe it was Cambridge, Mass.,

lost in the fog, unsure of time or space.

Sometimes there is singing:

something about a “Yellow Submarine” or “Strawberry Fields”

or sometimes haunting melodies without words.

But it’s all about the words, even those implied by the music.

Wine can help.

By the gods, wine is sometimes all that can help

(tho sometimes even wine betrays me).

The stinking debris of mornings after the night before,

or just morning by the coast with the stink of rotting fish,

the cries of gulls or sirens, the emptiness without tears, the cold of morning

— I remember that too.

That no more mornings could touch me,

that I could hide contented in the night dreaming

flying dreams so none could touch me.

Fragments. Taking life in fragments. Folding each shiny fragment

into tender velvet pockets sequined to reflect the light,

let them be all right, feel cared for.

Let the nights protect us from the days.

Like a wandering hermit with a self-igniting lantern . . . .

 

*

*

 

*

 

 

Here, in a world of fog and fury,

blurred in twilight vengeance,

crows, ravens, portents of

dark flight circle above.

A crown of shrieks, feathers

cascade, rain like pestilence.

No blame in blindness.

“I could not see through feathered fog;

could not save you.”

 

*

 

Collar up against the wind and dark.

Rising smoke creates warmth illusion.

Wrapped in sanity’s delusion,

fog’s memory of mist, imagined tide.

Seated here, salt-etched wall

alone between vast sand and

murmuring waves.

No one sings.

The notes, the voices

appear

*

 

Singers in the fog.

Outlying voices thin, yet growing;

accruing sound, like liquid, flowing.

Emoting tales of woe, resistance.

Shouted sighs of denied existence.

Insightful chants insist persistence.

We never died.  We’re knitting strong.

Born into a world-wide village.

Only from ourselves to pillage.

Hear our song.

Some bright good morning of

fish and loaves, cake and wine,

capacious tribes adjoin in movement.

Shining line of peace.

*

*

*

 

Cloud imagery morphs, calls forth

enchantment effused through morning firmament.

Pulls memories, wishes, muses’

wordless cinema

enhanced by rhythmic score.

Loosed within foggy aurora,

birdsong. Voices conflate

sums of experience.

Mauves, shades of color still subtle

coalesce;

mist rainbow

undulates.  Moist air

shares, surrenders whispered tales.

*

Prismatic atmosphere,

diffracted light.

Layered clouds, sustain

perfect

inspiration.

Ecstasy dissolves the lock

dividing everyday from magic.

*

*

 

*

World-eating fog encroaches.

No capacity to breathe in this miasma.

Rotting from lung to core,

gasping for something clean

to inhale, to cure.

*

Release.

Ooze gently

into nothingness.

No trace of panic

around which to coalesce

fear, malice.

Let turmoil bleed off,

dissipate as airless mist.

 

*

*

Creature, being, created from singular experience

cocooned in dreaming.

Sitting, silent, still, watching artfilm of revealed

truth waft, oracular smoke. Mesmerized by beauty,

this deep-blue pond contained

in floating ice offset in fog-faded mountain promise.

Those dreams, those dreams, to live only there,

where it all makes nonsense that feels so inevitable.

Stories unencumbered by beginnings, logical progression,

by boundaries, yet pure and strong as sacred text.

 

*

*

new dawn

Twilight at the Dark of the Moon

*

*

Moving inward.

Spiraling

into deepest silence.

Feel me here,

oh my most darling.

Here is the free-est flow,

river of bliss.  Bounty

of years of grey resistance,

incrementally awakened to

swirling shades —

mystic purples,

mad magentas,

sky-eyed blues.

There is ancient music,

crescendos to peals.

Layered millennial ears,

creatures of seas to trees

murmur through.

Ripples of soundwaves,

broker wisdom

not yet condensed into words.

Romances spun of clay and sand,

woven into fashion’s fabrics.

Hearty voices join,

create regaled mythology.

Star-shaped world story

reverberates with

chill and heat.

Nascent strive for enriched clarity

that must open ever more widely,

a luminous spiral

up, out, in, around.

Come, brave as you imagine.

In that brief eternal interval

all of energy

coalesces.

*

*

*

 

sow and weep

while you sleep

a new day grows.

 

*

*

*

 

Each new day we relive the old, acting out dramas unresolved.

All we need to do is breathe to play to dance into our unbound creation.

 

*

*

*

 

dawn could be inspiration,

bounteous gifts free of obligation,

uplift of

energy gleefully received.

 

*

*

*

 

This is the first measure of the first movement,

a pirouette, a dervishly delightfilled whirl.

Cast upon this rocky estuary, dance inner wise,

third eye calling dawn into destiny.

 

*

*

*

 

Symphonies,

drums at dawn.

Inspiration and instruction

carried forth through song

*

*

*

 

 

Birdsong, voices conflating

the sum of experience,

let loose into this foggy dawn.

Colours, still subtle,

arranging,

catch liquid,

dissolve in

undulating air —

tell a story.

 

*

*

*

 

Dawn’s pink-purple hue

breaks through over time

while I wander in dreaming.

*

*

*

 

 

Words of Peace

speak beyond structured language

sharing profoundly

in joy,

graceful dancing

to music of each dawn.

 

*

*

*

 

A bright dawn upon the kingdom

offers sparkling hope,

new dreams aborning.

 

*

*

*

 

Early morning dawn awakening

to a season of wild abandon

a golden moment of sensation

In a flash — alive to an open season

Alive to a new awakening

Alive

 

*

*

*

 

Dawning form seeps toward reward,

to speak out what’s been found.

 

*

*

*

 

charge fiercely into each new

dawn.

Initiate, ignite.

*

*

*

 

We are calling in the dawn

Calling, gently, our many voices

How do we call thee, oh joyfully smiling mother

Welcome arising in our hearts,

Anointing our many-colored soul.

Take in the day

Rejoice in the sunshine

We are alove and strong

In primeval paradise

Upon a windswept beach

Our eyes, our arms

Raised in blessing

Totality is ours

There is no darkness.

 

*

*

*

 

dawn

upon dawn.

Listen for enchanting pipes

of Pan to follow, drawn on

painted sky.

What was lost may be re-crafted.

Daring quests begun anew.

In a world of lads and lasses

hale and strong, brave and true.

Joined in conjure,

raise our glasses.

Do as we must do.

 

*

*

*

 

    Hope emanates, flows into form.

    Another day dawns and lingers.

    We journey on.

 

*

*

*

 

peeping dawn high in colors of awe.

 

*

*

*

 

What world is this

in swaddling clothes

at the break of dawn?

 

 

*

*

*

 

Deafening nightmare, desperate storm

give way to rainbows, peaceful dawns.

 

*

*

*

 

before the dawn

take peace into each breath, each incantation

from the strength to align impeccably

with your deepest truth

*

 

childish agonies

dispelled with dawn’s

bright kiss,

 

*

*

*

 

Imagine the day that dawns when

you are no longer dreaming.

 

*

*

*

 

 

 

A new day is dawning, but is it sun or storm?

 

*

*

*

 

The new day dawning

it will encounter clouds and hailstorms,

turbulence and destruction.

It will be a day of startling showers and

unsettled wind,

of unreasoned pain

and empty solace.

It will be a day to try our souls.

But it will be a day of infinite possibilities.

 

*

*

*

 

A new day dawning in the

drizzle and the pain

[These little moments

of presence, of meaning

when for a bit all is clear

That’s what we’re doing here.]

Another chance to revel in the rain

 

*

*

*

 

 

Through weary hours of bitter nights

It helps if we can fix our sight

upon the rays of morning.

*

*

*

 

 

Some bright good morning of

fish and loaves, cake and wine,

capacious tribes adjoin in movement.

Shining line of peace.

Terror’s fear released.

 

*

*

*

 

A new day is dawning, but where is the sun?

Our freedom and faith are defined by the gun.

The symbol of power overrules everyone

‘Til we create our own electricity.

A new day is dawning, look up everyone,

it’s time to rejoice in the dawn.

 

*

*

*

 

New days, new dawns, new destinations

open endless, unforeseen segues.

Wonder creates, merrily navigates veils

as each falls, cast  away.

Luminous celestial array.

Lightning aurora bursts

expose prospective trails.

New days, new dawns, new destinations

open into never seen visions.

Wonder creates, gracefully navigates

through veils each cast  away.

Luminous color array.

Lightning aurora

bursting through.

 

*

*

*

 

ascend into sacred muse-ways.

Every day a new day

 

*

*

*

 

I walk softly in the morning.

Drink awakening dew, sunbeam blessed.

I take what has always been mine,

cherish magnificence

and leave rough visions

of apocalypse to human eyes.

*

*

*

 

 

morning sunshine

burns off fog.

Glistening sky and the luxury

of self-companionship.

Ready, take aim, begin.

*

*

*

regarding gods

s

regarding gods (in progress)

s

s

s

It seems to me that these people are mistaken

when they claim to be at war against Satan,

because the God they worship is the God of Evil,

Destruction, Death, and Despair.

Yet, there are other gods with other values.

How did this group gain so much control over mankind?

Why do we hate our lives?

s

s

s

Pray for Violence

s

s

The God of Abraham

enjoys His Master tricks.

Calls Chosen men to violent

revenge against all fancied slights.

“They’re wicked – Smite!

Pillage their villages.

Rape their disgusting whores.

Make their acres yours in My sight,

in My glory.  Give blood lust, My rightful

gory sacrifice.  Pride is My reward

when your sons fight in My Name.

Pride can pay the price, replace shame.

I am no pansy, no prancing debutante

at Papa’s ball.  I am no Mama’s man,

no Fate’s enthralled.  I am the First, the

Prime, the All.”

s

s

s

Pluto’s Wife/ Demeter’s Daughter

s

s

Persephone, your will is free

Even as your living is in bondage

to forces much older in their power

You are free to reconcile your fractured life

Daughter in Summer’s sun

smiling warmly, playing at innocence

with charms long practiced

Mother’s Fool

Mother’s Lamb

Saved from that horrible man —

Well, joint custody

Ever Her beloved child

While it is no secret

Down below you are honored Queen

among tortured souls ever needy of your

attentive care

Far from noblesse oblige, it is your

chosen career, though not chosen by you

Are you told enough:

“You do it proud.” or even acknowledged

for the prowess your will gives existence?

Free Will, not Free Choice

It is learning to make of the whole sad cacophony

discrete instruments of harmony, of divine symphony

to find, realize, act with

impeccable integrity

as child or Queen

or someone between

s

s

s

Persephone’s Worlds

s

s

I have wandered far from thoughtless girlhood,

am woman grown, a Queen

in my own right.

Yet I am treated with the expectations

of a mindless child

in my mother’s Summer home.

The Gods are all agog with Zeus,

fickle, abrasive, free to take full stance

above the laws he so imperiously commands.

My Dark King is so much more a man,

sincere, deeply feeling, committed to his realm,

compassionate, if not always kind.

Yet, this season I must obey the crowd,

display charm and grace

in haute couture, make small, insipid

conversation with useless socialites

decorating Zeus’ lawn parties.

Up here, life is meaningless,

All flash and doggerel

to amuse, O’, do entertain us.

So tiring to endure the ennui.

Those not privy to opulent entitlement,

relegated to the dregs of servitude, or less

endure for their time, brutal, painful, short,

for no good reason.

I hear their horrid tales,

back in my rightful place and purpose.

Shrunken souls, shriveled by life time hungers

still growling beyond the grave.

I am balm and wise mother.

At last they matter, their stories opening in me

a marvelous passageway through which they are

taken into paradise.

My life above, the petulant daughter,

the pampered goddess spawn,

I endure coldly.

Summer’s trivialities, properly obedient to

rituals of social condition,

know nothing of my true calling

under Winter’s glory.

s

s

s

For Brigid’s Day

s

s

Who am i to bow to You —

me shorn of love, without honor;

You an enduring Goddess,

long honored for your bounty

of knowledge, thought’s ground water

poured, shared, carried forward.

Goddess of brides,

of hope, of visions, of poetry.

We who want a deeper future for ourselves,

more kind, more wise,

a better definition for humanity,

assemble on bended knees to

beg, accept, express your beauty.

Humans alive to art,

flow of mystic cavern seas,

can synergize, can command,

manifest as Magick.

s

s

s

Nyx,

Dark encircling

womb

Goddess of Night

from sacred firepit

feeds dreamers

the potency of stars’

cosmic light

concave distortion

reflecting

myth’s shadow

s

s

s

Andromeda Unbound

s

s

Primal emergent scene of fear/betrayal/rage

Against prosaic life tuned to a simpler age

A woman and a man and progeny of course

A life tailored to plan, no stranger to remorse

s

So early in the days of what might hence occur

The learning of the ways of how to be are stirred

So legends have been cast, so myths in mist abound

As some realities are buried underground.

 

s

 

It was a cold and gilded house, camouflaged as home

It was a brutal game of chance camouflaged as life

Chain me to my jagged rock and let me bleed

Let the ravage start, I will not plead,

My tears will only flow when primed by raging seas

s

 

They say that life’s a school, we must learn or die

They knock into us what, where, when, forgetting why

Each put into our place and left to wait our turn

It’s not about what we may be, but what we earn.

s

Tree-lined sidewalks, car-lined streets, children at play

It seems so calm and peaceful, keeping fear at bay

Do the laundry, buy the groceries, pay the heating bills

Get it done, don’t delay, no matter who it kills.

s

 

It was a curse hurled from the gods, but it wasn’t mine

Punishment for a crime of pride I did not commit

Clinging to my prison door, I hide my eyes

Expecting no pardon from the skies

No where left to go to hide from my mind’s lies

 

s

 

What can’t be told infects a deep and deadly path

Buried wounds untended surface into storms of wrath

A beaten creature huddles beneath a snarling face

Dying for a welcome smile, the warmth of caring grace

s

 

Some doors left open lead to mystic hidden rooms

Of purple velvet drapes, plush carpets and rare perfumes

The tapestry of life upon an ancient wall

Or was it down a rabbit-hole you meant to fall?

s

 

I begged a chance to be saved, but it was not my time

The monster’s howl a hungry hound denying rest

Lost in a tempest, finding none to care

Petrified by my own inward icy stare

Bound and cursed by the gods, of what use is prayer?

s

Comes the time in spiraling life of do or die

Take the time to breathe the air, read visions from the sky

Willing change, allowing pain to tell its sorry tale

Rearrange the picture’s frame, learn to adjust the scale

s

 

The rules laid down to keep us bound were never friends

A hero’s quest with divine intent can open stories’ ends

Gods inspire nature’s desire for beauty, healing, choice

Reclaiming heart, we do our part, obeying our true voice

s

 

Opening my eyes, raising my voice, I claim my power

The gods respond not with violence but with joy

Claiming my life as my own, I turn my demons into stone

Free at last my spirit soars as I

dance by day through sweet Olympian fields — by night among the stars

s

s

s

Venus Guide Us to Peace

s

 a meditative poem

s

s

Not just sweetness and light

There is a strength; there is conviction —

there is a vibrant dedication to true worth.

If we can but believe again

in all the humane virtues —

Love is sharing,

in kindness, understanding, supportive regard.

Love is forgiving and being forgiven,

when it is clear that malice was not intended

or malice has been exorcised

— an acceptance of the positive power

of change, of growth in spirit.

Love is the assumption of “we.”

We are doing being going having creating

We are able to exchange our labor, knowledge,

possessions, positions

We are able to take in more than I — to synergize

our fortunes into wealth and integral well being.

Love is not just a song — a pretty set of symbols

Love is a power and a glory

and an all encompassing truth.

Love is addition and multiplication,

not division or subtraction.

Love enriches and inspires us.

Love is not blind, not foolish.

Love is not denying the self or self interest.

Love is seeing clearly, knowing wisely,

understanding and expanding the self —

expanding outward to take in the universe

of interconnected, interdependent being.

Love sees the ugliness; and loves sees the beauty.

The ugliness saddens; the beauty invigorates.

Love is to peace as music is to harmony.

But how are we to love in a discordant world?

It is within us to pick out the true,

enduring melody

to which our essential selves are tuned —

If we but look to, listen to, open our selves to

Venus, the Goddess of Love,

Peace, Justice, Harmony

as she manifests within us all.

s

s

s

Prometheus Descending

s

s

Stealing fire from the gods

was but part of a process.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

Long, complicated tales.

Heroism, challenge, reciprocity

stamped into squirming genes,

appearing again and again

through the ages.

My father’s father’s father and yours

farther and farther into mists

of antiquity

words said, positions taken.

Complicated tales unravel

knots in temporal rewind.

We see hero/villain

rearrange, reverse, reverently

bow each to the other.

s

Who is the thief?  the victim?

What is this fire that it is not

equally shared

among the initiates

who understand the requirements

of its power?

s

s

s

Holy Chaos

s

s

Please, never mock at Eris

Lest Eris mock with you

She of star hot temper

Fells any who upset Her

You haven’t got a clue

s

It isn’t that you’re stupid,

or even that She’s wise,

but that’s She’s wildly puissant

You aren’t dealing with Cupid

mere love spells to hypnotize

s

She wields power of Chaos

She cares not about Right

Nor who is strong or bravest

What Eris wants She stages

to play within Her sight

s

Will charged up with magic

Slights small or large revenged

Express desire, She grabs it

Though for you it’s tragic

She laughs and strikes again

s

Best mortal, mock not Eris

Lest Eris mock with you

Unfazed by fear nor reason

She razes as She pleases

You haven’t got a clue

s

s

s

Ceres in Regalia

s

s

Call in the harvest

My Lady awaits (impatient

is  She,

as all Immortals)

She sends cauldrons for tribute

on chariots of Moon lace —

dervishly risqué

stars sparkle celebration

s

We humbly attend, extend

ardent service.  Gaily bless Sun and Earth,

nature’s noble accord.

s

Welcome Grand Goddess!

Indulge in dulcet fruits and glories

from Your largesse devotees’ labor hath wrought.

Love and Work

in pure adoration,

Her most gracious bestowals, our holiest

of offerings.

s

s

s

Churches

s

s

These myths about crosses, holy water, Christian artifacts, are in some sense amusing.

Such short-sighted arrogance these Christians expose.

Our kind greatly predate The Christ.

I have been told that some still walk who worshipped at the feet of our dark Lord’s bride.

s

Persephone, when she toured this world would take succor from such acolytes in Her secret night rites.

Children of the God of Death and Transformation, we are born in intimate blood ritual.

We are damned with immortality to experience Hades on Earth.

s

s

s

chiaroscuro

s

s

Ceres, mother of the Earth

Athena, of cerebral birth

Juno, queen of all the gods

Vesta, pure against all odds

s

s

Golden night rises.

High fields enriched in seed,

aglow. Listening for enchanting pipes

as Pan serenades

romantic lust, lingering hope of thrill and thrust.

Amorous nymphs a’hum in ripe foliage

answer in bleats of rapture.

Chirrups, nightwings,

mingled weeping and carefree cries

slowly reveal.  Pan to follow,

dancers bathe elation on night shores.

Legends cavort, their joyful voices echo,

kiss and tell, lithely merry on.

s

s

s

Mercury Trickster

lithely larfing pixels and waves

Happy adventure

creating mayhem silly and brave

wandering worlds, leaping between

with the flick of a dial

bringing a soul feeding smile

to the lips of a beaten down child

slyly ass-kicking evil demeanors

dancing outside the scene

to quicksilver change

flickering out of range

of censor or brute

soldier or suit

to give ’em the boot

when their attention is taken

up in their infernal machine

Immortal mixer

in our mundane affairs

playing at musical chairs

or the game of the day

unattached to our daily cares

merry and gay

spreading that sunny moonshine

then dancing away

s

s

s

Athena’s Valentine

s

s

Athena fair

stalwart daughter of Zeus

graces her time and place

with divine knowledge.

Today unlined face,

silken hair,

robust yet fragile form

are proclaimed as the graces

of womanhood.

Athena, lost in the pantheon,

whispers to the nightears

of her faithful,

saying:  “True woman’s mind

inclines to wisdom.”

But Daddy’s girl

wants more recompense

for loneliness.

s

s

s

Gaea’s laughing

 

silly antlike scavengers

 

groomed in self-importance

 

never see the joke

s

s

s

Eve of Hecate

s

s

As we approach the 13th of August

August celebration of the Dark Moon Goddess

under the light of this August Full Moon

Aquarius bears the Water, carries the way

along the electro-virtual waves

shining Moonlight, Faery Queen or fabled harlot

stirs potent night blooms, expelling myths of

what we cannot bear, cannot overcome

Feel in the electric falling starlight

Spells of renewal, of power to look back

upon our falterings, to find the seed now grown

yet changing still and ever, able,

willing, co-creating in the illuminated shadow

invoking the peace of dissolving twilight

of midnight’s hopeful resurrection

of the hinting flame that lightens before the dawn

take peace into each breath, each incantation

from the strength to align impeccably

with your deepest truth

s

s

s

chalice

s

s

An empty chalice, open, to be filled by spirit’s essence, placed according to ritual, waits for its turn.

Goddess of so many duties, so many eras, so many sorrow-filled worshippers, She feels the tears, the emptiness.

“I cannot fill you.  I can not fill the chalice of emptiness.  That is not my gift or purpose.  I can offer only what is already within you.”

Almost quiet, sea sounds, dank odor of lowtide, creeping Spring carries  melt of harsher climes.  She stokes the fire to remember warmth when the Sun was high and strong, and present.  Fire has its own secrets, its own order.  As do we all, each our own furnace, nurturing a flame that is destiny.  So old, She has been burnt by many flames — blistered, scarred, hardened.  She still feels every one, tastes fiery spice, seasonings, marinades.  It all moves Her to cackling hysteria.  You don’t want the pain of knowing what She endures.  You just want soothing stories, fantasies to believe in.

s

She understands your fear, and withdraws.  No need to escalate sorrow. She is self-contained in her work and close-knit layers of exquisite aeons, sense memories, distilled lives.

s

“Was I a woman, then, upon the Earth, feeling sweet breeze of early Spring uplift my being when returning birds and budlings made ready for new beginnings?”

s

In the dark, in the cold, enclosed below that hopeful ground, stirrings still find Her.  She can not miss the Sun, the Sky, the open fields.  They are ingrained in Her, as there and intense as ever they could be.  There is no yesterday, no tomorrow.  Always all times, all places, all emotions, overwhelm, yet gentle strand by strand amuse.  She has no pity.  There is only action, including the action of long enthrallment, of stasis within unfolding storms.  There is no room for judgment, no excuses.  She sees all the rationales, the weak flailing attempts at blame, at justification.

s

Laughter takes Her.  It makes so much more sense to revel in explosion, expelling, cleansing for exploration, for readiness to take the next step.

s

s

s

Alchemy

s

s

Simple acceptance.

The dancer with the dance

entering pre-dawn mystery.

Quiet interval, enchanting music.

Undulating reverie.

Alone in Hekate’s garden,

breathing in memory

of jasmine and spice.

Weary roads traveled

crossroad to crossroad;

the journey continues.

Weary days have found sustenance

in secreted hovels, dimestore romance.

Convoluted talk, empty gestures,

soul-less ritual

take up the stitches of time.

Some brave midnight,

if I learn my lessons well,

I will eat the fruits of Hekate’s garden,

dancing in piquant reverie,

leaving my tears and anguish

along the windswept trail.

Ebullient music

dances me

as the Goddess kisses

my tearstains into

gold.

s

s

s

The fact that there are so many religions, so many “gods,” so many interpretations of what to believe makes it clear that no one group as “The Truth”. We each see our little part of the whole. Rather than insist  on converting others to our “Truth,” we would do better to spend our time looking further.

s

s

s

lazy days

 *

Celebrate Laziness!

Mentor of Invention,

this easy first cousin to Peace.

Proclaim, reclaim, claim

such lovely virtue,

calmly, with gentle elegance,

languid flourish, impish wink.

*

*

*

 

Like a warm evening on the beach, all woozy from sunshine.

Tingle of sea breeze, that ocean scent of the wild.

As the sun recedes, cooling, refreshing, yet still a lazy summer eve.

Oh that luscious feeling, that overflow of quiet release.

In and out of sleepy reverie, so gently washing through pools, reservoirs

of elation.

Like a sweet warm breath caressing.

*

Beaches at sunset, quiet waves, sparkling reflection;

sand like dulcet bedding, lazily shaded serene meditation.

*

Ripples

along a lazy stream of time

crossing whirlwind space.

*

*

We need more laziness:

Too lazy to be evil.

Too lazy to interfere with people

being people.

Too lazy to prevaricate, shill for hate,

devastate innocent civilians

to elevate your cause.

Too lazy to legislate excessive laws.

Too lazy to project your flaws, to bother

to pretend to perfection.

More nonproductive hours of blissful

reflection, extending perception,

enjoying the sun, the rain, expressive clouds.

Praise laziness as ours.

No shaming allowed.

Attention shift from winning enchanted toys

to attending to enjoyment.

*

*

*

Oh for the lazy days extending living

into grand stairways of heavenly languidity

*

*

*

the tale unwinds in brightly

colored ribbons

dances gypsy comedies

of lazy, dappled romance

*

*

we need a tune to dance away

give a chance for play

to wash and heal our wounds.

Smiling captivating tune

hums, caresses into sleep

lighting lazy seas of dreams.

*

*

Pick up bits of wisdom

on the way.

If you’re doing it right,

no need to delay.

Time’s neither fast nor slow.

Every placement relates

just so.

Beautiful day,

lilting lazy river …

 

 

on ego for Leo

Why do so many people get the self-esteem thing so wrong. Self-esteem is a by-product of feeling competent, of being able to act effectively in the world. Faking it won’t make it. Self-esteem is very important in the development of a healthy ego, of a healthy social being. In order to foster this important kind of self-evaluation we need to teach kids useful skills, not praise them mendaciously. That only gives them a false sense of self and of the world. So, perhaps the issues so many seem to have with “ego” is misunderstanding what a healthy ego is.

*

People get the ego all wrong. I do understand — it is what we are taught.

Ego is meant to be the organizing principle in our consciousness to help us develop and maintain focus, to live purposefully.  It is a hard-working, important tool if we are to be social beings in a material world. When ego is well used, it allows us to make sense of the flood of sensations, organize time/space/tools/intent into worthwhile projects, create appropriate interfaces for smooth social commerce, and generally function as strong, self-motivated, sane actors. Because we are misinformed, we often grow misformed egos that are not well used or healthy. This can create deep resentments, anti-social inclinations, general confusion about one’s place in the world. Rather than denigrating ego, we would do well to befriend our various strands and become more whole, more able, more socially useful and personally joyful.

*

The denigration of the ego as illusion or self-aggrandizement is often a barrier to appropriate understanding of the ego’s usefulness.  You have a goal; ego lets there be an organizing “you” to attain it.

*

Having regard for oneself, respect for that first person singular subjective locus, why would that be considered negative? Bragging, puffing up, presenting oneself as more important are not attributes of self-regard. They are attributes of insecurity, a need for constant validation, a role played to gain attention or misdirect. The person who is secure within their own skin is generally genial, with no need to take the spotlight, unless that is their role in a particular performance. So why is the ego, the self, the first person singular, the focused consciousness maligned?

*

Ego is not the problem, the separation, an enemy of flow or mindful awareness.  It is this misconstruing of Ego’s purpose and nature that we have generally accepted.  Healthy ego is simply the operating organizer of the mind, a flowing together of all of our impressions and understandings.  If we were to have the kind of sacred relationship to ourselves that accepts and loves we would have no need to vilify this or any other part of our beings.

We need an ego to be able to relate.  What needs to go are the unhealthy ideas about ourselves that corrupt the ego’s functioning.

*

The ego is an organizing principle within the psyche, much like government is an organizing principle within the society,

the problem with both is when we mistake a tool for a master.

blue new moon

Blue New Moon

)

 Dreams long enshrined touch magic of New Moon,

covered in shadow for her mourning journey.

New Moon howls, less than a crescent

empowers our over-seer sky.

Back and fore ground merge.

Seeds learn to navigate treacherous seasons,

acclimate, rise.

 )

The moon is blue and dreaming

Cry all my children to sleep

In conquest dreams we deem to rule

In darkest halls we plot in torment

In empty caverns we deify glory

Dance, again, dance for freedom

Dance my children to sober dreaming

Of valor and honor and color and pain

Dance and cry and strive again

To hold a mass and state the Name

Call forth my demons from sleep

The songs of old and runes of yore

The empty words we’ve learned to score

The high and low and even

Listen and you’ll hear them moan

It’s dark and dirty here below

The emptiness can drive you

To a place you ought not go

You’ll die in horror screaming

Cry all my children to sleep

The moon is blue and so are you

You’ll hear its song so clearly

And discount it all to dreams

And when you wake, you’ll wonder

Why you’re screaming

Why you ache in places you can’t feel

Why your work and world don’t seem so real

Why the voices in your head are screaming

And you’ll count the phases of the moon

And wander in the night without direction

And keep a silent vigil in your secret heart

And turn quickly round the corners,

Lest someone see you

And when the curse is cast, you’ll hear it spoken

Without bothering to look for the absent speaker

And when the moon has turned

To other dreamers

You’ll see a vision overpower the sky

And answer . . . when you ask it “why?”

The moon is blue and dreaming.

 )

Mushroom teacups sail in stardust

withered laurels snap in dustwhirls

tethered horsemen roam the skyways

soldiered remnants hiss through brushwoods

All is soon made clear.

MegaSolstice Summer 2020

season of change

*

)

Kind wind, scent of Spring

travels still extending

Tingle of choice

bound up in change

Colours mingle, edge into

mauves and teals, wisps of shade

and Sun, moody, descending

*

Eyes alert beneath flirtatious

flutter,

puppy-beg for Summer,

whining to get out to play,

to burn kinetic

With thrust of flame,

to weld

a tight, unyielding hinge

)

Swinging door

to untested vistas

carries with its motion

changing definitions of out and in

*)*)*)*)*)

You can have your equinoxes,

or cross-quarters’ fetes.

Lead me with Solsti, delineation of extremes.

Sun to Earth,

charged Cardinal points, sturdy in stubborn worth.

Symbolic enchaining

rock to sea.

Kinetic energy

defining space in relation to time.

Ecstatic Saturn

and brother Moon, sublime,

secreted in esoteric lore,

heroic stories,

everyday glories,

exotic songs

evoking prescient memories.

I dream a shining fountain of fame

upon a sparkling hill.

If wisdom can save us from

the illness of slavedom,

so bend the common will.

*)*)*)*)*)

And the sky.

And the breeze

wrinkling the trees.

And the red-pink-blue of sunset, so late

these endless evenings.  Summer brings, they say,

dreams of younger days.

Terrified because no safe world awaits,

gives continuity.

Never to know or be known a moment more.

Awakening forever such sweet sorrow.

From what might have been if dreams could be covers

for transposition, doorways that might be forever closed

from that opening path beyond.

Apprehended by vision so vivid.

Ground to stand when ephemeral wings fail,

dissolve to clay.

“Who are you?” the stranger peers with glassy eye.

Hurry on, heedless of direction.  Bemused feet waver,

push off, rise.

And the sky.

*)*)*)*)*)

Moon Child

*

)

Created from the Milky Way shining into Mother Moon,

Reflections from that ancient light emerging from her womb.

A sad guitar, a raging sax, emoting through the sea

Of stories sung through ages all, what was through what will be —

Were you the Lady of that lake, were you the piper’s reed?

Were you the luscious, sacred fruit fulfilling every need?

Yes, you the child dancing in the fullness of the night

To ring the rune and cast the spell to make the darkness bright.

Of goddess born to keep us safe and sing our lullabies

Till we emerge as sparkling stars to light the dreaming skies.

*)*)*)*)*)

before the eclipse

before the dawn

before we are given our missions,

sent forward in time,

we must be ready,

must rise to the challenge

without map or guidebook to prepare.

we endure the patience to exercise

control over every capillary,

every synapse,

of our being.

*

it’s not the believing, but

the seeing.

a better world needs a new kind

of ware.

be a ware

for peace, for life,

for consciousness

before the wake.

*)*)*)*)*)

The seatide ebbing/flowing of the music

more than hypnotized

as I watched people flowing

through an inner newsreel

of pride and misery.

People marching in various uniforms

to a beat of pride and progress in the marketplace

and war zones;

people marching or being trampled or

sniping from the rooftops

all in rhythm.

And a friend said to me

on a starlit evening,

“It’s so hard to know anymore what to do.”

*)*)*)*)*)

On a cloudless, moonless night redolent of dreams

Towering waves inundate sand, glowing streams

shower pure delight, ignite romance’s gleams

A golden thread sowing together their seams

*)*)*)*)*)

Sun and Moon embrace

as one

for brief eternity

all mystery reflects recursively within

)

Black and White

create gradation

radiate kinetic energy

We can achieve,

believe,

begin, begin, begin

*

Gardeners, planting vibrant fields,

planting food,

planting future flowering in

nurturing soil

)

Healers,

perceiving wounds

to be sewn,

relieving loneliness,

revealing pain denied,

held in; applying benevolent medicines

to salve twists of ardent toil

*)*)*)*)*)

Returning

*

)

If I could turn again

If I could turn

If I could

If I

If

I

*

Flying too high

confused, losing oxygen’s fire

infused with enthusing desire

Touch me

Don’t take me down

)

You, who never knew me,

grasping in space where

I may have lain.

Laugh to my face

exploding in pain.

O’, that’s no way to survive.

I want you to thrive,

be better than

still life man.

I’ll encase you in goo that

allows you to see

while you writhe

*

inside intricate mind.

)

Each molecule of remorse

creeps out of your eyes.

Sweet water

of life, grace effervescing.

(Lessons of Nietzschean blessing.)

*

Rocky hazards face those who

walk this ridge.

Take it slow; let time wait.

Patience  prevails.

Duration spans to build

bridges, irrigation ditches.

Inch by plodding inch plot

fields of grain, barrels for rain,

roofs, walls, windowpanes,

chimneys for warm hearths below.

Flowing rivers reveal lines for exploration,

mining ores.

Mine and yours,

that element missing from accounting calculations.

Earth and her hordes, a separate salvation?

Wherever did you hear that enmity

would take you anywhere but desolation?

Dear, darling man, so wrapped up in

some plan you think you’ve sussed;

delivering your birthright and your trust

without second opinion;

believing written history makes mystery clear.

How can I discover words you will hear?

Why should I any longer care?

Off am I, breathing higher air.

No need to share with those who

daren’t climb.

Sublimity, subliminally inclined —

nothing more to reach for.

No need to aspire.

If there is a you, and you choose,

touch me.

Don’t take me down.

*)*)*)*)*)

Scrying on the Moon

*

)

~twilight of the goddess, call to song to aery dancing, lady fair your fiery trance rewinds our souls; enjoy these offerings of fancy: all art is yours ~

*

By sibylline light

images I recognize,

creviced captures of my life.

I know her judgment to be my own.

)

“Nourished by Moon rivers

mythical cavern blooms

unseen by sunlight

glow green.” 

Thus she sets the scene;

becomes the prophecy.

*

“Purest white simplicity

curved to suggest fragility

faith fed maiden ready for

plucking,

given in bondage to womanly woes,

hard rows to hoe

for that human hug through 

crying of night.

)

Fate of mortal soldiers, sacrificed to lust.

Seeking relief, beg for the boon of drama

high adventure

sneaking into sad hotels

for a fix or a tumble.

Laughs,

deadly play,

danger, a real chance.

*

Barefoot in the snow

icy roads

winds so strong

I could not make you hear.

I thought you were my destiny.

Crazy thoughts, far from clear;

but I believed

song lyrics from Saturnine deities

would not lie, leave me

dying, fading into winter’s grey

drifting clouds,

endless sorrow endured for naught.

Lost on this careless corner,

dreaming of oblivion, intent on visions

like rain

tapping against eternity’s

vast windowpane.

Scenic serenity.

Nature’s gradations of green

soothe tired eyes,

trembling nerves, throbbing  veins.

Slivers of moonlight reflect

in withered refrains, unearth secrets

embedded in song

effervescing through cool pure air

)

cleansing the uprising nestling

set aflame

resurrected

tempered mettle,

pure, wise, tested

engorged with the will

to rise”

*)*)*)*)*)

Dark Magick

*

)

liminal space, where magic reigns,

crossroads, crises, cusps….

In the still of the dark of the moon

after the revelrie has passed on

deep, deep into the frozen fields of dreamless sleep

we, walking, silently, along the riverbed

breathing in ancient ash of woodsmoke

breathing out long-growing tears

to weave ghostly tentacles

along our path

take each others’ hand up to our heart

to pray, to kiss, to whisper

thus casting an eternal spell.

*

)

prophets and expanses

metaphysicians

*

*

Boldly we go where so many have gone before,

each informed by our unique set and setting.

Some perform alchemy, mixing metaphors

upon a marble altar.

Telling sooth, or constantly mapping the stars,

we spin ourselves ancient fantasies,

reclothed to fit the current fashion.

There are werecreatures, energy vampires,

Lions and Tigers and Bears,

insects infected with rare, lethal archetypes,

angry demons mating with our own cells

to destroy us.

There are lethal conspiracies of demon-men,

bent on self-destruction of their/our whole half-species.

There are warships and projectiles of evil

invading our consciousnesses, destroying our dreams.

There are armies of the night, marching,

conscripting our young, our heartland, our hierophants.

We watch, and scribble notes, often indecipherable.

We chant like banshees, chattering primates,

impressed with our own noise.

Sometimes we forget for a bit, slip out of the script.

We awaken to find ourselves singing;

creating heavenly music.

*

*

*

Interceding,

a view between Heaven and Earth,

Above and Below.

Chilled, burned, abducted by prophecy

*

Whose prophecy is worthy to invest our hearts, hands, minds?

If our world makes a circle — no end or beginning —

may we slip between a then and now?

*

*

*

Sacred Calling

 *

*

Cloistered for warmth in this area between.

I’ve learned its scenery, like lattice worked into my eyes.

Slowly turning toward wise belief, pausing at this door,

portal to awesome wonderment, pure radiant bliss

dispelling knots of pain and betrayal.

Magnetic psyche searing brand,

archetype of mystic revelations carried through

into the world of Man — I come to the promised land,

potent stream of prophecy.

Commanded, I lay down my burden, weight against my back

of gathered assets I was certain to require.

Freed to meet my mission, to accept desire,

immortal pleasure, the opportunity to sketch,

to draw out beauty, to paint leisurely upon prism glass.

Have I reached the bridge upon the crossroads, the glimmering?

Magick’s sea through which I now may travel, native soul

returned, having earned my keep, my long journeyman’s

wage.  I have looked at age, a deep reflective pond.

A wild road calls, beyond this threshold, sculpted by

oceanic power, rifts and meteors.  I feel self-created destiny

shudder slowly, seismically, move me as I prepare

*

*

*

in a wraithlike pocket

outside of time and space

none to command

none to hinder

how does the spark ignite?

Spontaneous combustion?

Multiplicities of zeroes

encircling void

before chicken or egg or seed.

Was there a silent prophecy?

If the system is closed,

nothing created or destroyed,

where does it all come from?

How far can it expand?

If the system is open,

how far does it go?

If there is no system,

chaos endlessly realigning,

helpless to demand rule of law,

form but temporarily

delimiting substance,

no matter.

In our space and time

we play at definitions.

“In the Beginning . . ..”

Words upon a screen,

analyzed

over millennia.

*

*

*

Pageantry

*

*

Could Christian Fundamentalism be the dread AntiChrist,

and greedy Wall Street his ravenous Beast?

Could the Second Coming be prides of young

claiming back the streets?

*

Could Prophecies feared and hoped

to bring Sinners to our knees

to lift the Holy into just reward

by Blessed Hero’s mighty sword

defending, avenging the meek —

*

Could that parade be before us,

just not the scene we believed,

preached to prove the righteous right?

*

Has the final fight foretold been taking form,

storm clouds positioned for a hard rain to fall,

untidy time of transition as soothsayers call,

alarm bells chime?

*

Is the end of this trial of dependence nigh?

Can we break the Jesus code, create out of

Apocalypse our own golden age, reign

of Peace?

*

*

*

(may all your world ends hook up to better worlds beginning)

*

*

*

By sibylline light

images I recognize,

creviced captures of my life.

I know her judgment to be my own.

*

“Nourished by Moon rivers

mythical cavern blooms

unseen by sunlight

glow green.” 

Thus she sets the scene;

becomes the prophecy.

*

*

*

Flourishing prophets,

delectable, potent, wise

in the ways of demons,

oracles, gypsy Queens,

ascend into sacred muse-ways.

Every day a new day,

standing ground against a grinding

down to profit’s dust.

It can’t be a secret

if nobody’s listening.

But, listen:

places in your mind

will answer.

*

*

*

Reject me; reject hard truths,

long trod on diamonds, golden geese brought

to slaughter.

Obscured like icebergs, amphibious myths

kept subdued, symbolic

work songs, prophetic exaltation,

labyrinthine gardens,

we who are only dreams in your philosophy.

*

*

*

There are prophetic dreams.

They haunt or

creep upon conscious walls.

Tell all is not

as simple as it seems.

There are reasons, portents, allies

*

*

A dream of water is a prophecy

written into the DNA,

waiting for the day to manifest.

It is a dream about secret dreams,

sacred ceremony,

that which cannot be named.

That which is always present.

Somehow the source is speaking,

perhaps in rhyme and metaphor,

yet speaking still, insistently.

Listen.

Let it insinuate into all the senses.

Let it speak.

*

*

*

Astrologer’s Key

*

*

The future descends

from fear-embroidered skies.

A vision of holocaust — when everybody dies.

A new day is dawning, but is it sun or storm?

We have a chance to make our mark,

but is it right or wrong?

The military marches,

the anti-warriors too.

We take our stand in battle,

the many and the few.

Spinning tales of magic, of wizardry and fate;

we want to know just how it ends before it’s all too late.

We sing our song too late.

We right our wrongs too late.

We want to know the date.

To find a better fate.

*

Can I tell you?

Can I help you to understand?

Can I utter words of prophecy that will make you see?

Standing here before you, I want to take your hand

to swirl up into a magical dancing,

divine worlds of beauty entrancing,

to give you the will and wonder to set you free.

Can you see me?

*

*

*

12th Sign

*

*

unblessed

with necessities of success

lost, adrift in divination

*

*

A confluence of ripples

scoops up objects of prophetic reclamation

(seen smaller in the glass-eye of science),

readies to infuse diffuse forces, aquatic expression.

Elemental reaction.

Metamagick metamorphoses

(any body’s guess).

Smooth glide out from chthonic caves, hiding games

into buoyant seas.

Capricious Gaia applauds

release to navigate (no hesitation) past history’s

sunken shore

— forward explore

— captivated, not captured

Fleet (from soul to feet) saltate enraptured.

Sailing fate’s delightfully blithesome path.

Form flows with function

at last, to ride radiant waves

gracefully, recreated

as chance

*

*

*

I have wandered, lonely, sometimes abused, sometimes caught up for lifetimes in ecstasy, living others’ lives.

I am gifted, cursed, given that sacred choice, taken with brute force from Heaven to Hell, and less apocryphal places along the mystic trail.

I don’t know art’s definition, the barbed metal and sharded glass that mark those lands.

I rise alone, barely able to stand the glory, the mesmerizing starlight, the sheer backdrop implied in prophecy.

It’s not that I claim to be any more than a bashful ghost caught in this macabre machine.

These precious eternities in preternatural presence I am free.

*

*

*

Prophets may well be attuned to a higher knowledge,

yet they are human upon the Earth

with the understandings and world views

molded by the human ecology in which they live. 

Perhaps this is partially why new prophets arise

as our story evolves.

*

*

*

I prophesize by reading wine dregs,

which first necessitates the ritual in which

the wine is drunk by me,

and I am drunk by the wine.

my back pages

My Back Pages – a collection of links to my work online:

http://dreamsjourneys.blogspot.com/2013/03/dreams-and-other-journeys-by-laurie.html
a collection of poetry, short stories and thots from my late teens through my early 50s

https://web.archive.org/web/20010502215135/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/8401/
my geocities page (from last century — links mostly obsolete)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/laurie-corzett/words-from-the-sky/ebook/product-18613483.html
Philosophic and inspirational poetry and poetic prose. Notes from an ongoing journey of transformation, using language to capture visionary imagery. Complex, metaphysical, reflective — pieces embroidered in faery dust, others engraved in lead that alchemically turns to gold. Words from the Sky God, Uranus, progenitor of us all and grand inspirer through the chaos of change.

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com/
emerging visions
MOVING FROM THE VISIONARY’S IMAGINATION INTO VIEW THAT ALL OF US MAY LEARN TO SEE FURTHER
an online ‘zine displaying various visual and written visionary art connected into a derivative artistic statement. It is free for anyone who wants to view it

https://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/t1215
Root of Desire
working with a gaggle of characters in conversations, back stories and poems from their perspectives.

https://venusianair.blogspot.com/
Venusian Air
partial compilation

https://om2317.wordpress.com/
poetry
https://windsongmyths.wordpress.com/
chapbooks, cycles, montage pieces
and myths personal and reimagined

[evening dionysian]

working title: [evening dionysian] – performance of imagination:
Dancers dance
musicians play
Enchanting sylph narrates stories
while seductively moving to sinuous
back beat, tick of chimes.
Occasionally emphasizes subtle percussions
with intense expressions, leaps, cunning
stumbles, falling to crawl into spellbound speech.
Scheherazade myths, archetypal passion
escapades, poignant weeps, salient shouts
to power. Exquisite meditations on mystic
climes, spirit and form. Merry masks,
sparkly costumes, paint and glitter as
embellishment to the tellings.
Theater as intimate ritual.
Anything could manifest.

https://lunaramble.blogspot.com/
lunar rambles, random acts of sharing
and works in progress
https://yprophecies.wordpress.com/
seasonal writing and other journeys
https://yearprophecies.blogspot.com/
blogbbook word opera
https://postapocalypse13.tumblr.com/
the night’s pages precurser and random thots

https://nightspages.blogspot.com/
night’s pages
{patchwork narrative} a flash fiction serial following the story of a child vampire, the eternal child monster working out that existence.
Something Sacred online
experimental metafiction scif fi fantasy
http://caelastory.blogspot.com/?zx=c0685d9c70ddcc67
https://www.redbubble.com/people/libramoon/writing/25981754-something-sacred-metafiction?asc=u
https://www.redbubble.com/people/libramoon?ref=account-nav-dropdown&asc=u
http://libramoon.deviantart.com/art/Acts-of-Desolation-1-671429065
http://libramoon.deviantart.com/
https://yprophecies.wordpress.com/2017/03/
http://bdelectablemnts.runboard.com/t2582
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/postapocalypse13
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/libramoon2
Something Sacred – Prologue

In the time of antiquity, back before our written records, we are told that humans and gods freely played together and created a beautiful city in the heart of an exquisite landscape where all were free yet happy to cooperate so all might share a common bounty and all might know the joy of engaging each in their true work, respecting the best in all. It was a peaceful time, a happy time, with energy displayed in healthful work and joyous art. Every day was celebrated and every contribution honored.

But then the gods, who are immortal and powerful, grew away from their human playmates. The games they played became more sophisticated, less easily joined in. They developed concerns with a longer view and devised complicated scenarios, complex barriers which humans could rarely overcome to play in the fields of eternity. We became confused and frightened. Some of us would develop feelings of superiority believing we were the arbiters of rights and wrongs, that we deserved and needed power over others, to make our dictates law and punish those who did not properly honor and obey. Others developed feelings of inferiority and great fear of insecurity. We started to believe that there could not possibly be enough bounty for all, that we must hoard and fight off those who might take what we thought of as ours. Instead of happily joining our efforts to assure common good, to find equitable and practical solutions to problems, to enjoy and honor our individual abilities, we broke off into groups that underscored and denigrated our differences. We expended our energy inventing weapons, teaching and learning war. We praised our warriors, poisoned our lands and our minds with the detritus of hatred, passed on violence, discord, deep pain within our families and against our neighbors. We despoiled the gifts the gods had freely given us, repurposing them as game pieces against each other, even against our own best interests, even against the peace-loving, hopeful and ecstatic parts of ourselves. We dishonored the gods and all they had given us. We dishonored our own beautiful potential.

The gods were horrified and disgusted when they saw what we had done. Being ancient and wise, they did understand that they had a part in the blame. They tried to tell us where we had gone wrong, tried to enter our hearts and minds to lead us back to our true paths. But humans, for the most part, had gotten too caught up in our own dramas, feuds, thirst for vengeance or wealth, power, fame. The newer generations had been raised with these values rather than valuing themselves and their collective talents. They had never developed an interest in working and growing together at a high level of prosperity for all. They had learned, instead, to be bitter and angry and depressed, impatient for wealth that even when attained never provided the peace they unknowingly yearned for.

The gods held council and discussed the tragedy that the humans had made of their lives. Taking the long, immortal, view, they decided upon an experimental course of action. They would plant songs, ideas, legends, methods of discovering sacred knowledge. They would at whim walk among us and whisper or sing, act out, prophesize for any who were strong enough or weak enough or somehow developed the space in their minds to understand. They would plant the seeds of salvation in a variety of environments, then watch to see if any sprouts took hold. In this way they hoped to slowly encourage us to find our way back to our true nature as vibrant beings, to help us relearn, become the glorious people we were meant to be.

That is the story we tell. But, of course, we humans had become entrenched in our unhappy ways. A promise of something better was not sufficient motivation to change. The gods devised crises of various kinds and durations to shake up our misaligned order and give us new configurations to deal with, in the hope that in being forced to learn new ways we would eventually turn to the abandoned way that had given us so much. And, despite their horror, disgust and sadness, the gods found joy in their efforts made into games for their own amusement. Some of these games, their stories, are passed down as legends for celebrations or teaching, or told by our storytellers as spontaneous inspiration.

I am an old woman. I have lived a blessed life, with so many wonderful and terrible memories to keep me company. I have gone on a marvelous journey and won the greatest prize. Well, actually, there were several journeys. There were long, dangerous roads and dramatic adventures. There was love; there was loss. There was dedication to an underlying truth that carried me along even when all hope and reason strayed. I have grown and learned from experience, into a deeper wisdom, a luminous joy that is all I could ever be, till it flows out from me into all I perceive and into the hearts of my people to go on into those who will come.
Diaspora

I was born in the City, the only city on my world. It is a huge and sprawling center of culture, seat of government, depository of knowledge. There are marvelous tall buildings, street and underground transportation systems, concourses of commerce, magnificent museums, libraries, concert halls, theaters. There are public ceremonies of much pomp and circumstance. There are great universities, industrial complexes, sports arenas, and all manner of commercial enterprises. It is an efficiently run city where public servants take pride in their work and everything is kept clean and gleaming. I only have vague memories, but this is what I have been told, and have seen in elders’ memories. The military trains in camps on the outskirts of the City, not too far from the prison camps, from which many of the troops are recruited. Nothing is left to chance; little is wasted. There is freedom for the citizens in their private lives, but only insofar as they obey the public rules.

My name is Caela, and I am of the witchfolk. That is what we were called on our home world, Earth, centuries ago. Where shall I begin? There was that ancient era when a craze for genetic solutions came with advances in genetic research, as the histories tell us. Fashionable parents of that age reveled in their ability to choose special gifts for their offspring through the miracle of gene manipulation. It was thought by someone with the clout for the research dollars that there was a crying need in their society for people with enhanced empathy, minds that could probe the minds of others — maybe as clinicians, maybe as spies, maybe as weapons. We were used for all of those purposes, and not to our benefit. We became vilified, feared and hated by those who did not share our gift. Naturally, we tended to band together, to marry and live within communities of our own, of those who neither feared nor revered us but simply knew us as we were, as people much like themselves. Bonding together in enclaves within which we felt accepted and protected, we left the others to develop their fears and resentments. We had natural advantages in myriad social situations, able to know what others felt, to enhance those feelings or divert them to our purpose. Of course, some of us had used those advantages unscrupulously — although that very empathy in some ways puts a damper on the advantages of manipulation over time. Thus, there was actually much less abuse of our abilities than was expected by the general population.

Over time many of us learned to keep our abilities to ourselves and blend in more with the mainstream. By the time of the big wave of colonization, most of us were quietly assimilated, not particularly noteworthy. Still, many of us hoped for less constrained lives on a brand new world. Those who came to this planet, Eden, so named because of its bountiful natural resources, did so as common recruits like anyone else, looking for the possibility of paradise. Genetic engineering technologies did not ultimately solve Earth’s problems of over-population, pollution, depletion of resources. The solution came from the science of space travel, the brave new adventure of colonization. As star travel and planetary exploration permeated the media and popular imagination, the idea of leaving the troubles of Earth behind to start over on other worlds became a common dream. People from all walks of life became enamored of their own fantasies of what they could become given such a new start. People from all walks of life ultimately made the journeys, took the chance, found themselves vastly far from home, and, perforce, created new homes which they were privileged to build from scratch, in league with the others who had made the journey with them.

prequel – Acts of Desolation
from: Acts of Desolation http://caelastory.blogspot.com/2009/03/acts-of-desolation-when-battlefield.html

When the battlefield torn by mines is all the school or playground in which to grow,
how can the children be taught to know, to understand a lexicon of peace?
Bitter hatred permeates mother’s milk and what there is of grain,
permeates the very rain, gathered in barrels since the wells ran red
with poisoned blood, since the holiest of sites became blackened
with pestilence and shame.
Rumors expand on who is to blame; not much else to go around..

I like to walk the dark empty streets. Late at night, the city becomes its own. The smells, the silence, the stark black and white, shadows and streetlamps, without the people the city can become comforting, peaceful. But never for long.

It was a cold night, early in January. It hadn’t snowed much, but there were icy patches where puddles refroze after the hours of the traffic’s warmth. She was huddled in a threadbare shawl, moving at a pace some compromise between care for the ice and keeping blood from coagulating to avoid frostbite. I don’t like to get involved. In the end you can only lose.

Sure enough, a large, somewhat threatening looking, guy appears, yelling after her.

I keep to myself against the reassuring bricks and steel, and watch the drama ensue.

But maybe I’m not as sheltered as I thought, since the next thing I know I am waking with a monumental headache in a far different place. Bright lights, loud noises, sterilized activity, I am propped up against a wall in an overcrowded ER, a place where my disheveled, disoriented presence is sure to cause no alarm.

Then, I see her on a gurney. She is deathly pale, still. I am starting to wonder if this is all a dream, or some superdrug hallucination, but the sensory qualities are all too real, and distasteful. I hate when that happens. Now I’ll have to deal with all this gross stupidity without the benefit of knowing what it’s all about.

A nurse’s aide comes over with a form for me to fill out about insurance and next of kin. I motion, slur, get him to understand that I am concerned about the young woman on the gurney. He probably thinks she’s my sister or girlfriend, and tells me she’s lost a lot of blood, but they will be transfusing as soon as the right blood type comes up from storage. It may be touch and go, but she’s in good hands. He tells me a physician’s assistant will be calling me shortly to examine my contusions and lacerations, and I should tell her what drugs I am on.

I see the guy from the street come in while we are talking. Should I try to hide or get away? Or is he just here because of her? I was just an inconvenient by-passer, after all. I can’t get my legs to work under me anyway. May as well just let it play out.

Sure enough, he sidles over to her, whispering something in her ear as the life drains out of her. Like I say, I don’t like to get involved.

I waited for my body to figure out how to cooperate, and got out of there. Back home, I’m hammering this out on my antique manual typewriter. There’s no electricity here in the hole. Thankfully, there is a working fireplace, and places to scavenge wood.

The city’s got a million stories. I like to squirrel them away in these recordings I keep typing and filing. You can see them unfolding, refolding, just out there, everyday. The hard part is not getting sucked in, becoming the story yourself.

leap day

Sway and leap, dance expressly.

Rhythm’s sweeps lets us less see

arms weaponized, more flesh and bone.

riding out on desolate plains

skies of colors, dark, forbidding

sending rays of electric

necessity, intensity, urgency

leaping my heart, my loins, my essence

grabbing onto the giver of lessons

My theories come in synchronicities and

instinctual leaps.

My truth comes in different shapes and sizes.

It is not free, but fluctuates

in value and price.

Sagacious butterflies may morph

into pre-archaic beasts

of mechanical flight,

then fission into visions

throughout multi-dimensioned space,

or coalesce into a perfect face.

Kind touch, open

reveling in shared humanity

etches a loving pattern

for integration,

incentive to dare creative leap.

Each bounding leap more distant.

Inviting opulence, opening vistas

vastly

flowering.

I may take this leap,

wake from my sleep,

break from faith’s gilded glass cage.

The excuse of my age

no longer staunch enough

to make me behave

as a self-shackled slave.

holograms of beauty

Mourning memories of deep emotion steeped in beauty

no other mind will see

*

*

I look for answers in epic verse, archetypes, fairy tales.

I don’t know if what I find bears validity, but they can be lovely,

lyrical adventures that lead into deep, complex emotion,

ecstatic movement and poetry, a need to share.

I am consecrated to beauty, in all its terrible majesty.

Exquisite agony is everywhere to be discovered, held dearly, set free.

I whirl, leap closer to the fire.

*

*

Freed to meet my mission, to accept desire,

immortal pleasure, the opportunity to sketch,

to draw out beauty, to paint leisurely upon prism glass.

Have I reached the bridge upon the crossroads, the glimmering?

Magick’s sea through which I now may travel, native soul

returned, having earned my keep, my long journeyman’s

wage.  I have looked at age, a deep reflective pond.

A wild road calls, beyond this threshold, sculpted by

oceanic power, rifts and meteors.  I feel self-created destiny

shudder slowly, seismically, move me as I prepare

*

*

Beatific privacy, spacious fantasy,

Beauty’s secret sky.

Instant transport on beams of faery dust – pastel trails

fade languid to grand expanse.

Welcoming wilds, whisper of stories,

shelter of mothermoth wing.

Echoing, reflective pond plays soft consort with

lingering light.

*

*

Sadness is beauty brought down by ugliness,

truth succumbing to convenient lies.

Joy is opening all the senses into the

spectrum of beauty.

No moderation,

no limitation,

no convenient structural captivity.

Let the stars be shining beacons

calling us home.

Let the wind be a magical cloak,

the rain an exultation.

Let the cold, dark night be

a treasured, inspiring friend.

*

*

To see, to feel, to merge and undulate

through; to discover, uncover, swim

in the glory of original grace,

ecstatic beauty.

To see, to feel, to breathe in

all exquisite luxury of  prescience; to hold,

transmit as cellular energy.

To paint upon translucent canvas

subliminal etchings, private symbols

generously revealed.

Sagacity gifted, re-gifted,

planted in potent fertility

of visions, of cantations.

The tinsel of starlight;

the subtle scent of conflagrated pain;

the feather touch of eternity.

I fall into velvet voice, enchanting form.

Move with the rhythm

Tumble

into

song singing hallelujahs.

Haunted by pretty memories,

stars, sunrays, miracles ablaze.

Loved and protected by gods,

smitten with ecstasy.

Fortune favors elegance,

grace of presence,

true nobility beyond codes of legend.

*

*

Twilight,

fairytales brought back from sleep.

Sprinting across that abyss,

beauty simple, profound.

*

*

Stories safely told safely

hold dream-hidden refugees below surface travails.

Lost in flailing, in crafts lacking integrity, cracking,

leaking, failing to protect.

Sirens devise ritual beauty, fierce death/wild rebirth.

Pulling energy, drunk from fruits of Earth, swirl

into ecstasy; face becoming.

Beauty,

inspiring, drawing upward those myths

seekers of meaning in desperation complete.

*

*

Beauty lives in curves

and correlations,

simple intricacies

fitting frame to frame,

the potency of exactly

naming

demons and destinies.

Endlessly recursive beauty

Deep azure reflection

whirling stars

confections dark and

gloriously dangerous.

Transformed,

daily meditations

reach heights of ecstasy;

practice becomes mastery.

*

*

Beauty must disturb,

send waves displaying

meaning into neural crevices

thus saying:

Stay deeply in

this brief eternity …

*

*

The weight of the world.

The sadness of oceans.

The endless pain of life a’borning.

I am shaken; I am touched in that eternity.

If beauty demands sacrifice,

sacrifice demands such beauty.

*

*

As fascination leaves me

brilliant haze

transcends

oh! look! at the wonderfulness

dancing, prancing,

laughing

no consciousness

but of beauty and fun

no pressure, no expectation

light as air

practical as rain.

I am my own ambition to be realized.

Not a yoked beast,

but a child,

wild and free,

turning conundrum in

whirlwind,

euphoric

to be of service

to the muse

of my own creation.

*

*

Twirl into bright world of magic and melody and dance.

Send out twinkling moonbeams as smiles of delight.

Gift us all with love’s vision of bountiful peace.

Pour out joy that every beauty filled impulse increase.

Find a song that fills your heart

Feel a beat that sets you free

Embrace the wonder you are meant to be.

*

*

Rapid dance from idea to idea, moving so swiftly, so

deftly, to leave a whirl of orderly beauty.

*

*

Appreciation, cooperation imbued as art.

True beauty trumps

exhilaration of destruction.

The spaces that combine

dark and light

end and beginning

edge and sky

where flight and float may merge.

To see, to feel, to merge and undulate

through; to discover, uncover, burst renewed

in the glory of original grace,

ecstatic beauty.

*

*

Like a meditative prayer to beauty’s sacred well.

Drinking deeply with subtlety of sensation,

expanding metaphoric cells with

water of life and contemplation,

reaching for more.

Enchanted inward, beauty sculpted

pure, decanted music,

deep draughts of ecstasy.

Commingle, frolic with merry sprites,

conjured fumes,

intense, piquant elixir.

*

*

When beauty’s smile could greet our eyes,

define new mornings as we rise, why would we

otherwise choose?

*

*

Art lives, breathes, touches so surely

in the air, eye, mind of we who come to call.

With art

invisible renderings

take on a scheme

breathless with beauty.

*

*

Fleeting beauty

yet eternally expanding

integrating with starlight

recombining in those nuclear storms

I see you here, the artist

weaving sackcloth of diamonds

reflecting and protecting

that beauty never end.

*

*

There is the often grand and breathtaking,

often soft and ethereal,

beauty of the natural world.

There is such beauty as well

in the art and architecture of man.

Each has its story, its music, its water colour.

Each has the power to move the rhythm

of my heart and bring tears streaming down my face.

Each has the power to make me feel

hopelessly inadequate,

or to inspire me to reach to the stars.

*

*

Friday the 13th Harvest Moon

o

Harvest Moon (revised excerpt from Manifesting Destiny: Pages from Persephone’s Notebook)

o

o

Moon in Pisces

o

o

Harvest Moon, too overcast to see your resplendent glory. Pisces Moon moving through Neptune in her dance with the waning Summer Sun.  We’ve been dancing to, if not exactly under you. The weather should be clearer tomorrow night for the full Full Moon effect. Or will another hurricane come up the coast to drown you? Unsettled weather. Unsettling times.

o

I mind-see a fantasy, and wonder about the Christ and AntiChrist quoting scriptures, using prophecy to further causes of today. If Christians wonder why I mock them, or more likely take offense (turn that other cheek, guys), how would they feel about castigations of being Satan Worshippers, evil heathens, unbelievers in the One True Church (splintered as it may be). They leave no room for me. I, on the other (left?) hand honor them by taking their creed seriously. There’s room enough in believing for all of us. Why don’t they want to see that? They’ve only been around for a couple thousand years. In the beginning was way before any of us can remember. At the end we all die, onward to whatever afterlife does or does not await us. The Bokononists, in Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” believed the world ended when they died. Their world did. Of course, their world was a fictional one created by a human author. So like a god, the artist, creator of worlds.

o

Don’t worship me! I don’t want the responsibility. Why would a god? Why would a President? What kind of power does it really give them? Well, if we the people and our other representatives aren’t looking, paying attention, expressing our minding, who knows? Maybe it’s not some mythical AntiChrist and Beast as prophecy warned would bring about The End Times. Maybe the threat is much more mundane and RealPolitik. Myth or portent, humanity does need to PAY ATTENTION!  We need to understand and believe in our true reality, the world where we live.

o

So, dear Goddess, tonight belongs to you, under the Harvest Moon. My intention for supplication to your wisdom will be brought with holy honor. What is the nature of my harvest and my sacrifice? The Vestal Virgins were not physically intact, but free of the domination of any man. Perhaps I am in that sense a virgin as well. Though the bonds of love — but are bonds of love a domination if it is a love between free equals with no expectations, no demands? What am I willing to sacrifice? It’s not like I’ve got much. Maybe I can sacrifice my ignorance, my unfounded fears, my ill-advised temptations, self-imposed limitations. I sacrifice my weakness in the service of my strength. Sounds lovely. The thing with magick — be oh so careful when wishing that you are ready for the consequent reality after tweaking to magick’s demand. Be careful what you will for; it may become your destiny.  I am opening myself to destiny, not out of bravery, but necessity. What else have I got? It’s far too late in the game to switch over to a “normal” lifestyle. I have the candles, the incense, the herbs, the wine, the spell. Blessed be, all wise and witchy, and willing to manifest the joy of peaceful plentitude upon our world.

o

http://caelastory.blogspot.com/2009/08/manifesting-destiny-pages-from.html

o

o

o

It is time to reap ecstatic harvest

of moonbeams dancing to dawn

o

o

o

Come, discover arcane treasure,

magic of my forest’s harvest!

Breathe radiant air of revealed bliss.

Respond to call of tribal chants

no longer silent,

embraced in resonance.

o

o

Layered legend long ripens, tangled,

mired below in brooding traipse through

dust and gloom.

Crafty synaptic flow,

dreamcatching from all hallowed and harrowed,

tasting subtle essence in the bitter grain

of sanctified harvest sacrifice.

Swept into light as destiny,

revealed by labor of cultivation, excavated,

bestowed honoured place

in ritual chorus.

Celebrate

‘round communal table, exultant vibration.

Energies blend, fuse.

Recombinant winds call timeless tunes.

Rhythmic movements re- and un- engage,

ever changing,

never wholly new.

o

o

Loosening from light, long hazy days ebb golden,

move through Sun grown fields and buzzing industry of

bringing in harvest as written in ritual lore.

Cold is still a legend, a remembered song

soon enough we’ll be singing,

huddled into aural lamps for mutual warmth.

Tonight, as twilight melts into familiar

constellations, migrating like flying life,

sweet fruit of harvest still feeds celebration.

o

o

o

Wizardry of synaptic awareness,

unlikelihood of consciousness,

Dreams, Visions, Reveries,

ineffable insights

too dear to deny.

See, smell, taste

chemical reactions;

hear reverberating air.

Feel through ceremony, festivals,

deities, seeped in ritual,

the glue

of worldview.

There is no limit

but that will assigns.

Strict chants, mannered dance,

keep reality in line.

o

o

o

Real lives yearn, feel need

for some promised warmth of care,

shared extremities that nurture hope

of shared deliverance, hands and minds

together strong;

surge of survival over uncertain destiny,

return to industry, if we might find that energy.

Realign expectant gaze toward peace, plenty

— planetary necessity.

Eventually to remember as poignant history,

ritual song, reverie

as respite to somber tidal drum

o

o

o

In these moments

stuck in migrating vibrations,

attached to this Earth,

mired (but not beyond mirth,

cosmic inspiration),

miasmic

throes and woes,

undefined transformation,

laborious birth;

I am dignified, made whole,

giving service to vision.

o

o

o

Soar o’er awakened sky, past to now.

Taste surprised by puissant essence of

perennial harvest sacrifice.

Private seas pull grand tiding,

sweet, bitter sweet, salty sweet as candied seaweed.

Sunny, Moony, Star-eyed oracle snidely whispers

dense cues, cuneiform runes.

o

o

o

Angels and

Demons wage sacrosanct war.

Dice from a grail foresage trial or comfort.

Hungry Ghosts wail.

Vampires and Creatures

of the night seek shelter before

travails of daytime break them.

Skies descend, dark mirroring.

Smell the woodsmoke, intoxicating, soft and sweet,

masks the taste of bitter bile, secret vomiting,

starving despite harvest’s gay array of treats.

Faded, nearly blind, falling in and out of

shamanic fever, primeval native callings beyond sight,

ripple of tribal beat at the periphery,

ecstatic vision dark/light/agony and brilliant breaks,

star-bright constellations.

o

o

Private harvest. 

Cultivation rituals hung taut.

Shamanic divination

spun into fine golden fabric.

Gifts of remembrance.

Harvest nights given to ceremony, empathic

frenzied dance, spontaneous gaiety

— a tribal stew of sustenance,

warm spirit embodied.

o

o

Call in the harvest

My Lady awaits (impatient

is She, as all Immortals)

She sends cauldrons for filling

on chariots drawn by rays of the Moon

o

o

Faery Queen or fabled harlot

stirs potent night blooms, expelling myths of

what we cannot bear, cannot overcome.

Feel in the electric falling starlight,

spells of renewal, of power to look back

upon our falterings, to find the seed now grown

yet changing still and ever, able,

willing, co-creating in the illuminated shadow,

invoking the peace of dissolving twilight,

of midnight’s hopeful resurrection,

of the hinting sky that lightens before the dawn.

Take peace into each breath, each incantation,

from the strength to align impeccably

with your deepest truth.

o

o

Staring at Lady Moon,

breathing in sweet night blooming herbs from the garden.

She fancied hearing faint music in the rustling wind.

Slowly, not knowing that her body moved,

she danced, the wind carrying her like a lover’s arms

caught up in dancing slow and closer than a kiss.

o

She had so long felt helpless, unloved, unsupported. She felt a slow,

undulating power move through muscles and mind.

o

“Goddess?” Her voice quavered at the audacity; but she felt surer of her course.

o

“Goddess, I am your child.”

Nothing had ever felt more true.

o

o

o

o

Willing to be merry, to partake of

ritual, merging through

overarching trance elation.

Constellations, moving, shifting,

making waves in our collective

consciousness, appear to reveal

sparkling impulses of true vision.

o

o

Pleasure can win

salient treasure beyond

imagining’s failure.

Caught up in

rising song, brave steps, the play,

foresight gifts of gravid day,

celestial night.

o

o

o

Able to skip through vicissitudes as charmed emanation:

all is working inexorably toward fruition, true harvest’s peace.

o

Who chants behind that flowing curtain, charming?

What acts denote sacred allegiance, guide to mystics’ source?

Tribal myths, quests as lessons, collected anecdotes

signify ambient science for that era’s delegation. 

Zen koans, Aesop’s fables, lullabies,

invitations to meditate, to quiet, ineffable experience.

This yearn toward meaning harbors no enmity

to progressive projects magnifying kindness.

o

o

o

Golden night.

High fields of food and seed

aglow for harvest.

o

o

o

Harvesting Moonlight

o

o

Today the dark approaches, loosens veils of entropy.

Pixel colors whisper, hum of trails diminishing.

Lumbering, tales sweaty from slumber sweep

crumbling crusts, twigs and dust,

unencumber twinkling.

Luscious Moon, brilliant, rises

like a sacred flower unbinds, radiant,

smiling indulgence.

Celestial song, deep-breath effulgence,

wise spirit.  All we who hear it open our wings.

This night we fly over poignant fields of work requited,

imbibe euphoric mystery of peace.  Sweet day’s release,

rewards of harvest, ritual feast of play.

Uproarious dance with moonlight; voice, arms, lift

in embrace so strong, complete.

o

o

o

harvest

o

o

Mornings come later now,

permeated with scent of harvest,

green and red and the bright orange

of the Harvest Moon.

Morning air, heavy with moisture

seeps through my pores

into my bones.

I see roiling ships caught in rough sea,

their fortune a deity’s toss of dice,

or whim.

Ships laden with treasure,

sailors desperately loved.

Synchronistic vision,

on a placid pond three ships sail

a fine sunny regatta.

No longer await on the sickle,

deep fade of harvest

beckons to prescient chores.

o

o

o

Ritual

o

o

Ritual gives form to meaning

(every merry crone doth know).

Every act from which we’re gleaning,

Every sack that we must sow

Gives rise to tides that make us wise;

Gives humor chance for binding wounds.

Does good these ancient weary eyes

To dance abandoned round the moon.

o

Virgo

There is something very pure about a Virgo, no matter what muck s/he may fall into. You can be hypercritical, not out of meanness, but a desire to bring out the best. You are hard workers, because you don’t think of it as hard work, but as what needs to be done to make the real as close as possible to the ideal. You are practical, yet magical. You have a vision and no doubt that that vision can be realized. Virgo is the sign of the Vestal Virgin, consecrated to the gods, and bringing that spiritual consciousness into the everyday. Virgo is the sign of the farmer, working in the fields to bring forth the harvest to feed the community. Virgo takes care of the devil in the details, counts the angels dancing on the pin, and serves both commoner and king all in a day’s work.

.

.

Virgo

.

.

Snow-white light on field’s relief

reflects upon divine belief.

Virgo native, life bequeaths you,

standing proud among your sheaths,

cunning service, gifts of grace.

In all fields is your place.

Virtue’s reason, mind and soul,

You plant the seed. You help it grow.

You till the soil and prune and weed.

You are the soil. You are the seed.

.

Work of lungs, the gut, the spleen,

all we’ve known, done and seen,

reason’s truth that marches on,

with much to do before we’re gone.

..

sign of the Sun

*

Loyal Leo will lick your wounds,

refresh with nature’s joy:

All our world awhirl in pain;

love and luck we’ll soon regain

*

Leo

*

*

Heart strings

playing in the sunshine.

Nobility

out standing star sublime.

Ability to elevate each day.

A lilting aria of blessing.

Radiate your precious energy

to burn pure and true.

Brilliant spirit blazing through,

benefic empress of golden hue,

that’s how my heart sees you.

*

*

*

Mid-Leo Evening

*

*

Sitting here, in the cluttered fan-cooled kitchen

while a storm-brewing wind rustles

through the garden below.

The supermarket wine tastes tart and sticky.

The wine tells me stories, you know.

It’s the redness and the way the light reflects

against the glass, along with the drug.

Hearing voices in the silent darkness,

I listen without question.

As the night slowly falls,

I envision fantasies of former lives:

Glistening ball gowns and a smiling orange moon

in a starlit sky appear in my mind’s eye

along with

jugglers and dancers.

A fortune-telling maiden in glorious rags

places cards upon a table:

“The red one is Death; the white one is Honour;

the green one is Fortune; the blue one is Love.”

She lives in a log cabin with a unicorn and goat

who feed and clothe her and keep her safe.

There are many things I need to know

and few to tell me.

So I listen to the wine’s stories.

I wish it were my garden, below.

I would go out barefoot and gather ripe vegetables

under the moon,

breathing deeply of the cool night air.

*

*

*

Walk to the Sun

*

*

When I was a child, it was an old shaman

in our village who told the story.

“We used to walk to the Sun.

We would bring back gifts for the earth.

Everyone was happy.

Today, no one walks to the Sun. No one tends the earth.

No one is happy.”

*

Lately, I understand that

it was not the actual Sun in the sky

of which s/he spoke. It was that shining

place in our heart that lets us know how to do what is right.

*

I’m taking a walk to the Sun; want to come along?

*

*

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

*

*

Then she smiled a million miles

Sunshine bright for days.

*

brilliant sunshine warming

soporific

melting melodies

*

Early pinks ascend from eerie violets.

Sun’s lifting eye twinkles like a happy kitten,

tummy exposed for adoration.

*

Valiant mauve trumpeter of Sun,

rising songs from sleepy forest balconies, 

*

Souls dance in the sunlight

to song of far away stars.

*

Floating in the sunlight

ready to break free

to be

exactly who we are

*

protecting primeval fire and

gemstones,

seed of the Sun

bearing a glorious array of

multi-hued fruits

upon which we feast

for energy

*

sharing secret bliss

taste of Sun-kissed cloud and honey

*

I hold your recalled visage dear,

smiling like a sunshine ray.

Sometimes the world is very clear.

*

Cyclic time

Sun betrothed to Earth

Millennia revolve, fade, reassert

*

*

She stokes the fire to remember warmth when the Sun was high and strong, and present. 

Fire has its own secrets, its own order.  As do we all,

each our own furnace, nurturing a flame that is destiny. 

*

The well of sorrow metamorphoses into a peaceful pond

in which graceful gliding silvery creatures glint in the sunlight.

*

song singing hallelujahs,

place of play, haunted

by pretty memories

tinged gold in sunshine

*

walking long mornings into sunrise

*

Morning sunshine

burns off fog.

Glistening sky and the luxury

of self-companionship.

Ready, take aim, begin.

*

Hear adventure recall tribes to revelry,

chase lead of Sun’s bright, warm exchange.

Ignite past’s battles, burn discord as energy.

Surge ahead. Explore new forays toward

merry meeting.

*

The hope for bounteous Sun that bathes all

cares with caring.  Lengthening from center

outward, new growth bespeaks awareness.

*

learning to love

      together in the

        sunshine.

Embracing in fields of daffodils.

Happy to be

      imperfect beings

          together.

*

Reach out to join our hands,

sharing warmth of your reflected love,

Mother Sun.

*

Daughter in Summer’s sun

smiling warmly, playing at innocence

with charms long practiced.

*

She grows fine long tendrils

sparkling in the sunshine

and dainty pearly flowers

for bees to hum over

and the long daylight and beaming stars

share the fun of a summer day.

*

Drifting out on a sunshine day.

Leaping hearts/meandering artists

keep faith to a wayward tune.

*

Sunbeams sing along brilliant waterfalls.

Sparkling rivers feed turbulent melody.

Those who have found the key

play here.

*

My firefly heart beats into a thousand rays

striking out into the stratosphere playing

with the sunlight, prism bright rainbows

beating, flickering, cold and hot and

How can I make you see?

*

Blind old seer, wizard, holy prophet

stumbling over rocky hillocks

toward the sun

*

Sunrays are playing

Warming the walkways

Flashing out rainbows

in random puddles and streams.

*

A blazing blue and yellow sun-rayed sky overhead,

and sparkling sea shells beneath your feet.

And the sea breeze and lapping waves make the only

sounds (noisy traffic, heated pavement, not

even a memory).

*

wild in the sun, in the shadow, against the highway

moving I to I in the twilight,

anticipate memories to come

*

Brilliant skies awaken.

Assert dominance, define upcoming

plans.  Feel their confidence as

seedlings burst to touch sunlight.

*

Ah to be a Summer gift.

Borne on Sun’s warm rays, a’smile,

a welcome lift for all our hearts’ desire.

Festivities, sparkling lights and

generosity

bless time of joyful celebration,

rise in salutation to this Summer star

*

Children ought to bloom

smiling daisies

laughing pansies

great grasping reaching to

the Sun, the stars.

*

Reinstate the quiet sunrise

smell of pine and wild roses,

of limitless sky entertaining majestic formations of earth,

unbridled passion encompassing silent reflection,

all orchestrated in bold tones, exquisite complexity

and simple truth.

*

In this small space starlight smiles, sun rays slowly kiss

strength and warmth.

*

Summer melt of sun and mud;

heat mellows, liquifies icy

tensions.  Beat down, swallowed in

sweat, too hot for questions

to make sense.

*

take a leisurely walk along an

old stone bridge charmingly decorated with ivy and flowering vines

above a swiftly bubbling river onto which the Sun is shining golden notes of magical music

sit and watch, letting the river bring laughter to your smile

if someone should happen by and join the fun, enjoy

if someone should happen by and call you names that are not truly your own, laugh them out of your hearing

if someone should happen by singing your true song, sing along

*

Welcome arising in our hearts,

anointing our many-colored soul.

Take in the day.

Rejoice in the sunshine.

*

I walk softly in the morning.

Drink awakening dew, sunbeam blessed.

I take what has always been mine,

cherish magnificence*

Stars, sunrays, miracles ablaze.

Loved and protected by gods, smitten with ecstasy.

Fortune favors elegance, grace of presence,

true nobility beyond codes of legend.

*

receptive to pleasure;

balming luscious nectars,

warm melt of sunshine,

elation, charismatic exultation —

*

ebbing outward

gentle ripples

bathed in sunshine ease

*

All woozy from sunshine.

Tingle of sea breeze, that ocean scent of the wild.

As the sun recedes, cooling, refreshing, yet still a lazy summer eve.

*

If the sky could, it would dream of stars nova bright raining through galactic clouds.

Move inward

as Sunlight descends.

*

Tomorrow, the Sun will rise.

The Earth will revolve.

Life will adjust, compromise.

*

flow with the forces

of nature,

in touch with combust eternity,

child of the Sun

*

sun rise

blossoms to a

rhythmic peak

sending out, sending out, sending out

radiant vibration

*

moon days

Ritual

)

)

Ritual gives form to meaning
(every wiseman’s son doth know).
Every act from which we’re gleaning,
Every sack that we must sow
Gives rise to tides that make us wise;
Gives humor chance for binding wounds.
Does good these ancient weary eyes
To dance abandoned round the moon.

)

)

)

Full Moon Harvest

)

)

I could
if I willed it
go inward
beyond the cognition’s sphere.
Infinite bliss
the whole of the real
I know, I feel.
Eternity pulls me,
grasps my ambient air
into awareness.
All ways my destiny.
Incandescent transcendence,
resplendent artist’s delight.

)

Still
here
in these moments
stuck in migrating vibrations
attached to this Earth,
mired (but not beyond mirth,
cosmic inspiration)
miasmic
throes and woes,
undefined transformation,
laborious birth
I am dignified, made whole.
Giving service to vision
corroded, corrupted,
yet shining below that surface
I see
and uncover the light.

)

)

)

Full Moon reflection

)

)

Archetypes
walk city streets, ride subways as commoners –
subterranean consciousness,
ethereal siamese twin
to the everyday.
Shadow and substance
entwine as before
the invasion.
I long to tell you,
yearn so I loudly whisper,
but only if you really listen.
I cannot say these things twice.
Memories seep through,
acquire form.
Stand straight and true
as soldiers or Marines
giving full allegiance
to any who will take that load.
There are Gods foaming in excrement
begging relief in the form
of sacrament
potent and deadly.
Angels and
Demons wage sacrosanct war,
dice from a grail
foresaging trial or comfort.
Hungry Ghosts wail.
Vampires and Creatures
of the night
seek shelter before
travails of daytime
break them.
Morning Star
winks salaciously.
In wild’s kingdom
all manner of creatures
thrive.
Eagles soar.
Lions roar.
Whales sing.
Humans open a
veiled third eye.
The World rejoices.

)

)

With a word, the stranger gives a hand
An image stronger than the sound
Water falls upon the land
A smile peeks out from a frown
An eclipse returns dark to noon
As men’s minds walk upon the Moon

)

)

)

Eclipse Scrying

))

)

Where’s the fun
in hiding in the eye
of the hurricane?
I want to be bodysurfing
the storm,
madly dancing in the rain,
cast off from restrictive form …
I want to taste sweet grapes
break crisply;
Embark on a journey of ecstasy
to be all I have
thought to be;
Yet safely reside
in a place deep inside
away from the prying norm.
I want romance in the sense of
sensation inviting and free.
I want a chance to believe in magic.
And I want what I want to be
crazily in love with me.

)

)

E)clipse Dream

)

)

Jump! Jittery. Nauseous claustrophobia . . .
l e t t i n g g o s l o o o w
Whoosh in a leap faster than my breath can catch me
moving dizzily, half-blinded, out of focus
moving along a tree-shadowed path.
Enchanted forest?
smoke curling upward
gingerbread cottage in the woods
may I rest here, recoup my losses?
Savory soup simmers over the hearth fire.
Shadows fall over the corners
yet the center of the room
is surprisingly clean and polished.
I sit in mantra embraced
by soft silky wings.
Outside winter is falling.
When I awaken from my trance
planting season will begin.

The wild rains of spring
have caught me napping.
They catch me up in torrents
swinging me along
a cradle in the sea.
I am dreaming mazes
wondrous pageantry
woven into ivy walls.
The sea surrounds me.
I acquiesce to secret ceremony
believing the earth to be my home.

July the Fourth be with you

‘

‘

,The Lay of the Land

‘

‘

,I.

From your smoke-coughing cities

to your desolate plains

The children of Midas have taken the reins

And left you besoiled in blood-splattered stains

With none fit to wash you to purity.

‘

The air-waved cacophony pleads for a song

That will once more unite you ennobled and strong

To take back the glory to which you belong

To wrench freedom from dreams of security.

‘

The old man, he wanders through opiate clouds

The young take their distance

to move through the crowds

And every one fitted for life-draining shrouds

Reflect only on death’s dance of conformity.

‘

While poisoning rays permeate land and air

The high class step out like they haven’t a care

They’re bound to discover their world-rending tear

But can they comprehend the enormity?

‘

Ridiculous sages exhort peace and love

Say we each have our choice of reality

So we fight over contexts and deny what we can;

But reality marches on.

‘

II.

‘

Journeyman upon the road

Listening to the jungle drums

learns to bring it all together

as nightly his guitar he strums.

From the Woodstock Nation on to ’84

With his banner of music he learns to keep score

And the score, as it’s written, keeps costing him more

But it’s also what’s keeping him dancing.

With a beat in his heart and a song for his soul,

it keeps him journeying on.

‘

III.

‘

Winter creeps whitely over streetlamp and spire.

Muted to whispers the Grand Freedom Choir.

A clattering chatter overtakes the high wire

Pure white like the night of beginnings.

‘

The children have nestled all snug in their schools

In joyous rote marching, they take in the rules

Determined to never be taken for fools

Or give back an inch of their winnings.

‘

Silent, the singers are searching for voice

They know in their souls it’s a matter of choice

They need to find reason, a cause, to rejoice,

A newly turned path to felicity.

‘

A new day is dawning, but where is the sun?

Our freedom and faith are defined by the gun.

The symbol of power overrules everyone

‘Til we create our own electricity.

‘

But under cover of darkness a banner’s being stitched

Of patchwork-bright colors and radiance

To someday soon be unfurled in the breeze

As we march to freedom’s song.

‘

‘

‘

Recreation at the End of the World

‘

‘

The end of the world as we have told ourselves it is.

Widening eyes align with changed designs, underpinnings,

first causes, metaphors, stories of us.

Disruption, distorted transition, fear and distrust

wildly gallop to trample the field, cry out the call

“Just let me rest.  Just let us lie here, ashamed, afraid

to allow such blinding disarray.  So much safer

to fall, over the end of the world.”

‘

Could we edit together songs, pleas,

harmonize with birds, bees, thunder, settling sighs,

meme shattering symphony, dilated eyes happy to see

randomized patterns coalesce, myths reassessed,

zest of surprise?

Would we recreate deity as an image more easily

caressing, Empathy for the 21st century?

‘

‘

July 4, 2012

‘

‘

‘

The right amount of government —

just enough to protect freedom

without destroying it.

Just government

protects everyone’s freedom

without destroying anyone’s.

‘

But who decides what that line is,

each with our own dispositions?

It may be up to the fate of

social evolution.

Not a satisfactory solution

for we who cannot wait.

Our lives are forfeit now

to silly fields of behavior

deemed acceptable

to the respectable

who rule the day.

While life is so disrespected,

devalued, expect those

learning their behaviors from

the crowd

to coldly laugh and kill.

If that is the will of the people …

Such death is what we freely choose.

Those who would desist

are not allowed to exist.

Instead organized Reality tv fights

define our rights.

‘

Thirteen Wizards Shall Guide You, rotating in 7s,

to be chosen from a wizard test administered at regular intervals

to any who wish to apply.

Each wizard shall serve at his/her pleasure — until they decide to move on.

Any wizard may return by retesting and getting the highest score amongst

those currently in line at the time of a vacancy, like any other candidate.

The test to be devised by a wise pre-council to ascertain qualities of

wisdom, compassion, responsibility, integrity and clarity of communication.

The test may be reviewed and revised at any time that the full council agrees

to do so, based on evidence of better result to be gained.

The wizards do not make the laws.

Laws are made by direct democracy, after a sufficient period of debate when

an overwhelming majority of consensus seems likely.

Wizards do have veto power.

Wizards do not control the economy. That is the province of the market.

The wizards do oversee the use and conservation of common resources.

They do oversee a social infrastructure that assures everyone a comfortable, secure

livelihood. They do oversee disputes to assure that everyone is treated fairly

in the course of commerce, and in the course of community life.

They are not paid an outright salary.

They are given comfortable living conditions that their minds may be free

of personal want.

‘

‘

‘

Freedom isn’t free.

Neither need it be paid for by war.

Freedom demands integrity,

acting from the core.

Freedom is

not a chore.

It’s how we’re meant to be.

‘

‘

July 4, 2010

‘

‘

‘

Prophecy

‘

‘

And He became The One

as we all swarmed together

in His direction

anointing our Saviour.

We, so impatient to be saved

from evil history

from slavery, hunger, hate

to make a better fate

for our kids

(and, don’t kid yourself, ourselves).

Caught up, trapped, in the trappings

of fashion, co-opted hypnotic

consciousness.

Drugs to cure us of our many flaws;

because if you’re not flawless you

haven’t got a chance.

In marketplace fierce competition,

a youthful escapade can ruin you

for a respectable life,

that adheres peers’ and elders’ expectations.

And then where are you?

May as well be burning in eternal

damnation — at last.

At least Satan wants you

for your sins.

In a mythical colony,

far from their petulant King,

it is said a people

fought and died, and stood their ground

for freedom.

It is said such pageant plays

are widely performed today.

“Freedom is not Free; but based

on blood sacrifice.”  They say.

Freedom dependent on militia,

on strictly disciplined troops

firing into pregnant crowds.

Ancient wizards foretold

potent prophecy.

We will not listen.

We insist on martyrdom,

worshipping, as we do,

cults of murder.

Thus human life leads inexorably

to eternal death,

just as we demand,

when we all come together

anointing yet another One.

‘

‘

‘

Freedom FOR Security

‘

‘

Either, by nature, you’re plagued with paranoia

Or you’ve bought pervasive propaganda.

I do understand:

It was so cheap, and in your color.

It wasn’t labeled “Propaganda.”

Sold as “News,” common knowledge,

accommodation to the norm.

And it fits your internal dialog so well

“Danger is everywhere these days of disorder,

scary change.”

Just like all the days

when Freedom seems such a flimsy wage,

a cheap exchange

for sham Security.

‘

‘

‘

We Didn’t Know

‘

‘

Efficient development requires deprivement.

No profit, no playground to feel alive in.

Those few groomed for career cheer, mocking:

“Can’t you hear; that’s freedom knocking.”

“Work for rent, or stay in school, dude.”

You get no cake for being a loser.

Orwell warned “Big Brother is watching.”

We didn’t know he meant on you-tube.

‘

We didn’t know our life was a crime

Sentenced from birth to pay all our time

Cast from the truck to the roadside to rot

Drawn outside of luck, all about what you’re not.

Media screams their revealed truth feud.

Sell saturated garbage labeled food.

Orwell warned; we were warned:

“The best of you will be co-opted.”

We didn’t know they meant on you-tube.

‘

‘

‘

80’s legacy (happy Independence)

‘

‘

Don’t blame the GWB administration, it was Reagan and his merry crew.

Though we protested in the post-Vietnam ‘70s

hot and sure about every error

the point is, we had that luxury.  Yes, there was poverty,

discrimination,

groups and individuals in need; but going hungry was not the penalty

for lack of a paycheck.  There was real community

spirit, especially on the lower rungs, but philanthropy as well.

There was a strong foundation that made sense

and listened to well-wrought reason.

The ‘80s brought in a different paradigm,

more wide and wild.  Days of cocaine,

champagne, glamour and celebration for sweet deregulation,

when every schemer

could believe a neo-capitalist vision of wealth unbound.

Before it was found that

poisonous as plutonium, in the gleeful hands of the truly greedy,

just what we

were free to become.

Since then it’s been spinning our balance off to bits of

blast-warped brains.

Such harassing hatred and spitting disdain.  Psychic

Cassandras said at the time, his numbers are 666.

A man possessed by

Hollywood fantasies of what we all should portray,

folie a deux with a nation.

And here are those snowy yesteryears roosting

in our rafters, laying out

the macabre future of their disaffected youth.

Who is it, really, that we as a people choose to be?

Distanced from our history,

adumbrated by convenient lies, what are our chances

for recovery?

‘

‘

July 4, 2010

‘

‘

‘

When the national project was stolen before our horrified stares

When it became our duty to kill and destroy for the convenience of profit

When humane policy became anathema, unworthy economic drag

When the will of the gambling elite gamed the rule of law to their pocket

Did you scream so loud that bitter blood poured from your lungs?

Did you set up mourning camps to gather forces,

to train grief and rage into worthy opponents against true freedom’s foes?

Did you gaze into the cold eyes of propagandists and say “No!”?

Or did you march along in the parade, assured:  “First they get theirs; then we get ours.”?

‘

‘

‘

social net

‘

to paraphrase that great poet, Donald Rumsfeld:  We work with the Congress we have, not the Congress we wish we had

‘

‘

Yes, of course we ought be fiscally responsible.

Yet of far more import is that we be rational.

Hyperbolic apoplectic, Apocalyptic rhetoric

reduces us from politic to stagey raving maniacs.

No need for such hysteria; learn from recent history.

The flagrant ways of LBJ, Reagan and GWB

found mitigation in administrations following.

The People, energized, expand instead of wallowing.

Exciting industries take hold, real worth — not hollow gold.

‘

The conversation we as a nation need

is not a war of virtue versus greed

or capturing the rules to win a game

or playing catch with sophistry and shame.

We need to ask and answer in sobriety

Who we best can be as a society

‘

‘

‘

Drunk on destruction,

to fell inclusive truths of good faith,

triumph of the crazed.

‘

Under Lying Message

‘

‘

Coma Baby, salivation of ubiquitous tragedy.

Petroleum under the sea

breaks surface.

Fissures exposed, eroded social contract.

Corrosive wealth.

Corrupted Earth.

Tell me a tale of forgiveness.

‘

“Tough choices must be made!”

Congressional random phrases.

‘

The difference between faith and bliss.

Engine of tar-black submarine,

leak of held back tears, grief of millennia.

‘

I feel America crying.

Taste blood salt, polluted brine, dystopia.

The best hope for our regeneration,

for our continuity,

for our survival:

Let GO

Let the race be won,

the trophy given;

the competitors disperse

aglow in glory.

While we who endure

quietly, quaintly, alive to each moment,

slip between the slicks

‘

‘

‘

Live Revolution

‘

‘

Revolution comes when it is ready.

Sparks so many times seem sure to light, embolden change.

Only when the tinder is sufficiently arranged will fire take hold.

Blaze clear fidelity to this erupted moment, charging forward.

After images, ash flakes in settling dark, take flight,

swirl within echoed breeze.

Readiness, relative to chaos, free range of human whim.

Revolution is but a shared anthem, parts of anger and revenge,

parts of reaching toward a new religion.

In the aftermath of violent schism,

what bright vision will sustain?

‘

‘

‘

Western

‘

‘

Raw, piercing howl

promises places

not here.

Dirt-framed, sore worn tracks demark possibilities,

thankful for the regularity of commerce

allowing travelers meaning.

‘

Caged, kept from indeterminate freedom.

Irony does not escape me.

I find comfort in harsh Revelations

babbled by a shining eyed prophet.

Mad peasants and their Lords,

progress through tribulations,

power games of strategy and fate.

Millennial betrayal. Land sold from under pensioners,

savage beating of broken laborers,

children learning their worth without a home.

Is this Almighty Covenant?

Eras, tools, enemies revise.

The game journeys on.

‘

Rising gold Sun absorbs mist.

A righteous dawn.

The smell of enduring prairie after

the train’s rushed through.

On this side of the bars,

life is slow,

awaiting judgment.

‘

‘

May days

May the Fourth be with you

*

*

blisstoday, blasttoday

May the Force stay with you

inspire more heroes like

Lucas and Luke

)

Light sabers, Jedi tricks

Empiric adventure

Scripts for all ages

Fiction distributes truth

*

*

*

*

Beltane

*

*

Dreams long enshrined touch magic of New Moon 

Fourth day in May, cross-quarter fully blooms

Ecstatic dance to merrily entice

Into brave chance, Dame Future’s vast surprise

Divine delight invites inspired mirth

Renewed to life, we worship gifting Earth

Mother world, our one true holy land

Time to kindly honor Her command

*

*

*

*

for the May Queen

*

*

Tick Tock

Times a’creeping

Maidens weeping

beating rags along the river’s edge

shallow floods keep the land aware

destiny is seatide

)

Crazy lady mending her endless tears

Throat flumed, a voice to run from

Love never tarried, though many she married

She cocks an eye, arrowing flocks of fears

Cackles and coaxes sweet mourning doves

to carry her coffin to market

Buyers beware

)

Don’t stop

Don’t answer

Don’t stare

Don’t be seen

Hide in the green

Hide in the hole you call home

Never admit you belong

to the caste you belong to alone

Never assent to succeed to the throne

Wait for cover of darkness

Wallow in comfort of sleep

Trade what time you’re given

for a secret you can’t keep

Destiny is seatide

*

*

*

*

Love Song to the Queen of May

*

*

Electrical air, thunder praised lightning.

Aware, hug of ineffable gaze.

Aglow in nature’s snare.

Natural child.

Let her go wild.

Follow her there.

)

Enjoy these humble Spring delights,

softened days, enchanted nights.

Flowers of the May Queen,

bright expectant buds

waving, euphoria fragrant,

joyfully risen to

Earth’s celebration.

))

All that is or ever was or can occur

exists in whirling mists, vast cosmic blur

to set out bit by bit a brilliant poem

weaving eternally our common home.

)

Perhaps a poem of love,

thick words upon parchment

to hold to, warmly comfort sodden heart.

As flashing floods inundate, suffocate,

cleanse or lacerate from resultant rust.

Such perfumed promise might seem

a heaven sent reminder of what has been,

could become.

Romancers, lovers lifted above rhyme or

rhythmic scheme in perfect tune,

imbued truly with yearning spire of adoration,

create in shining halls of imagination

lyric poetry that never dies.

)

Gushing bloody revelation through fangs sharp and wise.

Temptress, tempestuous, oh tempt me pure and thorough.

Unrestrained wet, red essence

pumping into ecstatic relief.

Hidden as a jungle creature.

Learning by thrill, pagan exultation.

Strong scent of fecund Venus,

lusty scent of earth.

*

*

*

*

Mothers’ Night

*

*

cascading shards

ripping

echoes falling

“It’s our calling.”

)

Rape of Earth,

hot spurts, invective words,

savage knives.

Abiding Mothers,

sacred and mundane

twist into harridan

cold stars

)

wailing, hurtling waves.

Sad, old, crust of ages

sliced, screwed, carved up for profit

“It’s not the color of the skin,

the culture of the smile”

)

the scent of danger,

the inborn stranger —

all excuses for Us (superior)

and Them (inferior)

“They are not our breed,

but lower curs.”

We may kill with unfettered glee.

)

Cursed, clubbed, cut to our requirement.

Borders clear.

“Heretic fear fences in

our livelihood and wives.

Leave THEM to putrid pits

cunning jabs,

our pleasure.”

)

Stunning, treasure that might regale,

heal, exemplify true worth,

sustain humanity and Earth,

sold for pittance of potash

to wage a weary jig.

*

*

*

*

Imagine May Day

*

*

 

Brazen witches arise, fly

dark Moon nights, stealthy, silent

in joyous revelry.

Bonded to Earth, creation;

learning at mother’s breast

to bear life’s gifts and lessons.

)

Man may proclaim, murder

for fealty, to swear allegiance to

their hunt’s command.

They may elevate One True King,

kneel and obey. They may employ

counting measure, ceremonial sacrifice,

taunting torture or other trials,

thus find each loyal swan a pond

to plunder, to parade in royal color,

their place of pride.

)

Cruelty descends, more than tactic;

enemy of joy, of flavor,

caring, work of love and honor.

)

Yet, on real ground, work companions

to soil and rain, engineers trained to each

moment’s urgencies, philosophers of stone and mud,

reason and toil, persist. Their sinew and bone feed

the ages, build clay and richness on which

wealth relies.

) 

Wisdom carries practiced movement,

flexible to unexpected barriers, able to modulate

quiet or loud as the crowd ebbs

or grows in credulity.

Where wisdom counters

prevailing poisons, invigorates blood to nourish

minds and hearts, look there for blessing.

)

Arise, lovers! Summon better days, to play in revelry,

enjoy as neighbors our labors and our fruit.

Ally in magic; imagine life into this world.

*

*

 

411

IN FORMATION

1

1

It’s all information.

Sensory input synthesized

with lessons past

shape, rearrange contexts, meanings,

strategies of behavior.

Expectations and despair

that follow lonely poverty,

or expectations of repair,

of guardian fates,

of co-creating deities,

of boost from true community.

A story lived to be rewritten,

page by page.

Edited to fit

the going rage.

Electro-chemical data

set the course.

*

Scientist, mystic, mage,

data manipulators all,

reordering configurations.

With practiced art

invisible renderings

amplify to scenes

breathless with beauty.

0

0

0

DATA FLOW

1

1

Our major resources are infinitely renewable —

thought, imagination, information.

Combined acts of conscious beings

develop labels and experiments

to better understand given environments.

Science, not decrees of some overarching god,

ongoing history.

Experience we attempt to “know”

by categorizing, crafting systems.

*

Information flows through, leaves

inspiring bits, tills imaginarium —

well tended inner flower bed from which

variegated seeds freely

spread, carry attunement to essential center.

*

It’s not about either/or, duality, dichotomy,

even though portentous pendulum keeps swinging.

*

Not brain malformation,

inculcated information

shouts, whispers, insists

“violence!”

Hand turned in to fist, shake explosive arms.

Charms of hate, to capture, ensorcel, growing minds.

“It’s weak to be kind”

Creeping pendulum, the sweep of evidence

(which changes over time and place),

mainstream definitions,

these but chains of thought that build,

transform, include ever more.

The center is not about faith or submission,

authority or politics.

It is interconnections

as they coalesce

to form a cohesive experiential whole.

Layer upon layer

of ambient ether condenses into

data.

*

We speak of science as if revealed knowledge,

as what is real.

Yet, we people create acceptable reality

as collective agreement (though not all agree).

In laws and theories, we describe

to understand that segment of everything

accessible to senses and reason.

Attending to that part

on which we focus our “I”s.

Like old sayings (further extended):

Some look at a problem and say, “why?”

Others look at an opportunity and say, “why not?”

And still others look at our vast accrued mess and say,

“I’m not cleaning that up!”

*

It’s not as if I have declarative answers.

I merely offer open-ended questions

into which theories and possibilities can be dropped.

If reality is about perception,

and the reality apparent blows ill,

peruse leisurely, entertain unusual perspectives,

expose beautiful shapes and contours.

0

0

0

  VIBRATION

1

1

Hover bees buzz, calms me to sleep.

Gently drink effervescent nectar.

Spread bless propagating pollen.

Send wayward tales,

swing forward my fate.

0

I hear staccato buzz.

Onus is no part of privilege.

Privilege defines desert.

High prance noble private parts, flog

broken faces

with terror.  Hastening dust flirts with pillaged

descent.

Conquest by dictate.

Summons a bizarre maze of disfigured mirrors.

Unaware of consequence, of karmic games,

of simple quid pro quo: A resolving into A

for Arrogance, for Anger, for Allegory.

Fallen Angels glamour dance in pinhead glee.

Ecstatic shimmy well past the veils, will to see

slim glimmer of Pan’s freedom.

Nature’s buzz, that subtle strain,

echoes shifts in drumbeat.

New Queens rise, take flight.

Brilliant skies awaken.

Assert dominance, define upcoming

plans.  Feel their confidence as

seedlings burst to touch sunlight.

0

0

0

Thought Screen

1

1

It’s just a silver screen

a way to rationalize our being

a dialog along

the agonizing day

it’s just a way

to carry on.

0

Why should well thought out scripts

be any more well thought of

than any salad of words?

Why expect

attention or  respect or to be heard?

Why should loving words,

or thoughts, or thoughtful actions

result in any sway?

Has it finally been proclaimed my Nobel day?

1

What can I say?

0

There is a point in

all this farce?

That the fool on the precipice

dances wisely?

No matter

what the cost

there’s a prize worth the price?

There is good advice

in the stars?

There’s a lucky star,

and it’s ours?

There is magick,

to believe in?

There is hope and life and grace?

There is more than we imagine?

There is gold in inner space?

There is danger; there are dragons?

There are knights and righteous cause?

There is more than we imagine —

There are underlying laws

that we obey?

(Why would you listen, anyway?)

0

It’s just a veiled screen,

computer coded dreams,

what we see, based on

what we’ve seen.

It’s just our time-lined place

stored in inner space,

packaged in paradigmatic memes.

Accepted ways of being

interfacing real-time streaming

moving in and out of order

on either side of mind.

So what I track inside

is what I find.

But I haven’t got a clue

how to reconcile with you

with language 

self-reflectively

designed.

dream times

When I was a child I suffered a series of terribly frightening nightmares. I finally found a way to stop them. When I awoke afraid, I would go into the dream and find a good solution to the problem presented. I would complete the dream not as a horror movie, but as a problem-solving feel-good flick.

*

)

With all this Neptunian transitory influence I have been hoping to find some kind of message in my dreams.  Lately, though, they’ve been too vague and mostly nonexistent once I awaken.  There have been images about having to pack up a lot of junk, to move elsewhere by choice or in response to disaster or inconvenience.  Stuff about crowded living situations or helter-skelter moving about to find I don’t know what.  Nothing distinct.

)

This last morning, though, I was surprised to find myself dreaming strong images, even if scattered in the way that dreams do that.  I was waiting in a lovely waiting room with happy, even serene, people to be handed my new baby.  I believe, though I don’t think it was mentioned, a girl.  She was all little and perfect and sweet.  Everyone was excited, pleased, welcoming.  This went on for awhile as the scene morphed a bit into myself and child with a group of friends/family celebrating.  We went to a lovely European-style restaurant, open to the air, with beautiful artwork including the furnishings and tableware.  It was an open, breezy atmosphere, rich in colors, fabrics, yet not cluttered, enjoyably energizing and relaxed. 

*

The waitress came over to us to take us to a table.  She was dressed in a kind of alpine costume, with long blonde curls and a drolly made-up face.  She was all smiles and warm welcome, happy to see us, happy to have us enjoying her restaurant.  I looked at her face as she touched me gently on the shoulder.  I was amazed to realize that this was the woman who had so taunted, tortured and destroyed me in real life.  Yes, it was her, but so changed.  She was happy, warm, friendly, inviting, especially once it became clear that she also recognized me.  She went about introducing me to the other staff, very proudly, as if I were a long lost friend who had happily chanced to refind her, here in this beautiful place that she was proud to show off.  I had initially been quite (though quietly) aghast to see her.  Very shortly, though, I was happy as well, for everyone was being very merry, very loving, without the slighted hint of any edge or enmity or ill-will.

*

)

This dream has been lingering:  I was wondering about in a place I had once lived and returned to. Explaining my presence to someone, I said I had lived here before, but had been living in NY and a lot of places had changed.

.

Then I was back in NY, apparently to take care of unfinished business. I didn’t have enough money to pay for my exorbitantly priced room. The shrewish proprietress gave the room to someone who came in while I was arguing about the price. I was out on the street.

.

I ran into an old acquaintance in a dark parking lot, outside a bar. Apparently we had parted bitterly. I apologized for what had happened and asked that we be able to get along, if not as friends not as enemies. He agreed to try.

.

I was inside the bar, in a largish ladies’ lounge, sitting on a wooden bench. Another woman, friendly, offered to share a cigarette. We smoked and talked amiably. Another woman came along and offered a glass tube, which she put to my lips and blew a white smoke into me, several times. I realized I was enjoying kaleidoscopic visions when I awoke, thinking: aw sh__! Just when it was getting good.

*

)

I was dreaming that I was walking along a verdant highway shoulder with my brother and his wife. She was asking about my mental health issues. I explained to her that I was coming to the realization that I was no longer “sick.” I had gone through a long healing process. Now I was not a sick person healing, but a new person I had not been before. My task now was to learn how to be that person effectively.

*

)

As I was saying this last bit, she let us know that we needed to cross the highway here, to get to a place she wanted us to enjoy in the woods on the other side. She and my brother raced across when she said: “now.” However, I got caught by traffic that came up on my too quickly. I have a recurring dream situation in which I am trying to get across a street or some such and find my feet somehow glued or tarred, unable to move. I remembered that and expected this situation to ensue. However, to my surprise, I found I was able to, lane by lane, cross the highway after waiting for the oncoming traffic in that lane to clear. I woke up before reaching the other side.

*

)

an image from a recent dream. I understand my dream offers no authority: I had apparently been the victim of a violent crime and was arguing with the police detective that it was not right that I be denied a role in finding and dealing with my attacker. I passionately argued for the rights of the victims, supposedly those we are meant to be working for in efforts at criminal justice, to be empowered by being an integral part of that process. Yet I was being treated as a bystander in my own life.

*

)

Just a dream, but then,

truth can come from dreams

hidden far beneath common

understandings

compasses and brandings

useful for daily social norms

truths enrobed in symbolic forms

reveal in dreams

*

)

dream imagery can be so evocative

without making sense

without kowtowing to the senses

to scientifically observable fact

running without legs or pavement

smiles lingering without cats or mirth

dense, immediate quarrels

never begun nor ended

I roll over crimson seas in a rollicking

ferryboat, bartab with no way to pay

dreaming, outside responsibility

catching glinting glimpses

open to interpretation

*

)

Here, in this still place,

prior to awakening,

which dream takes hold?

Dream whatever dream you see.

Reveal your potent imagery.

Release your awesome wings

— it’s okay; it’s just a dream …

*

)

marching on

Soldiers marching in a desert,

remember not their daily cares.

Remember only endless marching.

Caught in dreaming, unawares.

*

*

*

*

marching to Bethlehem

*

*

Things fall apart.

The center does not hold.

We, along the periphery

dissemble for survival.

All our pretty goals

dissolving in the face

inevitable despair brings.

The wise babble desperate incantations.

The weak of will and mind

sing Hallelujahs and kick the peasants

as they pass.

Perhaps we are in the hallway

of a great reckoning.

Mad Earth grumbles loudly,

threatens to rescind Her bounty.

Men of illwill, men of destiny

proudly proclaim their birthright

to pillage, to plunder, to prey upon

chaos, annihilation.

If only the poets sang truth in such

majestic certainty, with such

charismatic humor and allure.

Things fall apart

coalesce

reconfigure.

Here, along the periphery

we carry our burdens,

sink ever more deeply

into rotten crevices

singing our selves

into sleep.

.

*

*

*

*

March tune

*

*

Substance obscured,

mucked in human manure,

grates through the common sewer.

Unembraced, unengaged with

disgraced as a gutter myth

given no say or power.

Keep a tight lid, kid, on

who you were, what you did

that never can be allowed.

Never let them see you sweat.

It’s dangerous to show regret.

You’re not a target; you’re a threat.

Do you get what we’re all missing?

We could be questioning and listening.

Giving credence to each other’s dreams

needs and abilities.

Healing rifts with respect,

gracious civilities.

Because the puzzle is only complete

with all of the pieces in sync.

Brain cells invited to think,

brawn to chop wood, carry water.

Souls dance in the sunlight

and to song of far away stars.

*

*

*

*

Pilgrim’s progress

White Anglo Ethos

Petulant brats demand obeisance

to our code of conquest, of dominance,

of hard-assed outcast of deviance

Rule over Earth and her issue

break them to work for our wishes.

Honor, respect,these are authorities’ own

the war lords we place on our thrones to command.

Progress is forward motion on opening roads.

Marching, no conscience nor care for what may explode.

Let our Great Destroyer sort it.

*

*

There was a Roman soldier bored with war,

with whores, with bloody babies.

Hoping to escape, he wrote a history,

moved into

his Holy fantasy.

It’s but a Shangri-La, a piper’s dream.

Metal men, formed from clay,

scream upon fields of hostility,

when nerves

catch up with senses.

Soothed with martial melodies,

gratefully march to serve.

*

*

*

*

There is a sweetly drifting tune

Meandering like wisteria

Is it a dirge?

A sassy New Orleans carriage ride?

Is it the beating of my heart

Spraying a trail of bleeding homage?

It is a wedding march,

Played slowly, out of time,

Beat by beat, more slowly

Rewinding.

*

*

*

*

Marching On

*

*

I give my wandering children

Anger to protect you from pain

Rage to ameliorate agony

Fear of what folks won’t explain

Fraught laughter to counteract tragedy

Music to move you to heal

Theater to unite what we feel

that vague sense that nothing is real …

Lost at an indistinct edge made of snow

Unsure where we’ve come from, with nowhere to go

Beggars and bullies and braggarts and whores

iron chains on our windows in rooms with no doors

Fire roams freely, unleashed by cruel wars,

feeds forever on days we will never see,

worlds we will never be

given

*

*

*

*

March Hare

*

*

Another kind of rabbit hole.

Ghastly dark and bruising.

No recompense of wonder.

No luxury of child’s imagining.

No spritely tea time story.

Only caustic mud awaits below

at tumbling’s end.

*

Young rabbit hops

beside Edenic flowers,

sniffs puissant nectar in the air.

I am complete in this instant.

Now, I leap to a farther garden

to taste the bitter charms,

the salty repartee, tropic spice

and cold beer. Sense, sensation,

cessation of sensation —

not happiness, not bliss.

The essential can not

be sought.

No destinations wave aloft

as banners.

We act.

We affect.

We move on.

*

I am the rabbit.

That chic Alice had the hots

for me and we had planned

to hole up for awhile.

But then thing’s got too

surreal.  Lewis Carroll,

wacky jabber?

I began to feel used

as a plot device.

Can you blame me?

I ate some of Caterpillar’s

mushroom, grew into

a pooka and moved

in with Jimmy Stewart.

Redubbed myself Harvey.

Loved the cocktails.

Later, I haunted Donnie Darko,

puzzle poser of his final fall.

What I mean to say is

that fiction

is born, bred, propagated

out of pain, vanity, desperation

and the humor we conjure

to spite it all.

I have no legitimacy.

It is enough if

I deign to cavort at your call.

*

*

*

*

March of disorders;

unstable chemicals break down,

crush frightened innocents

into dust.

*

*

Gonna build our army for God

Oh the glory, Oh the rapture

millions of souls marching home

*

*

There are armies of the night, marching,

conscripting our young, our heartland, our hierophants.

*

*

Marching, in orderly fashion

Or beatifically walking to a sacred drum.

The horizon shifts through daily duties and nightly prayers.

We take what we can. We give.

*

*

March of novelty

sad kabuki metaphor

drowns in destruction

*

*

*

*

Three Penny Opera and Grateful Dead:

What They Mean to Me

*

*

I was listening,

under a grove of budding trees,

on an early Spring  evening,

to the morals of our time as displayed

in popular music,

and thinking of the many tiny travesties

of personal moments all around me.

The seatide ebbing/flowing of the music

more than hypnotized

as I watched people flowing

through an inner newsreel

of pride and misery

People marching in various uniforms

To a beat of pride and progress in the marketplace

and war zones;

People marching or being trampled or

sniping from the rooftops

All in rhythm.

And a friend said to me

on a starlit evening,

“It’s so hard to know anymore what to do.”

*

*

*

*

Musical march of human history

heads toward individual liberty.

Taking our streets in

big bold singing, dancing, laughing, power

celebration.

*

*

A new day is dawning, but where is the sun?

Our freedom and faith are defined by the gun.

The symbol of power overrules everyone

‘Til we create our own electricity.

*

*

But under cover of darkness a banner’s being stitched

Of patchwork-bright colors and radiance

To someday soon be unfurled in the breeze

As we march to freedom’s song.

all hallows message

All hallows

All holy

All sacred

All souls, drifting in ether and

melody

Listen!

move with deep ambition

to command the living through all channels.

Stop broiling ranting of your wars

just for this instant:

Listen!

Hear desperate matter between,

holding, securing us,

breaking.  Like ice under steam.

Spirit escapes with no tether,

no purpose, no solid sphere

to cherish memory.

Listen!  Hear, all hallows,

all sacred vessels, all poets

of binding, protecting rhymes.

Extend unbridled wisdom as element,

as air that clarifies our minds,

teaching sad mankind to heal

before all chance

is gone.

11/1/18

named

old gypsy witch

night crone

with power of will

creature my own myth

little emoges

Little Emoges

*

*

The internal monolog, salient images,

won’t translate into written language,

mankind’s boon for communicating

beyond gestures.

Yes, I see,

clearly as if on screen,

not like stagnant memory,

avatars of me along the way.

Could I bespeak her,

become companion, trusted friend

at these small moments fraught

with inchoate destiny such that my psyche

keeps to reappear as if to engage

with fresh senses?

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #43

Caela’s Story #43

 

A strangely dressed, obviously old, yet regally postured woman appears on the balcony of the City Council Building, arms outstretched as if in benediction. Calmly, serenely, she faces the uproarious crowd surrounding from below.

Caela breathes deeply inward, accessing that bright core she has built from all the loving wisdom discovered throughout her life.

“You can be healed.” Her simple statement echoing, reverberating throughout the crowd. Everyone within range of her electronically enhanced and broadcast voice feels profound resonance.

Every one of them feels tender, loving presence reaching deeply into their secret, festering wounds, bathing their pain in beautiful soothing light.

Caela, smiling inwardly in joyful communion with the forest daughter entwining her consciousness, responds to each and every pause of wonder. She sends soothing musical visions with her words.

“There is no shame in pain. There is no cure to be found in blame, regardless of accuracy. There are so very many ways to be wounded, deeply injured, horribly scarred. Our natural desire would be to heal, end the siren signal of pain, the suffering of what has been hidden rather than made whole. It is natural for hurting children to offer up their tears and fright and indignation at their wounding to parents who will make them well again. Hiding, making dark secrets of unhealed wounds, is not our natural recourse. We have mislearned, incorporated guilts and shames where openness to nurture was meant to be. Sharing our pain, our stories of wounding, our attempts to regain wholeness, with caring family and friends is meant to make us stronger, individually and together. Go deeply into your greatest, most intractable, pain too intense to touch numbing wound. Listen, intently, to its story. Succor it as you would your dearest child. Then to the next, and the next, until all your despicable woundings are adored offspring of a closely loving family. Share your family tales with the people you see every day. I give you all permission to allow this vulnerability.

You are not about fear or anger or intractability. You are alive, growing, changing, learning. Learn to share who you are, really. Magical synergy can give us all everything we have yearned for, felt missing in our lives, individually and together.

I don’t know when, why, how it began. The social structure meant to house and contain us, safe, snug, happy children growing to become strong, joyful, nurturing families, instead becomes a prison. Structure meant to be loyal friend and servant becomes heartless master, imposing order without thoughtful consciousness, sane flexibility, wise encouragement of playfully creative boisterousness which might lead to inconvenience, mistakes, disorder. We can always pull ourselves together to clean up an inadvertent mess, correct mistakes, make amends, share discoveries. This is gregarious human life’s natural course of education. Rote memorization of rules, that is but an exercise in discipline. It is not learning. We feel a need for rules to create a safe structure; but the rules are but tools, not the project itself. What is our project but full, true, glorious experiences of life for each and every? To be full and real, we know there will be pain and wounding as well as love, useful work, private contemplations, fun, frolic, humor, loss, death, sorrow. What we do not need to include is hopeless despair, empty loneliness, unwarranted guilt or shame or restriction of opportunities for restitution and true forgiveness. It’s not that we need to avoid breakage, but that we all need to learn the arts of repair, reconciliation, growth that heals and enhances us all.

I am here to help you. I offer you the benefit of what I have learned. I am creating a school of healing where you will always be welcome. We will offer you our knowledge of healing techniques, therapy sessions, consultations and training. You may decide for yourself, and redecide at any point, of what offerings you desire to partake. Those who can will be expected to pay for our services in order to keep our operating budget in operation. Those without funds will not be turned away. We expect that what we teach will then be shared, expanding the resource of knowledge, healers, trainers, interactive healing groups. Very simple. Nothing hidden. Though our offerings may only be able to accommodate limited numbers at first, quickly enough we will grow. You, everyone who so chooses, will help to grow us, together. Ultimately, we will all learn from each other. Together we will be able to figure this out, this living thing. We will learn to live with the clarity and wisdom we create for ourselves. We can learn to embrace the bountiful gifts and wisdom of this planet that is our home. We can learn the blessings of interdependency, of give and take based on honor and respect. We can revel in the enlightenment that reveals each of our own self-interests gets better served when we truly, deeply, wisely know that we are all in this together. Can you sacrifice your despair on the altar of such a realization? We can together will a manifestation, of true possibilities. I offer not a vision of idealized perfection; but a readily obtainable viable answer.

Guiding a flow of unblocked healthy energy toward the beauty of balanced fully realized lives – this is a mission I gladly accept. Oh, my beloveds, think clearly about what you have to lose, and gain. Feel the compassion, the challenge, the call. Take what I freely offer out of my own great need for connection. We are family, a living interactive system, able together to achieve so much greater happiness and well-being.

You can heal.”

Thus will it be.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #42

Caela’s Story #42

 

Jorel has been enjoying getting caught up in Caela’s vision as she spins it out for him. He sees the potential of this fine university of healing arts, including the healing to be found through fine and performance expressive arts, touch, movement, meditations, creative play and experiments in communications, even more spiraling out beyond his imagining. A too good to be true fantasy, of course; but he allows himself a momentary luxury of getting caught up in the beauty.

“My dear Healer,” deciding it is well past time to inject reality back into their conversation, Jorel adopts a tone of impatient irony. “I am certain I would be glad to accede to your demands. Just tell me, how am I to spirit your charges away in the face of that?” With an angry flourish, he points to the mob, seemingly just shy of storming the barricade around the building and taking them all by force.

“Have we a deal, then?” Caela responds lightly, as if they’ve not a care beyond their civilized negotiations. “You do your part, Councilor. Leave the rest to me. Watch and learn why I know my plan will succeed for all of us.

But first, one more favor, please. I will appreciate your arranging for electronic amplification of my voice, and for my live simultaneous broadcast over your communications channels to reach everyone tuned in. I know you will find a way to sneak the others out safely while the focus is on me.”

Jorel is aghast. “I’m sure it is quite noble for you to sacrifice yourself to save these children,” he begins, ready to plead. She is extraordinary. Perhaps they can figure out some way to …

“No need to fear for me, Jorel. Just watch. Listen. And do as we have agreed. We are agreed?”

A quality of her voice, her will, commands his full attention. He quickly, authoritatively, arranges for the broadcast and amplification equipment, and transport for both contingents of Lukin’s extended family.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #41

Caela’s Story #41

 

“I believe you have recently closed and taken control of a school to the north and west, far enough beyond the centers of population to afford privacy. There is enough land for a buffering zone, gardens, basic self-sufficiency.”

Unsure where this might be going, Jorel concedes her information. “The Harmony Academy. Several of your people were shareholders in the enterprise. Some as well were prominent faculty. The people had been hearing unsavory rumors about goings on there. Some of your social experiments, group sex, occult ceremonies, dangerous ideas being spread. We arrested several of the major shareholder/instigators. The property is in the hands of the City Council until we auction it off.”

“Yes!” Caela seems almost glowing. “A dangerous idea – but danger can be a challenging doorway to glorious adventure, or the price of a longed for treasure. Sell me this school. I will pay whatever price you ask, over time from my profits. I will start a school to teach our people how to find their precious abilities, along with immediately practical healing techniques.”

Jorel is intrigued, more by her thrilling energy than her words, her proposition. The Chief Councilor in him smells trouble, but it has more the feeling of a reflexive defense than a real threat. It’s not about a financial arrangement. He has no doubt this witch woman will make good. He fears her power. Yet, somehow, it is a good fear, a call to challenge to his self-image as a brave man.

Or was that the witchery? Was she playing on his sympathies, bewitching his mind, dissolving his strong-willed resolve?

“How would this school help with the immediate situation? Are you going to single-handed convert us all? What could you teach us that would be to our advantage? I am sure you could turn a fine profit and pay your way, benefit the city coffers in return for our protection. Though I am also sure we could not guarantee your safety at any price. What are you offering these people?” He gestures grandly toward the ever greater unrest of the ever larger crowd just outside this governmental edifice. “How will you pay them for your life?”

“With theirs, of course.” She laughs, briefly, out of irrepressible mirth. “I am a healer. I have learned long, well and wisely so many methods, so many ways of being ill and injured, how to recover, become a new whole, stronger, better prepared to go forward, healthier, more completely alive. But I have no need to take the whole task upon my self. I can easily train those willing to learn to assist me, more easily at first those who have already developed the sensitivities more natural to we witchfolk. Over time, with longer training, we will be able to expand our pool of potential healers and trainers from graduates of our school, no matter which of our clans they have been born of. Really, it is simple. Together we can make it be. Let us be partners, allies in a wonderful enterprise.

Please, now, arrange for these children waiting for their verdict, and their chaperone, in the next room, to be taken to the school grounds. Make arrangements also for their parents, now held in your prison, to join them there. They can get started putting the place in order for our clientele. Eventually our children can learn together, and from each other, what we need to know to be a successful people together.”

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #40

Caela’s Story #40

 

Her senses and contexts expanded by what she has learned, accepted, assimilated through her interchanges, gifts now shared with the forest, Caela feels the wounds these people carry, incubate, spread. “Here and now.” Her eyes move from the disturbance escalating outside, lock onto Jorel’s. “Those abilities within us that you fear, that you covet, keeping you caught up in the belief that we witchfolk are a superior enemy to be shunned and destroyed, that gift is already yours as well. You can learn to find it within you, to access, develop, use your own innate abilities. You can be set free of this mistaken need for hatred which drains your energies, takes from you what you could be.”

“But how? Even saying you might be right about some latent witch genetics in some of us, that would just be more divisive. Even those of us with the potential for this so-called gift would have no idea how to make use of it. If they did learn, they would just be more of you, no longer to be trusted.” Jorel’s attention, divided between that enthralled to the witch’s spellbinding charisma and the sure threat of the outside mob scene, is not grasping how to reconcile the two.

“Not some, not witchblood. Human blood. Our people came of yours. What we have is but amplified genetically. The right kind of training could build these abilities from potential within all of you as well.”

“If you could get them to take your training, even if what you say were true. They would rather tear you apart then ever look upon you as their human kin. You are not their kin, nor for that matter mine. You are as alien to us in your own way as the natural lifeforms of our adopted home. What do you intend? To simply walk among those angry mobs and break them to your will with a smile?”

Caela smiles broadly. Jorel sneers, not knowing what to make of her, feeling mocked.

“No, I am not mocking you. I do respect your words, your experience, your sincere desire to avoid rampant violence.”

Jorel is mollified. He really does like this witch woman, wishes she could, they could, resolve this mess he knows is partially of his making. But if the instigations of his political maneuverings were all that was in their way they would not have such an intractable problem. He had only manipulated a deeply held antipathy, not brought it into being.
“I am sorry.” He admits his culpability while regretting the futility of his power. He does not understand why she still smiles, obviously, gently, as a collaborator rather than the opposition.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #39

Caela’s Story #39

 

“Your people believe they want us gone. Whatever the reasons, these are palpable intentions. They are inflamed, and need careful tending lest they explode. This would harm them, and you, more than we would feel it in the situations we are already in.” Her voice and manner so sweetly calm. Images merely illustrative, not as inflammatory as what they represent.

This is merely prologue.

Sandwiches and energy drinks are brought in by an aide, for those in the antechamber and the two in the main room. Apparently energy will be needed both for waiting and for negotiations. The aide silently disappears, on to other duties, perhaps speculations.

“Yes, those festering people in the streets, living out their day to days, waiting impatiently for justice, if that is all they think they can get. They don’t know we’re here yet, do they? Under the auspices of their representative in chief, eating sandwiches and leisurely chatting or sitting quietly in an antechamber awaiting the possibility of freedom. Are we your enemies?”

He could feel implicit threat, but softly gloved because this threat could cut both ways. Delicacy in the balance of shifting forces is not a theoretical concept, but obvious sensation. The thorny, twisty problem is clearly delineated.

“If you but think, you know, at this point of our social history our biologies have mixed so that many of our people are not one thing or the other. In the natural course, this will continue. We are not enemies, but kinfolk. We are human beings upon this planet foreign to our origins, but now the only home we know. All of us are aliens together, making this world our home. We are natural allies, tribesmen, sharing our individual wealth of skills and personal resources in common enterprise, as our ancestor colonists meant us to be.”

“That’s all very nice and philosophical.” Jorel has found his voice. “We have an immediate situation to deal with here, as you yourself point out. It certainly isn’t gong to help quell the fears of the masses to tell them you people have infiltrated their very DNA. They won’t know who to trust. That could create widespread panic less controllable than what we have now. What can you tell me, witch, that I can use?”

Outside the window of the Chief Councilor’s chambers, a crowd can be seen slowly gathering, gaining in numbers and loudness, on the street below. They do not appear to be in a mood of celebration. Their voices are angry. Their words indistinct, but their faces look more pinched and resigned then empowered. This is not a crowd expressing healthy anger against injustice, or grievances for which they expect redress. This is the face of a desperate response to long felt helplessness, ill-use, built out of a poverty of trust, foundations crumbling. Caela feels their surging waves of murky emotion. Disgust, fear, raw rage, harsh bitter brittleness, ready to break. What has done this to a people whose legacy was meant to be freedoms and opportunities far beyond what would have been left to them by the human confusion, pollution, insanity their ancestors had thought left behind on Earth?

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #38

Caela’s Story #38

 

The Chief Councilor was not a simple soldier. He was not a follower, but a leader practiced in the ways of power. He was a senior politician, used to tricks, manipulations, maneouverings, his opponents’ and his own. This was not a man easily trifled with or stared down. This was a man who could be persuaded, only if he could be made to clearly see his own advantage. Caela could do that. She could show him in clear imagery and well placed words exactly what he had to gain, and what losses he would no longer need to fear or calculate. Caela was not a politician, had never seen herself as a leader, or a follower. She knew the human mind. She understood the inner workings of will and desire. Power may think itself an irresistible force. When it meets calm acceptance, wrapped in well-reasoned, irrefutable logic, power can become a sheepish child happy to find common ground, if that power is backed by intelligence. 
The Chief Councilor is an intelligent man. He can acknowledge Caela’s wisdom, in his own self-interest. In this case, how fortunate, it is enlightened self-interest, a win-win-win for himself, his constituents, and Caela’s.

Toriv and the children sit in the anteroom while the principles palaver. They do not feel assured of their fate. Fear, though, mingles with hope, a most potent cocktail keeping them still, locked in their long moments of anticipation.

In the Chief Councilor’s chambers, something akin to a miracle seems to him to be taking place. Even before she spoke, this strange, primitively dressed old woman has pulled from him his total attention. He feels he would not be able to turn from her nor tune out one iota of her message even should he be able to form such a desire. So much more than compelling, this is the most immediately real experience he has ever known.

“I am Caela, of the witchfolk.” Her words enter his mind accompanied with rich imagery, a gestalt of intent and comprehension. 
“You do not need to be told of my journey, nor my history. You need to know that together we can come back from this mess between our people. We can all gain from each other, and become the one people we are meant to be.

Someday, after the immediate wounds have healed, scarred over, my people, the exiles, or your people of this city, or both, will make inroads into the land between. Those of the witchfolk here are few and dwindling. They have shown serious concern to improve their numbers through social experiments designed to increase procreation. I know you have noted and were nervous about this. But my point, they are dwindling. You could round them up or let them be. They would all but disappear over time. Yet the time bomb still exists to your South. I tell you this to let you know I come not as an outside agitator nor advocate for others. I have a stake in this outcome. My agenda is open to you. By the time the people I have been a part of reunite with these of the city, the rift needs to have been healed. The reuniting must come as separated kin coming together in celebration.”

Caela’s imagery, more than convincing of her conviction, flows, eloquent. Chief Councilor Jorel (proudly named for his spaceship captain ancestor), finds himself to be fascinated, eagerly awaiting what may come next sparking from her intelligence to his.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #37

Caela’s Story #37

 

Caela and Lukin touch hand into hand, facing each into shining open eyes, hug solemnly. The children feel as secure as any mother’s love could provide. Toriv as well feels that love, allowing himself the relief, the luxury of relinquishing a responsibility he had no idea how to fulfill. None doubted, assured in Caela’s confidence, that no harm would now befall them.

The knock at the door was no shock, no surprise. Neither were the officially uniformed pair of large brutes whose entrance their knocking barely preceded. They were the ones not so much shocked or surprised as amazed and disarmed by an old woman from the other side of the deep woods.

At Caela’s instigation, she, Toriv and the children were escorted to the official vehicle brought for their transport to an interrogation area.
“You mean to take these children, and the man who has harbored them, to someone with more authority than you for their questioning and incarceration, yes?” Caela had quietly, patiently suggested, clearly eyeing the soldiers. They could but nod, confused.

“Take us all to the supreme commander of your government. We have negotiations to begin.” She commanded them as surely as any of those officers they had been trained to obey with alacrity, without question. Also, there was some strange subtly commanding desire they could feel overtaking any objection before it could form in their minds. It did not feel strange at all to do as this unknown woman said. It only felt strange to have any idea to the contrary.

Off they all go to see the Chief Councilor, head of the city’s governmental body. On the way, Caela is able to collaborate with Lukin in forming a link of communication with Merin in his cell at the prison compound. He and the rest of the adult members of Sira’s extended family are being held, their jailors believe incommunicado, out of sight out of mind of those of the city’s populace enraged against them. Unthinking rage, used so easily in political rallying, is not always so easily controlled. None of Sira’s political enemies had ever intended harm to the children. They thought the outrage would die down once the maligned adults had been apprehended, sent into perdition for punishment of their insinuated crimes. Yet the people were calling to extinguish this evil subspecies, as they imagined the witchpeople to be, from their lives, utterly, completely, finally. These people had for so long been unhappy, silently or uproariously building up angers over the miseries they felt visited upon their lives from some unnamed foe. Having found a name, they now must vanquish those of that brand. To their rage, it was all quite simple. Anger can be a potent force for action. Once devolved to impotent rage, it is bereft of the solidity of reason and can only, when released, destroy.

Merin, glad for the distraction maybe even more than the hope of aid, fills Caela in on the pertinent history, the players, the games, the scores and strategies, cultural myths, background conditions, that she had missed while living her life on the other side of the woods. He is promised a detailed history of Caela’s community once the crisis has passed and there is time for the less immediate.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #36

Caela’s Story #36

 

Out of the Woods

 

Under cover of storm, those who might have been about all secured in their dwellings, Caela walks across the fields in a straight line to her destination.

By the time she got to Toriv’s school, the storm was spent. Soggy ground, grey sky, wind and rain now but wistful breeze and mist. A dark wet day for a stranger’s sudden appearance. The main house was abuzz with speculation.

There was already much concern about the troop of children Toriv had mysteriously taken in. Some kin of Merin’s, a dear teacher to many of them, but still unsettling. These are people who spook easily, do not trust strangers. They are not even on easy terms with their neighbors. They have chosen to live this more primitive style of life, as they see it, in order to be left alone, away from prying eyes and possible recrimination.

“That was why we had to. We had to protect ourselves. We couldn’t appear to be dangerous, harboring undesirables, enemies of the state.” They told themselves they had no choice. They needed to protect their own noble cause, the preservation of their kind. Toriv kept to himself at the school, apart from them. His concern was his own son, Kirin, and the children he taught; but now these other children as well. He is not part of their cohesive group, not really. “These children aren’t either, none of our concern. What are they doing here anyway, needing to be fed and who knows for how long put up with? It’s not that we wish them ill. Of course we don’t. They are children. But surely no real harm will come to them. Surely the authorities searching for them have everyone’s best interests at heart. They will just send over a couple of city reps to take the children away, probably to quite appropriate and loving foster care. We will be left alone. No one will have any argument with us.”

But perhaps this stranger has come to spirit the children away. “Perhaps we were too hasty in our action, reporting the presence here of these controversial youngsters. Oh, we don’t know what to think.”

No matter. Ripples of forces in motion find their outlets, moving acts and actors into place. Caela hears the chatter from the house as she walks up to the school door. She feels familiarity from those inside. They have been expecting her, without entirely knowing whom to expect. There are others expected soon, by those in the main house, whom Toriv and the children are happy not to see yet at their door. Never mind. It will all play out very soon. First, introductions must be made, brief summaries of stories exchanged, the creation of a bond already in the forming to be acknowledged.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #35

Caela’s Story 35

 

There is still a distance, more than several days worth of traversing, between here and there. Caela prepares for sleep, for potent dreaming. There is something within her in need of awakening. It feels, yes, just ready to be released, to claim its power. Is this a spirit child of Caela, of the forest mind, ready to be born as Caela’s sacred internal daughter, a part of (not apart from) herself?

“I see the cruelty, the stupidity. A tight fist. Harsh measures. Petty meanness because we dare not weaken, dare not show a chink of kindness, dare not relax. Nowhere that deep relaxation, every cell of life open to receive, to exchange expiration for inspiration. Tight disciplined cognitions, never too alive, never to allow dangerous chinks of doubt, unsettling openings to chaos. Fear is palpable, but more. It is gripping. Addictive. You need more and more to even feel, to not go numb with the senselessness, with the constancy. I feel it all. Where? How? I am moving through a forest. One footfall into the next. I see is in dual visions. I am perceiving far beyond my natural range. My senses, my cognitions, doubling up, increasing in velocity and intensity. The me I have known too slow to keep up falls behind. There is so much more to me. No binding down into mere panoramas of perception. I feel, see, cognate, extend, a greater totality. This I is not a limitation. Consciousness accelerates. Mind is not a boundary. Every sensation is infinite, eternal, completely integrated. Yet, here I am, still conscious of my own being, biography, will. Ecstatically integrated beyond my temporal concerns, yet so very grounded, root to stem, to sky. I am of this ground, of this sky, and of what comes between. I am a woman traversing a forest that has become my kin and my home. I am a multi-cultural consciousness in motion through space and time. I am a story in the telling, spinning outward, revealing my wisdom as it is acquired. I am a harbinger of sanity composed of beauty, of grace, of intricate balance moving dynamically through simple resonance.” Potent dreaming, indeed.

She awoke to a world exactly different. Nothing significant had changed in the time of her dreaming, except for Caela herself. She made all the difference. Seeing, hearing, touching with a different mental construct to decipher the sensory code, she discovered a whole new world.

Lukin’s impressions are still available. She can look; she can feel his pain, as his not hers. She knows her help and healing is needed. She can taste the forest throughout all her senses, molecular communication from self to self. She can also sense all the busy beings, all the selves working out their lives, or not. Pain, pleasure, the ennui of emotional defeat, the exhilaration of new challenge, the fearful raging, exhausted confusion, the newly forming consciousness opening an inner eye, the lurking of an inner smile. It is what it is, malleable, ready for change, so long as no one let’s it know it is changing.

Caela reaches, tentative and sincere. Enjoying the flickering light of subtle conclusions, she feels herself gently calming, a feathery serene presence, in Lukin’s consciousness. He tells his cadre there is help on the way. Strange, but he can know this so surely without knowing how or when, or whom. Strangely, they trust his seemingly occult knowledge. On that not quite conscious level, they too feel touched by the strands, the subtle movements of change, the ripples on the breeze.

Not all prayers are answered. Not all needs are fulfilled. Tragedies often come to pass, unaverted. This is not one of those. Sometimes there is a miracle. Powerful, subtle forces converge. We can feel that electricity playing among our circuits. Not all storms bring destruction. Rain, wind, electrical release, can bring potent healing.

Caela feels a beautiful storm brewing. She stands open to the elements, ready for their guidance in the ways of power.

The forest, proud of its consort, sings into the wind and rain, rejoicing in storm and song. Unnumbered flowers await blooming. What a beautiful day!

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #34

Caela’s Story #34

 

Opening that sharing place in her mind to full sensitivity, Caela feels bathed in totality of loving joy, bliss. All the busy interplay of forest life flutters through her senses. Not so much walking as dancing in that interplay, she partakes of life’s daily rituals. It is a brief, though eternal, idyll.

A human voice not her own, but one now well recognized, falls like thunder into her peaceful reverie in forest time. It is the boy who called her here, his own mind, not the forest’s allegory. He is somehow physically nearer, though still at some distance. Perhaps she has been moving with purpose, closer to his situation. It is not her mind he set out to link to. She is an accidental recipient, along with the intended ones. The story he relays tells her that in the greater scheme this accidental receiver is exactly the person required by that situation. Currents are crossing, lives in the balance.

The boy, Lukin, his story, sifted out from what he relays from his grandfather to the other children, his family. They were more comfortable sharing this information in a manner avoiding the wrong people’s overhearing. Not sure how or why she was let in on these family secrets, Caela delved deeper into Lukin’s memories. She felt no resistance, despite his clear alert cunning in the face of danger. “We both know I am not dangerous. It is understood that I am here as ally.” Caela listened and took in the background of her original calling into the forest by this child caught up in more than he could clearly comprehend. Caela, from her vantage point outside the maelstrom, could apprehend the bigger picture.

The children had been sent, under cover of subterfuge, to a sort of uncle, Toriv, a witchfolk teacher of the young. Their parents were being hunted down malevolently, essentially for thought crime. Guilty of the wrong kind of identity, of hiding their guilt. Conspiracy. Cover-up. Making authorities in control of terrible power feel like fools. Yet, it is the quiet power of these frightened, pitiful few that those in authority fear to the point of demanding extermination. A real mess these kids have been thrust into. Now they have word from Lukin’s grandfather, Merin, with whom he has maintained a mind link, that the adults in question, himself included, have been arrested. No further help can be expected for these forcibly abandoned children from their forcefully incarcerated kin.

The forest is complicit. These children must be aided. While Toriv may be a good man, he is too much an innocent, caught up in too much that he can not understand. His education has been more in ideals than practicalities. He has allowed himself to be sheltered from truly harsh experience. He has been foolish enough to see his disappointments as tragedies. Faced with so much more drastic circumstances and consequences, he is but another frightened child.

Does Lukin, the young leader of his small troop of frightened children, possess and pass on these insights about Toriv? The forest somehow amplifies Lukin’s mind for her. It has a stake in this meeting and outcome. Caela, beloved, healer, has intertwined missions to accept and follow through. This is a time of crisis. A point of stress built up of forces now converging offers unique opportunities. For abiding consciousness, preparing, alert to rumbles and shiftings that foretell action available to outside direction, this is a sacred occasion.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #33

Caela’s Story #33

 

So welcome to be undivided, safely within forest consciousness. Feeling every experiential frame falling into place, blending. Light, airy viscosity, like breathing bliss, in, out, all around, a solid-liquid-ethereal state in which thought, movement, awareness is fluid, unset in form, actively adapting, expecting only what is.

“I am actively adapting. I am whole as solution, dissolving while redefining, in all ways an accumulating summing, of perceptions, cognitions, interweavings.” Revelatory impressions rippling through, Caela walks in a foreground shaped by her background, steps interacting with ground, skin interacting with all the migratory molecules, movement as a whole system, within wider wholes, spiraling cycles, widening Caela’s range of perceptions. “I am; and I expand and am expanded, with every interchange of breath, every synchrony of symbol and response, every crystallized moment merging into the next.”

And the next

“I had to learn, to teach myself carefully, who is this I, my private self, my separate consciousness. I had to keep myself whole and pure, individualized. I needed to be me to hold on to my ability to work with my patients in pain, help their separate individual systems to heal after wounding. Of course I felt deep bonding, relationship, love. I could let go with Singer, fuse with his so familiar, so inextricable beauty. Even so, I knew: this is me, in pieces and their combined integrity. No mistaking others’ cognitions for mine. Here, though, I am integrating with this other, this nonhuman consciousness, communicating in direct sensation on liminal planes of natural awareness. I as myself continues even as we expand through mutuality. Strongly self-identified, I embrace, assimilate, share beyond compassion. It is not so much a separation as a hyper-awareness. All these floating impressions, imparting graceful strands of wisdom, enhancing my tapestry. I praise the artist, consciously in awe of the art flowing through me. My multi-layered friend, I know you understand. Your comprehension is whole, absorption essential, active, taking nothing that is not enhanced and shared. How have I lived so long in your presence and never before known you at all? Singer only knew of you what you both needed to sing, a specified arrangement of love. He shared with me what I was willing to see, shared his music that was of his essence influenced by yours. I was busy, caught up in concerns of what was then here and now. You were not my concern. You lived as eternally, abiding, direct perception, without my conscious thought.” Caela’s human cognitive impressions work though perception’s code, translating into a foreign tongue. Tasting her essence in flicking serpent-like strokes, thus pleasured, the forest releases its love. We know what and who we know. Love exists as grace, or not at all.

“I am proud of being human, woman, tribal representative, individual being on my own. I am proud to know and be known by you, to feel this loving acceptance. I am amazed, awed, deeply gratified by your stories, the grandness of your beauty.” Thus grows a beautiful friendship.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #32

Caela’s Story #32

 

Another mother appeared, ghostly drifting in sudden mist. “Did you grieve for me?” It is Letta’s spirit, a mother’s love Caela has not felt since she was almost too young to remember it’s sweet beauty.

“I grieved for you while you still stood before me in strange imitation of life. I tried so hard to reach you. You would not be reached, would not respond, would not know me.”

Caela felt that grief again, a scarred old wound that could still throb when disinterred, angry, red, infected, long controlled into quietude.

“You know I never meant to leave you. I never meant to betray our bond. As you say, my life ended long before my body died. I never knew it could happen that way. I never knew how to find my way back to you. It wasn’t that I loved her more, no longer needed you. All love, all feeling, was lost from me. I had nothing to give, no way to receive. But, look at you. You give and take in more than anyone I have ever known. I am gifted with this chance to feel the love, pride, pure pleasure, in knowing what you, my precious daughter, have become.”

And she was gone, dissolved into the mist which itself dissolved into a sweet, brightly colored flowery glade. Caela stopped to smell the flowers, inhaling a heady mixture of scent memories. She sat, relaxing her weight against a broad tree trunk, letting her freely flowing tears water the landscape until she drifted off into a different consciousness.

“Why do your people divide? Not just here and there, spatial separations, but even within? Mothers and children separate to expand living. Death separates, but renews – feeding the whole. Yet your whole rebels, rejects connection. No, some connect. But not the whole, not seed to root to stem. Even a healer can still be divided. You have strong presence, strong awareness and integrity of self. You are separate from your kind, also because of your own conscious striving to wholeness of self. How is this? To what purpose? Feel your way along the division, healer. Can you weave it whole? See this spiral dance? Reattach your shadow as a companion of play, and dance so sweetly, so free, complete in every movement, every moment, in living embrace of music vibrating eternally. These are your pictures, your words, imbued with that which is love calling between us.”

As other loves had implanted their brightly precious cuttings through Caela’s being, she now accepted this growing loving friendship with sentience not of her kind, nor of the world her ancestors called home. What is home but where we learn to be and feel alive?

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #31

Caela’s Story #31

 

It was Singer. Really him. If this is a dream, it is a real dream, more real than the dreams of ordinary awake life. He had always loved this natural world. It was part of him; he part of it. Perhaps she was called because of that of Singer which was in her. Now he is here so I can touch him, even if in the way of dreams. Why is one significant touch so powerful, so deeply held in the realm of essential desire? Caela doesn’t question. She drinks in that essence so immediate, so necessary. She dreams so intensely, as if lives were in the balance. When the rain comes, it is warm and gentle enough to meld into her dream.

Here she was, a great-grandmother. Felicity’s oldest, Solia, had had her baby just a few seasons past. Still, her heart was that of a passionate young lover. This forest, so far from human, seemed to understand and take joy in her. She felt welcomed as long wandering kin, with so much to catch up on. As she walked again in the sunshine, she openly shared her memories as the forest, too, shared its stories. They found common nonlinear, nonlingual, imaginal, perceptual language. Was this how it had been in that mythical garden of Earth, the Eden for which this planet had been named by human invaders? Was there a time in the early history of man when he and the Earth had been companiable kin? Could that kind of relationship be formed here, now? Could there be a reconciliation, a healing? What is this primal wound that keeps humankind from wholeness, integration with life? Caela has no reason to leave this forest. She can make a home here. She can make a new kind of life within this friendship she is forging. She misses her old friends, family, as she thinks of them, remembers their presence. Here in this forest she has found a reuniting with spirits of those she had thought lost to death. She found that something most meaningful of them living joyfully within her. She knew when she entered this forest that she was saying good-bye to those she was leaving behind. Something of them too lives in her, carried with her, wherever she finds herself.

Young furry creatures playing, chasing each other, tumbling, acting out ferocity that disarms itself with chittering laughter, reminds Caela of the children she left behind. The ones she raised were now children long ago. Larik has become a fine young man. Though quiet, preferring solitude to society, he enjoys his life tending to his companion animals and plants on his mother, Maea’s small family farm. The other young people living in what has been expanded from Maris’s old homestead, as well as those older folks he has always known as family, love and respect him for exactly who he is. Caela no longer has regrets about Larik, the circumstances and her part in how he was born. Their time together gave them both what they needed to grow strong, to heal, to learn to be more because of who they had been, where that had taken them. Yet, Solia, without those scars, was her own unique wonderfully alive young woman, adored and cherished by all who knew her. She had always been that magical, blessed child, even more so than that enchanting Felicity, her role model mom, had always been. Teren, quietly calm, shiningly creative, strong, magical, loving, had been such a perfect complement to Felicity’s willful insouciance. Solia was their perfect blend. Yeah, yeah, everyone has their faults. That stipulated, faults can often be the most endearing of what our loved ones see in us. Spiteful moments, bouts of vanity or self-pity, the occasional tantrum or thoughtless hurtful remark is easily subsumed into a generally remarkably lovely character. Caela brags to her forest friend, showing snapshots from the family album she carries within.

They are mothers, together sharing the joy and mystery of life.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #30

Caela’s Story #30

 

“Did you grieve?” A grey solitary ghost came forward with open palms, tears dripping down her cheeks, thin, wan, faint, but with intense presence. The forest became a sanctuary, a shrine, a temple of worship and sacrifice. A dark pit slowly manifested, a well for sorrow. Each ghost contributed tears, wrenching sobs, wailing, whatever they could give. Caela felt herself dancing around the pit, drawn irresistibly into the music of ghostly crying. Coming into her notice, she saw her longed for long dead loved ones among the ghosts, crying with her over her loss. Slowly, hypnotized, she moved toward their circle. They embraced her, an ectoplasmic affirmation of love, dispelling sorrow. But what of those other wounded spirits? How could they be helped? Were Caela’s deeply embedded wounds so easily healed; or was this uplifting but part of an ongoing process? If we can be ever moving in the direction of healing, no matter how slowly, Caela was thinking. Silently smiling in the center of the pain, wonderful gifts of lives leaving those behind forever better because of the beauty imparted into who we become. When we can let go of the pain and be the totality of who our interchanges and experiences have created, will that be a new kind of wholeness? Could this tentative resolution be useful to the forest’s spirits?

The well of sorrow metamorphosed into a peaceful pond in which graceful gliding silvery creatures glinted in the sunlight. Caela sat upon a convenient large smooth stony surface enjoying the solitude and warmth.

Yet, how strange, she was not alone. A self-possessed child, bright and lively, mature for his years, sat beside her. His image wavered a bit when she looked more closely. She could hear him speaking, though he appeared to be silent. “What was taken from us is still being taken. How can we reconcile, heal, absorb to grow, when our energy must focus on defense against pernicious, chronic attack? Our enemies have not been dissuaded by stoic resolve nor peaceful co-existence. They want blood sacrifice. They are angry beyond reason, calling forth such emotion in we who feel so poignantly a need to arise, take back what we can.”

This was the voice that had called her into the forest, into this newly forming relationship offering new ways of perceiving. The boy was gone, not waiting for an answer. He had given his message. Their people are still being attacked. The exile solved nothing. Had all the witchfolk been rooted out, wouldn’t others with some articulable difference be set apart as scapegoat, blood sacrifice? Does disregard of indigenous life come from a same core of xenophobic disdain? A cognitive confusion of anger, fear, manifesting desire for mastery, control, superior positioning? Back to walking, these puzzles her companions, ghosts dissipated in the sunlight while Caela’s focus is more inward. Why would xenophobes travel so far? Was there nothing left on Earth for them to claim? Or was it the children of the pioneers, born into a less clear purpose, into a world still not their own? Caela’s eyes were drawn to the only sky she had ever known. Brilliant with colors of the setting sun filtered through atmosphere, shape-shifting clouds showing off in deepening hues. Caela stopped her forward motion, turning her purpose to preparing for the night. For a passing moment she considered that she had no recollection of how many days and nights had passed while she and this ancient forest renewed and deepened their acquaintance. Then, back in the gentle flow of this time, she continued her rituals of preparation.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #29

Caela’s Story #29

 

Resigned sadness permeated Caela’s mind. It was not hers. She was happy, buoyant, enjoying the scents, the sounds, colors, sensory bliss, her own good company. She felt compassion for the sadness, but did not carry its weight. She did not feel resigned. Her blood felt wild within, her mind sharp and questing. Readying to meet any challenge, outmaneuver any obstacle, fully enjoy each next thing, still she listened. Hearing the stories, envisioning that imagery, Caela felt their desperate shadows. As when Larik was small, confused, angry because he did not know how to respond to frustration, Caela felt love. Flowing through her response to angry visions was loving calm, gentle acknowledgement, glad acceptance, open embrace.

Larik always so wanted to be good. He needed constant reassurance. Is that what provides the resilience to face down obstacles to integrity? The deeply cried out for reassurance that, yes you are good and deserve that recognition? So much of the “bad” young people do is naked self-destruction, proving to the world what they have been told: that they are bad, undeserving of respect or real love. Larik was born into horrendous fear, grief, despair. He had no way of knowing these were not his fault until Caela made that clear. It came from what she had learned raising his mother, along with her own daughter. Maea was so much more needy than Felicity. Mirra and Doren didn’t understand her the way Caela could. They were still too caught up in their own childhood dramas, recreating in their adult relationships the conditions to fulfill needs never acknowledged. So complicated, so tragic in large and small ways these misunderstandings, disregardings, minimizing of the importance of respect, consideration, for those we do not fully see.

Caela has been practiced, tried by fire in her own way. Opening her heart to these long festering injured spirits, bespeaking her in their desperation to be heard, feels natural, an outgrowth of who she has always been becoming. The forest and its spirits accept her love. They love her in return, not as a representative of her kind, but as her own unique entity. The seed growing in her since her birth is flowering. Multiple gradations of coloration, complex heady perfume, this flower, this Caela, is as beautiful as they come. Human hag, old, wrinkled, grey, yet what she projects transcends such definitions. Walking, traversing light and shade, consciousness as well moves. First cause, first principle: keep moving.

“Something vital was taken from us. We don’t know how to respond. We are wounded, unwhole. Tell us, healer, how do we reconcile? How do we grow new hearts, neural pathways, create what we need to feel alright?” A common theme so may of the ghosts agreed on. Caela too felt severing losses that had overwhelmed her, wrenched away good lives, those she most depended upon.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #28

Caela’s Story #28

 

They had assembled in ghostly presence, those from early memory who had walked with her through this forest. These spirits had not aged as the bodies that had carried them did over years in the human environment formed in the soft divide of this vast woodland natural to this world. So many of these she had traveled with were gone now. Yet here they appeared to her shifting in guises from that previous time in their lives. Shifting positions, faces, garments, props, several of these dream ghosts bespoke her, as if acting out a morality play, vagabonds in the woods begging for favor. The ground around her shifted as well, quaking, dream sand turning quick, sticky, flimsy, unstable. Yet she was not falling through, but with this slow-motion molten panorama. Voices, figures fashioned of old friends, memories, and memories of what had never manifested past fears and dreams, continued their performances into changing scenes. Too amazed and swept up to notice fear or her own reactions, Caela dreamed unlike any dream she had known before.

“Somebody called me. Was it you?” she asked of each ghostly presence. They all had their stories. These became a song of endless verses. When she awoke with the morning light, Caela was still singing. The feelings evoked by the dream lingered. Still dreaming, she resumed walking, perceiving multi-layered forest imperceptibly interweaving with the many layers Caela had never realized she contained.

Or was it the forest bespeaking her? She felt drawn to shiny succulent fruits when her thirst needed slaking. Their dripping nectar gave not only moisture but renewed energy. When she needed rest, she felt drawn to securely comforting soft vegetation. She found herself frequently accompanied by soft, chittering creatures, droll and endearing, somehow leading her into wordless conversation. Her human ghosts too had their say, quietly, whispering barely discernibly in the shadows. Far from frightening or unwelcome, these gentle, often changing companions amused Caela, engaged her attention, set off trails of reveries. “Tell me.” she whispered in return. Not dreaming, but seeing in a way that accessed unexplored places in her mind, Caela’s rhythmic movement, her very open senses, her willing acceptance of mystery, was rewarded.

“I was a tailor. I measured fabric, repaired treasured garments. I was not a monster. Mostly I was generous and kind. Not always. I still regret yelling so angrily at my little daughter when she scrambled my buttons and clasps in innocent play. I should have made a game of sorting them out together. But they sent us away, tore us from our hard-won through diligent working lives. Not because we may have been at times unkind or foolish, but just because we were.”

Caela felt the memory of tears. “But you found another life.” She wanted to give comfort.

“But it was not the life I wanted, worked for, chose over my years of childhood to give my devotion. I found another life out of necessity. I never found justice for the life taken from me.”

The forest too had life taken from it without its choice. The small clearing her people had taken was not such an issue. Of course over time and human ideas of progress it could become much worse, like the city. When the settlers first arrived, they took over only small areas, as the witchfolk did now. They took only what their several hundreds needed for continued life. They were careful, not knowing what to expect. Now they have claimed ownership of everything within their range of sight, as if by natural order. Perhaps it is the natural order. There they are.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #27

Caela’s Story #27

 

Old man rabbit feels the call. He is not so spry nor sharp of sight as he once was. It is good that he is called; better than the young ones with much life and potential still in them. Old man rabbit is not afraid. More curious than anything, “What is this will that calls me? I am a rabbit, burrowing in the earth, gnawing on roots, nibbling on leaves, ever wary of the predator in all his mighty forms. I am quick and sensitive, enough, while I am lucky, to survive and become old – too old to count on luck everlasting. I have never felt a call such as this, overtaking a will I had not been aware of possessing. What is an old man rabbit to do? Thought is a foreign concept. Action, reaction, that’s what I do. An overwhelming power pulls me closer. Without thought or emotion, I follow the pull. Am I to be eaten by a mighty foe? That is, no doubt, my destiny. I am to be honored by assimilation into the great mystery of life eternal. In this way, prey becomes predator, becomes mulch, falls back into the cycle, becomes the essence of life.”

“Come to me old man rabbit. I call you, with deepest respect, to offer me your lifeforce that I may continue to have the strength necessary for my mission. I enwrap you in a happy, peaceful dream as your life recedes. I consume your remains with reverence, feel the essence of your sacred sacrifice.”

Thus Caela bespoke the creature in their conjoined fields of consciousness, binding it to her will. A special kind of hunter, conjuring the prey into view, into giving itself to her need. A very special power must be tempered with love, compassion, humility. It is well that such power be discovered in a time of liminal contemplation, that it be honored and addressed appropriately. It would not do to be overtaken by fear or bravado, or a desire for self-aggrandizement. All of this Caela understood as she sat there, in what seemed the beginning of the world, in a state of reverence and awe.

She prepared and ate the old rabbit. It took a bit of cooking covered by wet leaves on stones in the fire pit. It was clear to her that what she had gained from this lesson was much more than a full stomach or added strength and vigor. It was clear that her strength and will, her gift, were much stronger, subtler, more powerful than she had dared to imagine when she had lived as part of a bustling community.

It was clear that this knowledge was now being revealed so that she could hone her skills for the adventure ahead. Whatever was to fall across her path to be overcome, this time alone, learning the ways of her spirit, would surely give her the skills and confidence to do what she must.

Replenished, Caela watched the last performances of flame as the fire consumed what wood it had been given. Darkening forest, ebbing, flames, tired body ready to sleep. She found her way back to a nearby sheltered grove noted in her earlier brief exploration. Having improved it for her purpose in rudimentary fashion, Caela lay down upon the soft forest floor and relaxed into dreams.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #26

Caela’s Story #26

 

First, find food. There is water running in the narrowing/widening stream she can hear and smell. Water is water, pure without pollutants. Minerals are minerals. This planet seems to be pretty much of the same kinds as Earth. We have lived here all these years unpoisoned. Caela’s people had dug wells to make use of the water in underground springs. They had devised irrigation for their plants. They had lived all their lives with, more and more as part of, this land, this sky.

After food, find a place to sleep of soft mosses, grasses, loam, dry enough, secured enough from rain and other detriments to sleep. Simple survival, basic building blocks of communication life to life in those simple, basic demands of biology.

Caela stopped walking; sat in the curve of an old gnarled tree. Listening intently, reaching out from a primal place in her mind into the teeming, pulsing life surrounding her, she drew it in with her breath. Very still beyond rhythmic breathing, she sat for a small arc of eternity. Heightened awareness to all sensory data without intrusion of conscious thought, Caela was finding her rhythm, the tune, the music of forest life with which she could improvise, sit in, sing along.

When he was till quite small, Larik had found and brought to her a sharp, jagged rock of clear, hard crystal. Over time she had found it to be a useful tool for digging, cutting, grinding herbs, even focusing sunlight to start tinder burning. She kept it in a pouch tied to the woven belt around her waist (a more recent gift, from Maea now settled into Grandmother Maris’s legacy). Had she not this fortuitous, familiar tool she no doubt would have found what she needed, made plans around what she found, for foraging. No doubt her crystal ally had originated in another part of this forest. Thus Caela amused herself with thoughts on the vagaries of fortune while digging a fire pit, arranging stones, tinder, various widths of fallen branches which she broke down to appropriate size.

Making preparation, not far from the stream. Moving through these purposeful actions as if in meditative ritual, Caela felt herself getting caught up in a quietly graceful dance, each movement blurring into the next. Bright sun star shining into rippling water, trees standing their ground as branches play with breeze, rustling scratching chirping squeaking creatures playing out their destinies, dramas, simple cycles of life. Caela discovering while creating her way in, feeling satisfaction in this expression of her consciousness, carrying water on broad leaves from stream to pit site, becoming hunter-gatherer natural human being.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #25

Caela’s Story #25

 

Into the Woods

 

At first she walked without thought, mind caught up in languageless reverie, body exquisitely attuned to every sound, scent, touch of living plant against her skin. Feet and arms bare to ground and air, though toughened by years of work and exposure, Caela moved into this landscape bare of expectation.

Scurrying, hiding creatures, peering out curiously slowly came to understand that she could be safely ignored. Walking into a rhythm in tune to the forest sounds, she could feel the music. She could feel completely alive, a creature in this natural world without guide, constraint, responsibility or companionship of human kind. Not thought, instantaneous realization of another level of being outside of society, inside the ecology of the forest. There is a restfulness to shedding roles. There is an energy that comes from rhythmic movement, a relaxation from moving in tune to the natural music of the moment. Habituated ways of sensing, of perceiving, of thinking can silently fall away. Without preformed valuations, what is speaks for itself.

A few smaller Earth mammals, originally brought as embryos on the ship, then propagated on farms, had escaped, gone wild, mutated to better fit in to their new world. Earth food stock in seed and embryo form had been sent on the ship in case Earthmen might find the local lifeforms inedible or lacking in needed nutrients. There had been hydroponic gardening on the ship for fresh vegetables, and, perhaps, to keep food growing skills fresh as well. Farming in Eden’s soil had presented no problem for the plants growing from Earth seed or the people and Earth animals eating them. It was even found that grazing Earth animals could find sufficient nutrition in the local flora. Still, suspicious humans preferred their own food stock to foraging.

Caela would need to eat in the forest. She must learn where useful, nonpoisonous to her body, sustenance could be obtained. She needed to learn to speak with the forest, learn its language. This seemed to her, on a level beyond conscious thought, the most obvious next link in the chain from here to there. She remembered Singer’s love of the forest, the music he found and co-created there. After all, it was the same forest, as far as the forest was concerned, a bit further north. She could find Singer’s presence within her, reassuring, loving, telling her to love this forest, his friend. She could also feel chilly ghostly energies, the pain, the fear, the intense emotion of her people’s journey that this forest had never assimilated into its own abiding wisdom. She could feel, sense, become a conduit, student, and awed participant with all of these energies ready to interweave into something she could accept and carry. But not yet; this journey is only beginning.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #24

Caela’s Story #24

 

Lukin and Merin knew what Sira knew. Anxious since his exile to the academy, Lukin has been monitoring his mother’s progress and anxieties. Lukin and Merin had been developing a meeting of minds. Smart, shrewd and meticulous in his knowledge, like his grandfather, Lukin had not the years of idolatry and indulgence to mar the clarity of his vision. Merin, shaken out of his self-obsession by the seriousness of their immediate peril, could still indulge in grand pride for his grandson’s gifts. Merin, for all his grandiosity, had never even considered the kind of distant and multi-leveled mind to mind communication that came so easily to Lukin, developed with the extended cousin network but originating with Lukin’s own natural talent. In times like these, when normal methods of communication are far too open to surveillance, Lukin’s talent was made to order. There’s some kind of saying: When the student is ready, the teacher will come. Perhaps when the times require it, the talent will come.

The Harmonic Academy, being a somewhat wealthy, prestigious facility at this point in its history, had an arrangement with a farm not too far south of the city, to provide fresh produce and such. Part of the agreement involved periodic field trips so that young students might experience the bucolic realities of food production. Fortuitously, such a field trip was scheduled in the not too distant future, just before the end of term school vacation period. Even more fortuitously, Merin had several former students who had formed a conscious experimental community down in farm country.

South of the city, several families had decided to make their own way, thank you, outside of restrictive city laws. They produced the food necessary for all those city folk in return for high profits and an unspoken agreement that they were to be left alone. To the east of the farm lands, outside the arable zone, were the military/police academy and barracks. This school of martial arts and military discipline was the original City Council’s solution for useful deployment of aggressive youthful energies that could not be adequately addressed within the city frame. Once properly disciplined, indoctrinated, these otherwise troublesome youth became excellent enforcers of city civility, or if not tame enough for that, excellent prison guards out east. On occasion farm folk and police cadets would find commonality in raucous celebrations or simple conversation while gaming or otherwise socializing. Mostly, each group kept to itself, that being part of their misfit natures.

Of Merin’s merry band of misfits now farming in the south, one was quite familiar to Lukin. Toriv had been an uncle to him for the years Toriv had been with Jenia. He now apparently ran a school for the kids of his community and others of the farm land who wanted to attend. He had a son a bit older than Kesia called Kirin who lived at the school with him. Merin might not mind-talk over distances, but he had plenty of other sources of information. Those would not be of help now. They needed to make contact with the farm folk and arrange for shelter for seven witch kids about to find exile preferable to the likely alternatives.

Lukin reached into his memory to find what he knew of Toriv’s mind. Reaching into a familiar, inarticulable process in his own mind, Lukin created a conduit. Before long, he was there, feeling Toriv’s presence questioning: “Is someone there?”

Not sure of what level of “voice” he needed to negotiate the distance and unfamiliar with the mind he was sending to, unlike the familial children he was accustomed to, Lukin considered the situation. Anyone who picked up on his message would be by definition of their kind, on their side. Keeping it simple, direct, an opening volley, Lukin called to Toriv: “Help! We need your help. We are of your kind; and we need you.” Soon Lukin felt the response he was seeking. Toriv, sending a clear signal of willing agreement, asked what was needed of him. Thus, the conversation proceeded. The pertinent information was exchanged, along with planning for continued dialogue as the venture should solidify, move forward.

Lukin’s pleas also reached another whose response was much less direct. Like a melody carried from some far off transmitter, Caela felt the call as she stood, mind open to the breeze, at the edge of the forest. It was a call that carried some element of distant past completely caught up in the immediate now. Caela felt something of a destiny calling, perhaps from her future. She walked into the forest because it was the next obvious thing to do.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #23

Caela’s Story #23

 

Kesia, Jenia’s little girl, was growing to be a quietly thoughtful, loving child. Her intense temper and stubborn streak melted at any thought that she might be causing pain. As for Sira’s project, eventually there would be papers to file, fees to pay, a campaign to run. Long before any of that could be of any use, she knew she must take a long time building up information, supporters, a clear plan flexible enough for contingencies. Most importantly, she needed to take the time to build up a reputation for being the kind of strong representative on whom voters could count to promote their interests. She has been thinking, talking about respect, appreciation. “It’s not that people don’t want to make reasonable compromises when they harden into set positions. They want their positions respected. They want voiced and palpable appreciation for what they choose to give.”

Merin and Vika were proud of Sira’s gumption, and did what they could to promote her cause with those among whom they had influence. The whole family felt proud, excited, somehow solemnly touched, each doing what they could. The seven children of this extended family, Lukin, Tela and Kesia in their city home, Noria, Serg, Safa and Tamis at the academy, were developing among themselves their own secret network to share, comfort, inform, bolster each other through the dramas and changes of their seemingly accelerating lives. The grown-ups were busy, did not need to know and possibly forbid or be concerned. It is good that they have their silent support system. It is good that they grow learning clearly, deeply, certainly, who they each are, how they can best collaborate.

It wasn’t that Sira was naive. How could she be with all her worldly experience? To some extent she was sheltered. Always surrounded by loving family, often knowing the joy of making them proud, had left her mental defenses against conscious opposition flimsy at best. She had long known how to get her way so graciously that none would find offense. She was so caught up in her inspiration and ambition to do very good for very many. She knew that there might be obstacles, stubborn loyalties to the status quo, countering ambitions of opponents, mistakes in planning, misunderstandings to watch out for and be made right. She did not, stupidly, plan on the opposition being so mean, so vicious, so entrenched, sneaky, or no holds barred. It was hard on them all.

Kesia was so proud of being a big girl, going to school. She was not prepared for this greater world in which she was not automatically beloved. Due to the trickle down of incomplete information, children thinking they knew of some fault in her family teased Kesia unmercifully. She was used to silly sparing with her extended cousins at home and several miles away. She shot back the most nasty imagery she knew, not realizing the effect she would have on these children. Frightened children told frightened parents who prevailed upon frightened authorities.

Sira was all damage control commander. The kids got dropped off to stay with Merin and Vika at the academy to keep them out of harm’s way. Sira put together a media blitz campaign showing her opponents to be using scare tactics to hide their own serious crimes of corruption. She personally calmed the local parents, children, teachers, using her special charm to move their fears into the realm of hyperbole easily released with some well placed jokes. The kids knew they were being mean, that they did so out of irrational fear, that they overreacted to Kesia’s tantrum out of guilt. They understood it all once Sira explained so warmly and clearly. Perhaps it would all be ok. Sira, finally, knew better. The family would have to come up with a plan to take the kids someplace more anonymous and safe than regally flamboyant Merin’s lair. She could feel rumors already spreading about those weird academy people related to Sira and Reag.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #22

Caela’s Story #22

 

Toriv thought about Jenia, reaching out for a familiar comforting presence. What he felt was icy fear and raw, searing pain that did not originate with him. Well, maybe, in a very tenuous sense of effects and causes, his behaviors were in the mix. She was sad, at a loss for self-comforting, depressed over their loss, over feeling that her life was going nowhere, over not being good enough.

Not fully aware of her surroundings in the immediate here and now in a sometimes unruly neighborhood, she was ill-prepared to protect herself. There were too many of them, too muscularly advantaged. She blasted out fear, rage, warnings of danger, but they were already too angry, keyed up, lost in chaos, to much care about the added pain her mind impinged on theirs. Later they would remember, talk about that weird witchy bitch, add to the rumors. Maybe, had she been trained, or even experienced in broadcasting her energy and imagery, they might have been dissuaded, turned away from prey too difficult for easy pickings. Instead, she had been trained, even pre-birth, in restraint, staying hidden, meek acceptance.

Sira felt her sister’s agonized screaming, found Jenia torn, bleeding, battered, trying to drag herself home. Reag felt Sira’s screaming and came running; they carried Jenia home, tended to her wounds.

When Jenia realized she had conceived a child, despite her family’s very real concerns for her, and her realistic concerns for herself, she knew she wanted the child in her life. It was a clear, fierce bond even before this baby was much more than an idea. Sira, after her initial worry, completely supported her sister. Soon this new child became another layer of their family life.

As the child slowly yet inexorably grew within Jenia, an idea was slowly growing to obsess Sira, teasing her in reverie long before it was consciously formed. She wanted to, believed she could, get elected to the City Council. In a very small way this was tied up in her desire for her people to have more power, a basis for respect that would allow them to be openly who they were. After all of her years of experience in hiding this part of herself from the official world, she didn’t actually believe her efforts would get them there. Much more immediately importantly, she wanted to help to shape a better set of policies, better governance, for all the people she felt she could represent responsibly. She wanted to help empower an active citizenry, to help create a better city with so much less fear and hatred. She wanted to clean out the ugly emotions permeating too many squalid city streets so nobody need have their lives overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness, oppression, helpless rage. Sira had always been the responsible one, smart, strong, brave, caring, reliable. She had early on taken charge of sweet, dreamy Jenia, seeing how hopeless their parents seemed to be. To a large degree these sisters had formed each other, raised each other to be as they had become. They each felt strengthened, encouraged, by the other.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #21

Caela’s Story #21

 

Reag, Sira and crew enjoyed frequent visits with Merin and Vika. Neris too taught at the academy and had her own ménage not far from her parents’ family home and playground of idealists and their ideas. Pera, another former academy student of the group who grew their minds and ideals in Merin’s salon along with Reag and Sira, had moved in with Merin and Vika. Her daughter, Noria, was close to Lukin in age.

In their developing friendship, Lukin and Noria secretly stayed close in mind over distance to share private jokes, consolations, working out together puzzles and curiosities in their lives. It was for them a game and a comfort in a confusing world. No one outside the inner circle knew Noria was in fact Lukin’s aunt, Reag’s half-sister, one result of Merin and Vika’s exploration of polyamory to boost the witchfolk’s possibilities of progeny and future.

Neris and Sebia, lovers since their teen years, not outgrowing their experimental young crush, had taken into their fold another of Reag and Sira’s crowd, Jal, who happily served to father the so far three youngsters of that household. Sebia’s son, Serg was only slightly younger than Noria and Lukin. His half-sisters, Neris’s girls, Safa and Tamis, were one a bit older, one a bit younger, than Tela. Merin was jolly about his pater familias role. Vika, typically, enjoyed the constant high drama and turning it all to farce at the appropriate moments. “The fun never ends while we enjoy the play,” she liked to say. Not the best people to go to for a reality check, they were always happy to argue any proposition, brainstorm up a gale, love and support without reservation, point out the structural flaws of any proposal while offering creative alternatives.

Lesa had been another of the old academy crowd (or would that be young academy crowd, now older?) who had stayed to teach the younger kids coming in. Back in the transitional times, when the confused youngsters who didn’t know what to make of their standard schooling were the prime customers, needing her patient care, Lesa felt fulfilled. She was where she belonged. But where she was was changing. Toriv had been her friend for, well, forever, from their own early academy days. He was somehow now part of Merin’s extended family, and often about visiting the academy. After the miscarriage, he needed consoling. He needed a woman who could give him a child. Lesa needed to be needed. After he left Jenia, Toriv moved in with the Lesa, now the mother of his child to be, and picked up some classes teaching the younger kids at the academy as Lesa did. But the academy was changing. Lesa and Toriv had talked with others of their friends about a community that had been started down in the libertarian farm lands to the south. Looking for something to belong to, a way to make their mark and make a life with meaning, Toriv and Lesa moved south to start a school for children like their own within the still newly forming community of former city misfits.

“You left little sister, but you’re still trying to please great god Merin.” Why had Lesa said this to Toriv? Back in their school days they had called Jenia “little sister.” Reag was Merin’s son, Sira his sidekick. Jenia was Sira’s little sister, along for the ride. Merin was their hero, of course. Yes, he was here in this strange new pioneering way of life because of what he believed Merin was preaching. But she was being ironic, angry, because he did not show the courage of his convictions. He wanted his school, his traditional family. She wanted to join the mainhouse, be part of a brave new world.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #20

Caela’s Story #20

 

Jenia’s tragic miscarriage helped to sever her bond with Toriv, separate their lives. There was no fault, no blame. She turned to her more fortunate sister, by now mother of both a bright, caring, naturally responsible and mature little boy and a younger precious precocious marvelously charming little girl. Jenia enjoyed her niece and nephew, the comfort of her sister and brother-in-law’s home, being family. Not enough, but enough for now, along with her if hectic and often frustrating inherently fulfilling work. It was a deep solace to her, sharing her knowledge and love of learning with the amazing children it was her privilege to teach.

“Not just food and a roof,” Sira was explaining. “People need dignity, respect, a feeling like we matter. We want something to believe in, to belong to, to hold sacred. It’s not enough to have the basic biological necessities. That’s only a small nugget of being alive, like an embryo. Unless that innate potential has its chance to be realized, there’s not much reason to be born at all.” She was working out these ideas, this logical progression, almost a political platform. It felt compelling, this desire to figure out what was wrong and how to right it. All these broken people, day after day, it was her job to help find strength to move forward. She often thought of it as working through the knots binding their potentials. More and more she could see so clearly that this was not a matter of individual failings to thrive, but systemic disease. If she kept working at the equations, cause and effect rationales, common denominators, kinks in the social fabric, perhaps she could discover appropriate treatments to apply. Her children, Lukin and Tela, touchstones and joys that anchored and expanded her life, were so young and vulnerable. Increasingly, every day, a deep and growing part of her demanded a better world for their future, as well as for hers and for everyone she loved.

Love can be such an infinitely gentle and suffering thing. It can demand more than simpler emotions, much more than would make sense from a standpoint of survival. Sira stealthily plants within herself, without her conscious knowledge, a seed of political ambition. For politics at its core and best is the art and science of moving the vectors of social change.

Meanwhile, back at the Harmonic Academy, small stage social evolution moved at a different pace. The school was no longer seen so much as an experimental answer for parents of nontraditional learners. It had become a well-loved learning community for students of expressive and performing arts. As such, a certain amount of social experimentation was expected, and therefore accepted. What a bunch of crazy artists do in their sheltered little school out, away from everyday decent living was just a colorful footnote to real life. Let the creative kids sow their oats and have their petite revolutions of the mind. They’ll get straightened out by real responsibilities soon enough.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #19

Caela’s Story #19

 

Outside of their formal schooling, Sira and Reag spent much time with Merin, and Reag’s mom, Vika, also a teacher at the academy. Vika also wrote and directed plays performed by the students. Others of their students, as well as Reag’s older sister Neris and her friends, were often about taking part in vociferous discussions and impromptu entertainments. Sira’s younger sister, Jenia, soon became a regular there as well. It was not just the kids. Other teachers, even some of the parents, would drop by as schedules permitted. It was good that Merin and Vika had such a large lovely home just beyond the academy grounds in which to enjoy and entertain their many friends.

At home Sira and Jenia were not so merry. Their parents’ fear, and loathing of their subservient lifestyle, permeated the rooms, the walls. The girls were not cruelly treated. They were loved, cherished as the hope of a dearly desired future. It was the here and now, day to day, grinding away at aspirations, at any chance of joyful prosperity or even honorable integrity that made this home a little taste of hell. It was so good for Sira and Jenia that they had their school, their friends, their own growing lives. For some, with only mini-hells to build on, life at best is merely unbearable. Sira and Jenia are built of much more. They have the potential to build a future more suited to living than dreading.

In the due course of time, Sira and Reag’s magnetic friendship blossomed in the strong bath of maturing hormones, into true love. The idealism they imbibed in their academy garden of knowledge matured in Sira, Reag and Jenia into studies leading to caring careers. Reag and Jenia developed their loves of learning and children to find teaching positions in a neighborhood low in hope and ideals. Sira, strident and self-assured, found working with the troubled and disempowered rewarding when her efforts made a significant difference in more empowered and self-defined lives going forward. Reag and Sira found a large rambling home, full of character and charm, near their respective jobs at the high school and community center. They also found themsleves to be expecting parents. They were living an emotional high, giving them incredible energy necessary to maintain the activities underpinning their high emotions.

Jenia and her young man, Toriv, primary teachers, had a cute little apartment nearby. The sisters, as close as ever, entwined lives, shared the excitement of the baby. Jenia and Toriv were hoping to have their own child as well soon. Their love of nurturing young children was a strong bond that had helped to bring them together. They were also concerned, it was a mostly unspoken but growing concern among their people, that their population was dwindling. After the devastating diminishment of the exile, the numbness of being so overwhelmed with emotion and the fearfilled introversion had been their major theme. Time and routines had mellowed that fashion of thought. Perhaps a group identity so maligned that it must remain a secret link shared by a secret few is in no position to demand continuation, survival as a kind. Perhaps assimilation into the accepted norm is the saner, ecologically sounder way to go. Jenia, Toriv, their friends and family, could never be convinced of that.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #18

Caela’s Story #18

 

Harmonic Academy’s philosophy of encouraging a variety of learning styles and peaceful self-expression was a positive nurturing environment for children who might feel pressured by social stigmatization of any kind in their neighborhood lives. With gorgeous rolling grounds, just far enough north of the hub of the city to be out of the way, it was a wonderful world of play in which to grow. The witchfolk children knew not to shine, not to stand out, to get along enticing no comment. They knew which teachers they could trust to help them with academic or personal concerns.

Out in the harsh eastern drylands, no one wanted to build their futures. Land more dust than loam, weeds more yellow bristly rough to the touch, creatures less shy, more mean, stinging angrily at whatever may disturb hard fought for and unforgiving territory. Sira had never been beyond the city to the east. She had been given warning images in her catechisms against careless disclosures. They might not exile someone like Sira if she should be fount out. They well might imprison her in horrible conditions, a much more viscerally palpable threat. It was in the harsh glaring sun of the unproductive east land that prisoners, pariahs from city justice, were sent for penitence.

All societies need prisons, don’t they? Time-out holes to hold the dangerous, or repositories for the politically and socially incorrect are hallmarks of civilization. Aren’t they? Well, not in a community in which a wrongdoer is immediately hit hard with the emotional toll wrought; not where the governing structure is more libertarian than democratic and disputes are honored by settling them through well-argued compromise. It is easier, of course, to settle disputes and prevent the welling up of criminal intentions within small enough social confines so that all parties are mutually well known. Once factions set up against factions, arguments intractably settled into place, disputes become institutionalized, and so do the losers.

Sira’s favorite teacher, Merin, was secretly a historian among her people. He was also a learned historian of their colony planet and of the home world, Earth. He was generally a favorite among the teachers and students for his easy friendly, yet passionately fierce manner, the way he made what might seem difficult concepts so immediate and real, the way he readily listened and deeply appreciated what was said to him. His intense mental thirst had led him to acquire a broad range of knowledge which it was his great joy and privilege to share. That Sira’s best friend, Reag, was Merin’s son only added to her estimation of them both.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #17

Caela’s Story #17

 

On the other side of the forest, beyond the open fields of the less socially enclosed, changes in situations and attitudes moved slowly. Of course they continued the long tradition of slowing enterprise through the perceived requirement that all must move through the viscous medium of money. Psychologically this tradition was beneficial to tamp down escalation of anxiety and panic known to accompany rapid change in a society founded on desires for stability, safety, clear and consistent rules of the road to a successful life. We did not come all this way, brave all this unknown and inconvenience, start from scratch in an alien wilderness, to accept anything less.

Red brick roads.
Centered in a park of verdant glory, a fountain statue of a mythical god of the sea.
Bright colorful street lanterns shine bringing out the patterns of iridescent threads fashioned into clothing, flowing, open, light and merry.
No one hungry except by choice for the experience. None without their cubicle, apartment, palatial estate.
Comedies, tragedies, play out in street and theater. Venders sell their succulent or fanciful wares.
This is a city self-consciously fulfilling the needs and ambitions of a people who strive to be worthy of the style and livelihoods they embrace.
Earnest scholars comment upon every aspect of their cosmopolitan endeavors. Social commentators dumb it all down for easy access. Everybody knows what everybody knows. Everybody knows we all get along a whole lot better if everybody agrees to know only what we should. Not to say we don’t happily indulge in heated debate and individual choice. It’s just that everything has its proper place, that we may all fit securely in our urbane scene.

Sira’s parents had not even been born at the time of the exile. Their parents had been of the fortunate ones too unimportant to be pointed out, too meek and quiet to be concerned about. Really, there were lots of them. Being different only counts if you’re seen as a threat. The mainstream folk are perfectly happy to have lesser empowered dweebs with embarrassing secrets to feel above. You, freaks, don’t be threatening my position, my possessions, my profits, my popularity, and I just might let you go on your miserable way. Is that how it was? How it is? As her parents had been by theirs, Sira was warned, had bitterly sown into her earliest lessons in belief, don’t be noticed. Don’t let anybody know what you can do. This is inner family business, not for outside consumption. We are who we are; but no one else can know.

In fact there were a rather large group of them. A very small percentage of a large number can still be a large number of ones and twos in a small world of who we know, those people we carry in our minds between meetings. Sira’s friends at the academy, the private school they attended, were also of the secret society who could always know each other by reaching mind to mind. There was never need to speak of the secret aloud.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #16

Caela’s Story #16

 

You are always going back into the forest. It helped to form you, as did your father’s seed, your mother’s womb and milk. What forms us, becomes us, we must explore, if only in dreams or strange obsessions, or unnatural silence.

Caela and Larik are quite a pair. Old and young, female and male, hyper-sensitive and numb to sensitivity, working out who they need to become in the cabin once a happy home to Caela, Singer and Felicity (with Maea and friends of the moment in tow). It naturally fell out that they be together. The boy who could not bond, could not fathom what was common to those around him, was bonded to Caela. She alone made sense to him. She had always been a part of who he was. Caela too felt a strong and special connection to this child. She also felt a need to find a way to heal him of the affliction resulting from a wound she also needed to heal within herself. Larik’s mother, Maea, meanwhile, was having difficulties and unpleasant awakenings of her own.

“He acts like I got pregnant on my own. Now it’s all my situation to deal with. As if he had no part in it at all.” Maea is speaking bitterly of Larik’s father, Larn, whom she clearly still adores. He has shown considerably less interest in her since it started to become evident that she would be more of a drain than an energizing inspiration. It’s not that he didn’t care for her; but there are many for whom he feels great fondness. All are subservient to his brightly shining visions, his grand plans and their imperatives. It is not that he is any different from the man she has known him to be, loved him for being, all along. Yet she feels bitterly disillusioned. She has lost her anchoring, her way, her understanding of and belief in who she had thought herself to be. She no longer feels part of the House community. For awhile she tries staying with her parents, spending much of her time with Caela and Larik, attempting to be a family. It is clear that Larik greatly prefers Caela, is shy and confused around Maea. Mirra and Doren have become set in routines to which Maea feels an outsider. She feels their love; but Maea feels awkward when she needs to find a respite of serenity in which to reconnect to herself, discover where her next steps need to lead.

Maea’s grandmother Maris’s place had been left behind, not too far from Jase’s outpost, as building moved further outward. The house is surrounded by plenty of land for their grazing animals, crops for fiber, feed and food for the household (supplemented by trade). It was a large house, built onto over the years to accommodate people and projects. Maris and here older daughters, Arla and Cali, still kept up their busy textile workshop. Cali’s longtime lover, Lilia, does her part as well, including her magnificently intricate and lovely embroidery to their bag of tricks. Lev, who has been living with Maris for decades now, assists with his carpentry, building equipment and furniture for the household and as part of their stock for trade. Always plenty of work for another pair of hands, and Maris informally takes in whoever wants to stay for as long as it all works out for them all. There is plenty of room in which to enjoy solitude, and plenty of companionship, easy-going or intense, depending on what one seeks. Caela comes around frequently with Larik. He likes the more private simple chores as he learns them, working with the animals and plants, away from the main farmlands of the community. His family knows not to pressure him, not to overwhelm him with expectations he has no ability to comprehend. Maea is getting better at dropping her own expectations for how life is meant to be.

Less enthusiastically involved with Larn, though still sympathetic to his vision, Felicity and Teren now live in their cabin near the House with little Solia. Solia, beautiful entertaining, entrancing, cuddly imp, is their perfect muse. They are developing their own project, based on their combined talents. Felicity’s knowledge of healing and Teren’s experience with creative expression have given them ideas about exploring the realm of possible expressive therapies. Working with others who are excited about possibilities of working out personal issues, improving health and attitudes, getting more intimately in touch with their inner muses, they are figuring out together how their theories can best be turned to practice.

A life expands into other lives, energies combining and recombining, creating human ecosystems. Like trees, each living through its own cycles within the cycles of the forest, we create our stories, our lore, our social networks.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #15

Caela’s Story #15

 

Contractions to crowning to birth, and Caela showing off their grandchild to Singer’s tears of overwhelming joy. Felicity, after screaming her head off in amazingly colorful language, and otherwise expending her legendary energy in biological abandon, now is blissfully happy to let her mom and dad extol her virtues. She smiles, though wanly, at Teren, sharing this moment of deep satisfaction. New mother and baby daughter, Solia, trade in their well-earned exhaustion for sleep.

Caela knows that where Felicity has gone, Maea won’t be far behind. She too takes this opportunity to nap between birthings.

Singer, with more emotional high than even he knew possible, makes for the woods to compose appropriately expressive song in collaboration with nature. She is certainly in a receptively collaborative mood, brewing up a storm. Loving the musicality of storm winds, driving rain, crashing thunder, cracking electricity, Singer exults. What a beautiful day!

Maea’s child, though clearly moving toward being born, has moved into an inappropriate position for ease in exit. Though not the norm, this situation is not one with which Caela is unfamiliar. She knows all it will take is intense concentration into this newly forming consciousness to guide the child into position. First casting an aura of calm through Maea to enhance relaxation, she calmly links to the baby, so gently he feels only the relaxed presence of mother love.

Despite the wildly loud storm picking up outside, within the House all is secure.

Deep crack of thunder and accompanying swath of light outside suddenly coincide with crashing painful agony so loud it reverberates throughout, it seems, the world. In an instant lives are shattered as one is lost, killed by the woods he loves.

There is nothing but screaming, blinding pain. Caela can always feel it if she looks there.

Maea, in shock and overload, suddenly freed from the woozy peace of Caela’s ministrations, goes through the motions necessary to complete her separation from newborn Larik. He appears a healthy, if inconsolable, child. All his parts in their right places seem to be functioning as expected. Maea is in no condition to notice what is missing, her mind overtaken with Caela’s silent screaming.

Caela of course knows what is wrong with Larik. She was right there with him when the world exploded. She knows, but such knowledge, all knowledge, has been cordoned off from her consciousness. She is only conscious of great, wet pain, crushing into hard, damp ground, crushing out of breath and life. She is no longer alive. All the places throughout her being that have always been filled with Singer are gone. There is no more screaming.

Larik was silent. Suddenly Maea knew. The bond was absent. That part in her people’s minds capable of sending and receiving immediate perceptions, memories, raw emotion and emotional bonding, had been horribly wounded in Larik by the circumstances of his birth.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #14

Caela’s Story #14

 

In the way of human destinies, it was not more than two seasons before Maea and Felicity were full of the wondrous news that they both were with child. Sharing their happiness with their parents in the superior manner of the young who seem to believe they have invented biology, they also share their courageous trepidation in the throes of new experience. Caela reassures them. This is just another adventure they will have together.

Entering a forest only seems more courageous than entering life because of the illusion of choice. We hear a calling. That compelling cry will not cease without an answer, no matter how we may try to quell or override it. What we answer, how we comport ourself over the journey, that we may choose. That choice may still be illusion, but of the kind extolled as prophetic in dreams.

Maea’s paternal grandmother, Narda the historian, had been part of history herself. She had been one of a small council of negotiators sent to plead the case of what were called the witchfolk to a council of leaders from the city’s government. The city leaders didn’t want bloodshed on their watch. They wanted a peaceful, prosperous reign. It was concluded that the small minority population causing all this excitement by their existence in the city must be banished. No problem. This planet has plenty of land thus far free of humanity. The native creatures have not shown signs against encroachment in all these centuries since men began doing business in this enclave. Send them far enough from here that they become a distant memory, eventually not even that. No need to be cruel. The elderly and infirm can live out their days in their familiar homes. Certainly they can do no harm in the time they have left. But we can’t allow the young and strong to have technological tools that might facilitate a future return or ongoing communication. The contract was made with the understanding that the witchfolk historians would remember and honor it, carry it forward to their historians to come. Being a small, out of favor, minority, they agreed to a contract of exile in return for freedom and life.

Fearful as exile had been to those who lived it, for the younger generations it has become more of an opportunity. They have been born into a society with few overt rules and an appreciation of creative innovation. The basic, primitive material conditions, depending on their own muscles and skills rather than elaborate machinery, makes for immediate appreciation of good ideas.

Larn had good ideas. He was idolized by his peers for his audacity of vision, and ambition. Maea is prouder than proud, higher than the stars, to be carrying their child.

Felicity as well is (surprisingly, more quietly) glowing in that rapture of love and hormones. Felicity and Teren are so sweet together. Caela’s heart pitter-pats to see them. They share a larger room in the House now, with an area they are preparing as a nursery. Family arrangements are flexible and fluid within the House. There are shared nursery and children’s rooms for less unitary families. There is plenty of loving nurturing to go around. As Felicity and Teren become more closely bonded, though, they are talking about perhaps moving into a cabin near the House eventually. Right now they are comfortable where they are, busily involved in the House community projects. There is the theater, and the classes they teach, and the classes and workshops they attend. Of course there are still the farm chores on rotation and the day-to-day hands on with whatever those hands are being asked to do. Felicity and Maea know they can be called to accidents at any time. Then, Teren, like Felicity’s father, Singer, seems to be compelled to irregular and unscheduled calls from the muse.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #13

Caela’s Story #13

 

It is a brightly sunny day. They are outside Caela and Singer’s cabin in impromptu picnic formation. Felicity, of course, moving about dramatically, striking poses, flourishing her arms, then flopping down close to share an intimate giggle. Maea, more languid, lies on her stomach in soft weeds shaded by a large, wide-leafed tree. Caela sits beside her, back leaning comfortably against the living wood. Singer has gone off to play in his merry woodlands, leaving the women to their own conversational recreation. Maea and Felicity live in the House, a large many-roomed multi-purposed well and lovingly made structure for the many and multi-talented men, women and children who created this home for themselves. Of course, there are still many families and individuals who prefer their own small cottages. The main thrust of this still newly self-creating society these days, however, is to an energizingly interactive while securely nurturing group arrangement. Still, Felicity and Maea have discovered living apart from their parents that they enjoy their company as lively, intelligent people, so visit often.

“So, what about your love lives?” Caela pulls them in with an impish grin, knowing that young women (or anyone) like nothing better than to swoon over the virtues of The One, or the one who makes them giddy at the moment. Mirra has joined them, meandering over from her cabin nearby with a delicious beverage she has concocted from fermented fruits and herb teas. Passing around the jug, the younger women regale their mothers with heartfelt romantic glimpses of the gorgeous House-mates they each are developing eyes for. Mirra and Caela, happily ensconced in their decades old romances, vicariously enjoy these youthful fancies.

Mirra’s Doren, Maea’s dad, is her half-brother Singer’s half-brother on his father’s side. The oldest of Jase’s scattered seeds, Doren is a historian, learning their people’s stories from infancy directly from his mother, Narda, Jase’s wife in the before world. That time has become an extension of the history Doren carries, that deep forest of lore we continue to learn from, roots to our scattered lives.

Though closer in age to Mirra’s sister Cali, Maris’s middle daughter, Doren had early been captivated by the younger sister’s easy smile and impish humor. Their young love grew with them into abiding magnetic affection. Maea may gently mock her parents’ shining glow in each others’ presence. She does this partially because she knows she wants this sweet enduring kind of romance for herself.

Maea is a’bubble these days over handsome and dynamic Larn. He is a young man already generally known as a leader, the kind who inspires with his own passion. He has an idea about art, creating space and audience for performing artists to generate performances — a synergistic pursuit. He has been part of the driving force of the House as a place of learning and creative projects. Maea is filled with admiration, enthusiasm, tender adoration, ravishing attraction. The bubbling of her blood, percolation of joyful molecular transforming of her metaphoric heart, is because he has been steadily showing her that she quickens his blood, enhances his days.

Felicity too has got herself an artist. Teren, sweet and shy, in his own world of brilliant visions, creates beauty in color and form, in magical emotional performances, in any and every medium he can find his way into playing with. He has been clearly showing his admiration of the archly dramatic young woman who has joined him in his dreams and playful waking life flirtations.

Singer returns to join his family in lightly dionysian merriment. His musical charms move them into giddy dance. Taking hands to hands, twirling into bumbling graceful laughter, expending any pent up coagulated energies into welcome release, celebrating this beautiful day. In a short while appetite turns them to devising a quick yet sumptuous feast from gardens and larders. Doren returns from teaching his regular history seminar at the House in time to join in.

After the food, the silly repartee, earnest conversations, cleaning up and good-night hugs, all make way to their own beds, their own private places, for the night. Caela and Singer, making love, though every act between them is an act of love, expressing the blessing of their human life celebration, drift lazily together in the afterglow.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #12

Caela’s Story #12

 

Maris’s youngest daughter, Singer’s sister Mirra, was a few years older than Caela. At first this was a big difference. Mirra had quasi-adult status to her younger charges when she was assigned to watch over Caela and Singer, keep them from too much mischief, while the grown-ups worked. Once they were grown, of course, the age difference was negligible. Caela and Mirra became great friends. As it happened, their daughters, Felicity and Maea, were much closer in age than Caela and Mirra. The cousins grew up more like sisters within their close and complicated extended family. They shared secrets, and giggling pranks. They honed their social skills through their squabbles and reconciliations, honed physical and mental skills through fierce competition, learned the consequences of their actions after daring each other into ill-conceived adventures.

The girls were fascinated with learning to find, refine, expand their potential healing abilities as they watched Caela, and experienced directly her skill in encouraging the healing of their broken bones, contusions and wounds. Eventually she merely supervised as they practiced on each other’s active child injuries. Caela was happy to teach them what she could, answer their curious questioning, open her own memories of learning to their eager perusal, let them watch, when convenient and appropriate, as she worked with others’ wounds and illnesses. Thus both girls grew to be healers themselves, as part of the service they could offer in their community.

“We get to be wonderful,” Felicity was remarking.

“We are wonderful!” Maea mirthfully chimes in.

“We are wonderful,” continuing on her train of thought, Felicity ironically marvels: “because we revel in all the pain and suffering no one else wants to be near. Kind of like compost keepers.”

“Though we all get that honorable chore from time to time.” Maea points out. “We get to be especially wonderful because we went through the initiation to learn the (shhhh) secret ways. We can protect ourselves from the pain and give that protection away.”

“Have our calmness, and share it as well?” Felicity remarks as querent.

Caela laughs with them, a deep chuckle at some impossible mystery that binds them. This mystery for them is mundane reality, yet serves to remake reality for those to whom they are seen as special.

Singer too is special, in his own charming way.

“We have a special family,” Caela allows, still chuckling with a merry twinkle. “Witchy we might be called in another time and place.” But that thought brought shudders from some protomemory she has no desire to pursue. Rather than become quietly thoughtful and put a damper on the get together, Caela rallies her true interest in the goings on of Felicity and Maea’s current gossip.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #11

Caela’s Story #11

 

She had been barely more than a toddler, barely walking on her own. It was good that she had sturdy legs, the boundless energy of exuberant childhood. It was good that Lev and Letta had been so loving, so eternally there, in the scant few early years, in their happy life together of her infancy. Sturdy little legs, sturdy little girl losing her world. Not the place, only real as vague impressions now, but the people who were no longer dependably who they had been, that was the strangeness that frightened her. Dreams of angry, panicked ghosts, spooks in the forest, were her childhood nightmares. Singer soothed her. He sang her baby lullabies that turned her dreams into sweet twinkly songs.

Mamma was losing her grip, drowning, bit by bit, detaching from Caela’s mind in her maelstrom of inexorable terror. Daddy was overwhelmed, trying to stay calm enough in all the chaos to be a strong, calming presence for Letta as he felt her obvious disintegrating. Nothing was left for Caela but to concentrate on moving along. There was not room for her to try to make sense of what her short experience had no reference for. In all that insanity, she could feel a bubbling of music calling to her. A child so small, he was carried by his mom and sisters in turn. A natural ebullience so contagious, he was their salvation in the wilderness, keeping the whole family buoyant, unafraid. Somehow, in all this massive confusion, he had found her too. He had projected his song and silly imagery into Caela’s stoically marching mind.

She smiled, even laughed a little. Soon her steps gravitated toward the merry little band led by Singer’s song. Somehow, in this mass of confused, frightened people, he loved her. She knew not why he chose her. She knew she felt loved and blessed in the midst of all the emptiness and barely staved off fear. Something wonderfully good had entered her life. Caela and Singer grew together, minds entwined. They were each other’s miracle, salvation in the darkest hours, taking root and blooming through the years. They taught each other how to be everything that was in them. So many people live long lives without profound connection. Caela and Singer knew to value their miracle with profound enjoyment, a special category of bliss.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #10

Caela’s Story #10

 

When Singer and Caela had played as children, and then as lovers, and then as old loving partners, in the woods, it had not been the forest of the long march. They had played in the beginnings of the great uncleared woods on the other side, further still from the city. This was land their people would slowly move into as they grew to have use for more cleared space, making sure to keep the forest they had marched through in their escape an unmolested barrier against any possible contact with their fellow colonial descendants. The city folks could expand in their sector. Those they had exiled could grow into the land further south of their tiny settlement. The large buffer of forest land must be kept between them. They had agreed, even if under extreme duress. They had no need or desire to return to where they were so clearly unwanted.

Since woodland was cleared as needed for building, farmland, various projects, community activity tended to focus toward their southern edge, further and further from the forest through which they had traveled to this place they were making their home. As was common, Singer and Caela, with the help of family and friends, had built a cabin on land newly cleared at the time. Singer’s father, Jase, had always been a loner. He enjoyed time with his friends; and everyone was his friend. He loved his kids and their mothers, and his lovers who did not bear his young. He loved his solitude, enjoying his anti-social twitches of behavior without concern that he was causing annoyance or inconvenience. He enjoyed being as wild and free as he pleased without suffering pained looks or rebukes from the less unrestrained who sincerely loved him but could not understand how he felt he had to be. They could understand enough to let him be, in all his temperamental glory. He built and rebuilt, expanded and rearranged, his cabin just inside the forest through which they had arrived. This worked out well. He fancied himself and was treated as a kind of sentinel, watching over the last outpost before approaching foreign territory. Because there was an almost legendary feeling of despair associated with that forest, it was left, and Jase with it for the most part, to its own fate. There was no other reason to go there but specifically to visit Jase. Fortunately for all involved, it was easy to check in to make sure he was in a good frame of mind for visiting, even without the electronic communications equipment they had long left far behind. For Jase did enjoy the company of visitors, whom he gladly beckoned to join him in play at whatever project was currently engaging his attention. He was always quick and happy to join in with others’ projects if they should ask his participation. He was loud and jovial at celebrations, pulling his friends into gaily dancing as he encountered them along his galumphing path. He enjoyed the companionship of others and the companionship of himself as long as both were available from which to choose. Singer and Caela as children often enjoyed spending playful hours with Jase, a bigger kid with wonderful, often challenging, ideas for having fun. The tasks involved never seemed like work.

It was Jase’s old cabin, abandoned when he abandoned this life, to which Caela had moved, away from the gaggling crowd. Once she was no longer caught up in her long-practiced daily devotions to family and work, she found she was happy in her own company. Like Jase, she felt better able to stay easily involved with those she cherished while keeping separate time to herself in a contemplative place of her own. The main activity of the community had moved further south into land cleared over the years since Jase’s tenancy. Caela had plenty of room for her own gardens, one for herbs and one for fresh vegetables. She had plenty of room to take a longer view. Not so compulsively active as Jase had been, Caela could arrange her little piece of the world as she chose and quietly grow within it.

In essence our lives consist of a great deal of caring for, looking after what we cherish. Do we know what we cherish by noticing the direction of our gaze?

Dancing in his arms, because where Singer was there was music, eyes shining into shining eyes. Her gaze belonged to Singer. It widened to include Felicity once their daughter expanded their life.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #9

Caela’s Story #9

Caela could call up her memories, flip through them like sequential cards to show a movie of brief scenes synthesized from the years. Felicity appears infant, small child, young woman, active energized multi-faceted adult. Caela is in awe of this miraculous creature, feels honored by her part in this creation. What can be more fulfilling than a child’s hand, safe and trusting within yours, letting go to reach out to a great shining world of living? Reminders of Singer, Maris, Lev, herself in unconscious poses, sets of expression, features of face, form, characteristics of speech, inflections, yet so much more than a summary of parts cut and pasted from doting family. Felicity had a well-decided mind of her own which she was always ready to give a piece of to make a point, or just keep the argument going. She loved to laugh, especially at her own foibles, easily dissolved into tears at a touch of sadness, especially the shared sadness of a friend. She could plant an affectionate kiss, a warm hug, a strong eager to help pair of hands, dance away with merriment in her eyes, enlarge the heart she had opened to snuggle into a place she conjured, sweet and savory, gently unyielding, a force to be reckoned with wielding her enchanting smile.

They were a happy family, blessed by each other.

Of course life never goes smoothly, predictably, moment to moment. That wouldn’t be living, but some kind of preordained hell. We may think, especially in the throes of terrifying chaos, that we want that smooth predictability. We need the thrill of intense emotions. We need the unexpected to shake us into awareness of just who we are, how far we can go, how much we can do. Drama doesn’t negate happiness. If anything, it deepens it, freshens and sweetens. Shared emotion is continually reinforcing bonds. Caela was often, irregularly, called upon to deepen skills in coping with drama. Accidental injuries would require her to find her own calm healing instructions for sharing with the aggrieved suffering injured party. Young Felicity often accompanied her mother, an apprentice healer in the making. It was so normal to her, even from the womb, to be giving this service, refining this skill. It was not like young Caela’s desperate search for the cure that would return her mother’s loving presence to her life. Felicity, like her father, Singer, took naturally to the blessings of her life. Joyful self-determination emanated from her like the invigorating peace of a pristine waterfall.

Singer, Caela, Felicity, good people all, integrated into a community that loved and respected them. This is not a lesser challenge nor tribute than that of warriors against a deadly foe.

When Caela went into the forest to reverse the original great journey of her life, she was alone. It was because she lived alone, closer to the forest mouth than her community’s center of activity, and because of the reason she did so, that she went into that forest journey. Her extraordinary sensitivity had been harnessed and honed to the purpose of healing. There grew to be other quite competent healers, most with the help of her training. The younger crowd, now of age for responsible leadership and self-rule, had a quicker style, somehow both more formal and informal than Caela liked. They were certainly happy for her company, and advice, any aid she gave. She was certainly happy to give what she could, enjoy their companionship, but not all the time. She found she craved a luxury of solitude to listen to the natural sounds, and the lyrics of her own voice. She liked the kind of thinking akin to dreaming that told her old tales mixed with memories and sudden discoveries all weaving into moments of delight without need to share. Thus, tuning her sensitivity away from the people she knew, loved and let go their own way, Caela was able to discern a far away call they never noticed. At first she may have thought it the call of her own spirit to take up a new adventure. Of course, it was that, her spirit in synchrony with other forces of events.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #8

Caela’s Story #8

 

Back at the beginning of her people’s history, Caela’s ancestors were bred according to parameters not interested in reproduction. This genetic weapons project had to be closely controlled. There was no room for rogue breeding. These human weapons were not produced sexually, but technologically. To make sure they were fed chemicals that prevented sexual viability.

Once they became free to live as human beings, they discovered issues with natural methods of achieving parenthood. For many it was difficult or even impossible to conceive. In their captivity both women and men were used to lives of hard work, service, not subject to childcare responsibilities; in freedom they tended toward producing as a community small numbers of children who were cherished by all. Over time these people assimilated with the greater population and took on the more normalized nuclear family patterns. Still a large percentage of these families were career couples without children. Even if a couple were fertile, women who decided they were not ready to take on a pregnancy had the ability to convince the newly forming life to dislodge before any sentience became a possibility. When that embryonic sentience did emerge, the gestating mother found herself suddenly a pair-bond, in total empathy with her developing child.

Caela had assisted with difficult births, calming mother and child as she helped them to separate. It wasn’t until she experienced pregnancy with Felicity that she was able to understand, finally and too late, the answer to her mother Letta’s undoing.

You are Letta. You have known all your life that you have an exceptionally strong sensitivity, even among people for whom hyper-sensitivity to others’ emotions is the norm. You have learned a kind of control, an ability to use reason and rules developed of experience to make of this what had sometimes seemed a curse a gift. You have made a good career for yourself as an admired and respected healer. You have made a good marriage with a man you love and respect who loves and respects you. You have a wonderful, adorable little child and another on the way.

You are forced from your happy secure home into total chaos. You are forced to endure months of hardship when physical hardship is something you had never known. You are afraid; the fetus is terrified. You try to find calm, but instead the terror keeps escalating in perpetual feedback. There is terror all around, within and without. This goes on and on as if it will never change. When it does change, it is a tragedy. The baby dies, despairingly panicked mom trying desperately to protect, give comfort, to that little dying life falls down, down, beyond recall. The march is over. She doesn’t notice. Life is over. There is nothing left of her to return. Some physical form that was once Letta goes through what to her have become arcane motions, when bidden. She swallows food, processes air and nutrients, doesn’t actually sleep because she is no longer actually awake. It’s not that she meant to desert her loving daughter, sever that bond. It’s just that there’s nothing left of her to bond with. There are wounds that never heal, never even have the consciousness to try.

By the time Caela has found this understanding, she is so joyfully in love with the child growing in her womb that the realization she had so long sought comes as mere information, not some holy treasure at the conclusion of a quest.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #7

Caela’s Story #7

 

Caela also found herself spending much time with the historians. The ability to share their stories mind to mind was better than an oral tradition keeping their people’s history alive for those who found such information fascinating or useful. Those who collected and maintained these stories enjoyed nothing better than sharing them with the curious. They were happy to answer young girl Caela’s serious questions as she worked to figure out such issues as her place in the grand scheme, but more urgently how her people had dealt with illness and the mental instabilities of the kind that had taken her mother’s nurturance from her. She found she wanted to know about all manner of her ancestors’ dealings with adversity, the connections and decisions that led to her creation, that she might better understand her talents and developing goals. She didn’t know why it felt so important to her to gain these understandings, only that it was for her a hunger. Singer was not bothered by this particular hunger. He enjoyed the stories she shared with him, but as entertainment more than education.

As Caela’s growing talent for healing became recognized, by herself and others, she became more and more called upon to help out with medical emergencies. Working with those injured by accidents, overtaken by infections, childbirthing, she slowly became familiar with how to respond to panicked, hurting people desperate for reassurance as well as an easing of their pain. Singer she found to be bursting with pride for his Caela’s special abilities so gratefully treasured by their community. She found him always truly happy to be able to help her sort out and deal with her feelings, sympathetic suffering and exhausted sensibilities. He helped her to reach within her own neural system to renew energies outpoured for others. He seemed boundless in energy, love, enthusiasm to share. Thus, she needn’t fear depletion or falling into despair from surfeit of vicarious pain. She could concentrate on the healing, the powerful and precise energy she could freely give. As with any sincere practice, over time it became who she was, how she was perceived by herself and those she knew.

Letta’s physical death, her body finally letting go, while Caela’s body was in the throes of adolescence, was a sad reminder of what had long since been lost. It could not be more to those who had said their good-byes bit by bit over the years when all they could feel from her was emptiness. Caela had never quite given up on trying to reach her mother, who somehow zombie-like managed to go through the physical motions of life without engagement, thought or any but primitive private fear and sadness. Letta had apparently departed from any attempt at salvation, could not be reached, brought back into her life. Bit by bit, Caela became less convinced that she could help. She allowed herself to give over her time and thoughts and energies to more immediately real healing and relationships. Lev too had long since given over his hope to a self-sustaining realization that allowed him to live his life for present projects and future possibilities, not promises lost to the past. They cared for her shell lovingly, devotedly, without demanding what wasn’t left in her to give. When her body too left them, no longer taking breath or circulating blood with heartbeat, they said their final good-byes and gave her shell back to its natural part in the cycle of growth and decay.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #6

Caela’s Story #6

 

Singer loved to explore, or rather wander into serendipity, in the vast woods surrounding the community. There had been a great enterprise of clearing space for shelters and farmland, as well as, as different projects were conceived, commons for whatever needed accommodation. Wood cleared for space was a major resource as well for buildings, furniture, fire fuel, whatever could be fashioned from it. Very little dent was made in the deep, deepening, deeper acres of forest which had long dominated that part of their world. The city from which they had come and its outlying farmlands and open fields had been cleared forest, developed over time and perceived need for open space in which to grow, build, civilize.

The exiled, at the beginnings still of their epic march, upon reaching the outlying farming area thought to exchange the money they carried, as they were leaving a social market system in which it could be of value, for tools, seed, livestock. They understood they would need to start a new farming community far within the forest still to come on their journey, once that land could be attained and cleared. Ready food and food preserved for future readiness on their way to their new home land was also purchased, as well as grazing pack animals, adapted to the local flora, appropriately accoutered to help in carrying the load.

This forest had never evidenced harboring creatures with any interest in preying on man. The local wildlife were mostly small and herbivorous. Those who were carnivores were content with the smaller forest creatures upon which they had always preyed. Even the large farm animals brought with man as frozen embryos to eventually be bred for foodstock (as who could know if indigent species would be nutritive to man) were not part of the dietary plan of indigent carnivores. For the most part, they preferred to lie low, maintain an invisible noninterference compact.

Singer felt in tune with the natural world, the living planet. It gave him a constant flow of music he could feel throughout his body, rhythm, melody, sweet sweeping choruses, in constant improvisation. He loved wandering in the woods, singing along. Caela knew to find him there when he hadn’t already dragged her along proclaiming on beauty and the sensual thrill of it all.

Making love on a bed of wet, slippery leaves, at one with the glistening beat of the rain, she could feel the smile inside her expanding into ecstasy. Singer’s smile, where she felt rooted.

Of course there were the never-ending flow of chores. Everyday was the cooking, cleaning, tending to livestock, cultivating crops, repairing clothing, furnishings, tools. Then there were always adjunct chores to bigger projects, buildings, planting and harvesting, manufacture of what useful items had been designed, even preparations for celebrations fell under the category of chores, work needing to be done.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #5

Caela’s Story #5

 

Lev was a good guy, generally acknowledged. He loved his little almost motherless daughter, Caela. He tragically loved Letta, his strength, his shining beautiful other half, his courage and moral compass. She was gone, worse than dead. Right there so he could touch her, but she wasn’t there, wasn’t her, to be touched.

Maris was. And sometimes others. He loved them, each for the special people they were, the feeling of sharing of intimacy they allowed for him. They weren’t Letta; nobody was, least of all Letta herself.

For young Caela it was all just part of the life around her. She felt loved and protected by Lev, and she felt his sorrow. She felt the uplift of his mood when he and Maris played in the easy jocular way they had come to together. She felt her mother’s terror, the inchoate creature she had become, unable to take part in the lives that continued around her.

So many tragedies, not little to those for whom they are daily deep suffering wounds holding down, holding back, severing hopes and possibilities.

Singer always made her feel lighter, so matter of fact and invested in having fun. Really, isn’t that the way, salving wounds with healthy living joyously engaging? Yet wounds, chunks taken out of all of us from time to time, need, deserve, tending. Learning who she was, what she valued, Caela grew to understand that loving the wounded meant for her an attunement to discovering ways to heal. It’s not about denying the wound, but helping the wounded to find a way back to wholeness. Who she was, influenced by her time, tribe, circumstances, DNA, not some preordained destiny, carried her moment through moment, creating the weave, the fabric she lived, as Maris created beautiful works of woven wearable art. Enjoying the feel, the weave, of such a perfectly fitting radiant garment, Caela’s consciousness dances. Like all art, this dance tells an enthralling story to those with the will to see, to feel resonance.

Let us go dancing into ceremony of joy and tribal cohesion. I see, smell, feel a firepit on a cool evening. Shared sacred time for histories secured to memories, mingling ideas, fears, fantasies, the reassurance of the constancy of love. Why do we think that we need more? Ah, yes, man is built to defy the capacity for satisfaction that we may ever be hurtling forward in our grand endeavors. Drama requires friction. But does not enlightenment require an eternal flame? These are not Caela’s thoughts. They are thoughts that surround her, always within her reach, perhaps awaiting her perusal. They are not conscious thoughts, but of the philosophies that shaped her. Self-evidently, what happened happened. This does not imply destiny. If the story had turned out otherwise, we would simply have told a different story. There was a time she had to traverse a forest. Thoughts from a close surface may manifest as traveling companions when regular companionship is scarce.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #4

Caela’s Story #4

 

There were other people back there/then, bound up in who she was, who she has become. Now she is happy to pick out their voices in this visit to her past, her child mind.

Her memories drifting, focus in on Maris, strong hands, open caring face. “Singer’s mother, but in so many ways a mother to me.” Maris had taught her to sew, a strangely relaxing use of her hands and so practical for keeping garments in repair. She did not have Maris’s talent, nor her daughters’, Singer’s sisters, for the magic of the cloth. She did not seem to have the necessary patience. She did enjoy those times of womanly intimacy among Maris and her girls, sharing reminiscences, studying together in their conversation worlds of ideas and discoveries. The instance that occurred to her now was from when she was of the age still a child but starting to become aware of the intricate charms of romance. Puzzled by what was not evident from Maris’s reminiscing, she had asked:

“Why aren’t you angry, bitterly angry, when you speak of Aron? He betrayed you, deserted you and your children to keep his happy easy life.”

Aron had been Maris’s husband, father of her girls (but not Singer), back in the city, before the troubled times that marked her community’s history. Aron had left Maris rather than be exiled with her. He was not of the marked group except by marriage. The marriage had to go, not him.

“There is no need to annoy myself with anger.” Maris had pointed out. “He is the one who has missed out on this life, caught in the intrigues and unfortunate values we left behind. He is quite angry, ashamed, disappointed with himself, and does not have me to help him sort out his frustrations and confusions. I must admit, looking back, that a good part of why I was attracted to him, why I married him, was that he felt so needy at a time when I was consumed by the need to be needed. Having kids makes that nonoptional, puts it into immediate focus. Aron’s needs were no longer so important to me. Now, I’m not sorry that I loved him. I am sorry for him for giving up on himself, what he could have been if he’d ever really believed he could. When we’re young we take so much on faith in the future to make up for our ignorance.”

That was the kind of thing Maris would say. It all made sense in her clear, deliberate imagery, punctuated by wisps of passionate emotion that Caela had not understood at the time.

What would Singer say? The very young Singer when they were children working out together what must be the meaning, the appropriate attitudes toward life; Singer through all the years until the years that no longer held him. He was always with her still, in a sense by her side. She could feel his strength, unwavering sincerity, light gentleness of being. She could hear him lapsing into song as an integral part of whatever task or frivolity engaged him. He had always been so present in her life, from very early years. They had grown together such that his physical presence though missed was never essential to their bond.

Children together, parents together. Felicity had something of her mother’s gift for healing, though not her intensity. She was more her father’s easy-going side-kick, bright, flirtatious, friendly in that way of caressing openness, that sunny temperament that everybody loves. See her loving her life in the chaotic home she creates and shares with so many busy friends, constant activities, every day a celebration. Singer and Felicity always bubbling over with fun, enticing Caela to let go and enjoy the merriment. Just thinking of them always lightened her heart, widened her smile, brought laughter to her eyes.

He would say: “There is so much beauty, in here, out there, everywhere. Come, enjoy it all with me. Open your senses, feel that everpresent amazement when you take it all in. Feel me experiencing with you, my most precious friend.” Yes, he would be dancing, hugging, exhorting with melody and rhythm, imaging a clownish comedy of musical movement, hyperbolized flowering woods filled with glorious natural delights. She could feel his dancing eyes, sunlight smile, adoration, fused into the Singer center of her mind. Always.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #3

Caela’s Story #3

 

She could feel the presence of the small frightened creatures that hid from her in the woods. It was easy to find one simple mind and hypnotize it with projected imagery. The creatures would respond from a place of which they had no awareness, the way fish are unaware of water or humans are unaware of the chemical stew bubbling out commands through our bodies. Calming the creatures, she felt a sympathetic calm, helping her to learn correspondences between the feelings within her and others. People were more complex, but also more familiar. The problem was more in keeping the separation along with the intimate connection so she could find the way in to help, to heal, without being overwhelmed or trapped in the shared pain. That was part of her problem in trying to find her way into a healing position with Letta. Her mother was too much a part of her, too easy to get lost in the sharing and fall forever to no one’s benefit. So far, at least, the delicate balance escaped her abilities. Again and again she was made aware that she was still a young child with a great deal to learn about, well, everything. Children often feel an urgency to grow up, to become smart and important like the grown-ups who inform their world. She didn’t feel frustrated and impatient so much as willing, willing her self to absorb the knowledge and skill she needed.

But it was not all like that. There was so much more to being a child, including the everpresent possibility of pure wonder, pure joy, great exhausting laughter, strong arms to lean into and feel safe.

It’s not about where we are or what we have. Children don’t start out with expectations, but with simple basic needs and a readiness to make what sense they can of whatever presents itself as their life.

Old Caela watches young Caela at play, from a great distance of time and circumstance. Memories, experiences, that came between separate them. Old Caela recognizes the child and that they share secrets from which she can still learn, take a special kind of comfort, see a shining thread of something she wants to call truth.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #2

Caela’s Story #2

The old woman closed this session with an offer for individual counseling after a break for refreshments and contemplation. As the visitors were led away, she herself turned inward to contemplate those twists and turns in her path that stood out with fond memory.

“Who am I, this particular organization of actions, ideas, experiences?” She thought, again, ready to take in the object lesson of the memories stochastically evoked.

There had not been much time to be a child. Mamma was so sick after unnamed baby sister died, after the long march, the exodus. It was a family image mind to mind of people walking, straggling, bodies unused to such forced exertion moving inexorably. Dejectedly, humbled, humiliated, they travelled mile after mile from their erstwhile homes to land far enough away that the good folks of the city need never think of them again.

That time took its toll on many families. Daddy tried to explain, to answer questions she was too inexperienced in life or language to ask. He tried to calm her, the panicked images she projected soothed by his message of strong, gentle love. Eventually she felt secure in his message that their life would be as they made it in these new circumstances. Mostly he seemed happy to be busy, working with the other able-bodied adults to build sturdy shelters that would, with familiarity over time, become homes. There was so much to do, to make that new life far from what they had known for themselves and the children to come. The few children among them mostly did what they could, helping and learning from their elders as children are meant to. This was not a community of leisure where children could be idle play things to dress up, show off, complain about and cuddle. She never thought to miss that version of childhood. Busily living is not conducive to missing irrelevant alternatives.

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story #1

Something Sacred: Caela’s Story

 

“I am an old woman,” she thought.

The image appeared before her of the wasting away of time, waves upon sand. Then, a parade of dioramas, scenes on a storyboard, acts from her life.

“Very early on, it was like that. A play of images to watch, hear, feel, uncensored, undefined awareness.”

Cross-legged, in softly hued flowing dress, barefoot, straight-backed on the wooden floor, she mesmerized her audience. Strong, simple words and resonate imagery effortlessly sent forth capture them.

“I am who I have always been. I have followed an impeccable path to this time and place. At each juncture the awareness has arisen to guide me through enough of the journey to find what I needed. For the greater part of my life I had no consciousness of this process. Now I see the path before and behind leading inexorably. I happily share whatever is asked of my vision. Come, see with me, as far as you choose to go.”

The children playing in the garden outside of the transparent wall of her classroom showed no sign of interest of concern, involved in their energetic game. Had the visitors not known their story, they could have seemed merely a playful backdrop to the old woman’s magical poetry. Had they not heard the stories, though, none would have travelled to this place to experience the magic.

It was a story that started long ago, almost, as the poets say, in the mists of time. Perhaps a branch of the prototypal story of mankind, the beast who tells histories intermingled with legend, but the woman’s current tale was not taking them back that far.

“I was born in a shining city to a family of honored position in a time of peace and plenty.”

She almost sings. The images show a heavily stylized, idealized sketch of the thriving city. The child she had been smiled from a window of a well-appointed home. In her background were happy, smiling adults, gracefully yet busily attending to their day. They saw a well-loved toddler’s happy memories of a time when all was sunny and calm.

For all children, as they grow, life gets more complicated, less monotonally bright (or dark). By the time this child was big enough to carry herself on sturdy legs, her whole world had tragically changed. Her family was no longer honored, but castigated and cast out, part of a fearful, resentful, barely provisioned exodus of close to two hundred of varying ages and walks of life. The image of so many sad, bedraggled, carrying what they could, learning to succumb to a strange lifestyle of movement, preparing and sharing simple meals in unbroken fields, learning how to travel as nomads in the woods.

Even those who had some knowledge of this history, maybe even knew those who had seen it, been part of that time, had never thought about how it must have been for those unwilling bitter exiles thrust from comfortable, normalized lives. Those were not the memories of the city they had grown up in. Common knowledge was that those exiled were sneaky, dangerous possessors of secret power, unfair advantage, unable to be trusted. It was the goodness, the kindness, of those in charge to exile rather than imprison or (as some few expressed the necessity, to execute), or allow to remain until they died out, only at the lowest level of society, unprivileged to bare young.

Such were the choices offered in the panic of that time. It was kindest to cast them out, require them to travel by foot for months, to keep moving until they were far away from sight, mind, influence. There had been unfortunate incidents. Not murders; murder is a word for destroying one of one’s own. The threat was both palpable and realized, strong enough to send so many from their homes out to the unknown.

Some, if they hadn’t been discovered, braved it out. They pretended to be as those who considered themselves normal. They became very careful to exactly fit in, not expose any cause for suspicion. Not an ideal way to live, but a way to stay alive without losing property or position.

It is a newly dawning revelation to these visitors. This horrible, evil talent that forced the exile and brutal deaths of these reviled people was the wonderful magic they experienced now. It was the same gift given by this wise old woman whom they had travelled to see.

It occurred to some to ask, and one did: “Do you hate us for what was done to you by our elders back then?”

“Look into me, child,” she responded, opening freely to those who would see. “There is no room or cause to harbor hatred for a tragic misunderstanding. It did lead me and my people to becoming who we are. Hatred is a shield of fear. Shielding fear keeps it from effective expression that will allow it to safely dissipate. Fear has something important to tell us. We are better off to listen intently. It will go on its own once we work out useful solutions to what fear has warned us of. If we don’t learn that, fear can become a brutal master, when all it wanted was to be a humble servant.”

The graphic story emerging with the words evoked a terrible vortex of pointless destruction, a cowering monster reduced to shameful tears, sputtering its flame.

Something Sacred (Caela’s Story)

Something Sacred – Prologue

In the time of antiquity, back before our written records, we are told that humans and gods freely played together and created a beautiful city in the heart of an exquisite landscape where all were free yet happy to cooperate so all might share a common bounty and all might know the joy of engaging each in their true work, respecting the best in all. It was a peaceful time, a happy time, with energy displayed in healthful work and joyous art. Every day was celebrated and every contribution honored.

But then the gods, who are immortal and powerful, grew away from their human playmates. The games they played became more sophisticated, less easily joined in. They developed concerns with a longer view and devised complicated scenarios, complex barriers which humans could rarely overcome to play in the fields of eternity. We became confused and frightened. Some of us would develop feelings of superiority believing we were the arbiters of rights and wrongs, that we deserved and needed power over others, to make our dictates law and punish those who did not properly honor and obey. Others developed feelings of inferiority and great fear of insecurity. We started to believe that there could not possibly be enough bounty for all, that we must hoard and fight off those who might take what we thought of as ours. Instead of happily joining our efforts to assure common good, to find equitable and practical solutions to problems, to enjoy and honor our individual abilities, we broke off into groups that underscored and denigrated our differences. We expended our energy inventing weapons, teaching and learning war. We praised our warriors, poisoned our lands and our minds with the detritus of hatred, passed on violence, discord, deep pain within our families and against our neighbors. We despoiled the gifts the gods had freely given us, repurposing them as game pieces against each other, even against our own best interests, even against the peace-loving, hopeful and ecstatic parts of ourselves. We dishonored the gods and all they had given us. We dishonored our own beautiful potential.

The gods were horrified and disgusted when they saw what we had done. Being ancient and wise, they did understand that they had a part in the blame. They tried to tell us where we had gone wrong, tried to enter our hearts and minds to lead us back to our true paths. But humans, for the most part, had gotten too caught up in our own dramas, feuds, thirst for vengeance or wealth, power, fame. The newer generations had been raised with these values rather than valuing themselves and their collective talents. They had never developed an interest in working and growing together at a high level of prosperity for all. They had learned, instead, to be bitter and angry and depressed, impatient for wealth that even when attained never provided the peace they unknowingly yearned for.

The gods held council and discussed the tragedy that the humans had made of their lives. Taking the long, immortal, view, they decided upon an experimental course of action. They would plant songs, ideas, legends, methods of discovering sacred knowledge. They would at whim walk among us and whisper or sing, act out, prophesize for any who were strong enough or weak enough or somehow developed the space in their minds to understand. They would plant the seeds of salvation in a variety of environments, then watch to see if any sprouts took hold. In this way they hoped to slowly encourage us to find our way back to our true nature as vibrant beings, to help us relearn, become the glorious people we were meant to be.

That is the story we tell. But, of course, we humans had become entrenched in our unhappy ways. A promise of something better was not sufficient motivation to change. The gods devised crises of various kinds and durations to shake up our misaligned order and give us new configurations to deal with, in the hope that in being forced to learn new ways we would eventually turn to the abandoned way that had given us so much. And, despite their horror, disgust and sadness, the gods found joy in their efforts made into games for their own amusement. Some of these games, their stories, are passed down as legends for celebrations or teaching, or told by our storytellers as spontaneous inspiration.

I am an old woman. I have lived a blessed life, with so many wonderful and terrible memories to keep me company. I have gone on a marvelous journey and won the greatest prize. Well, actually, there were several journeys. There were long, dangerous roads and dramatic adventures. There was love; there was loss. There was dedication to an underlying truth that carried me along even when all hope and reason strayed. I have grown and learned from experience, into a deeper wisdom, a luminous joy that is all I could ever be, till it flows out from me into all I perceive and into the hearts of my people to go on into those who will come.

Diaspora

I was born in the City, the only city on my world. It is a huge and sprawling center of culture, seat of government, depository of knowledge. There are marvelous tall buildings, street and underground transportation systems, concourses of commerce, magnificent museums, libraries, concert halls, theaters. There are public ceremonies of much pomp and circumstance. There are great universities, industrial complexes, sports arenas, and all manner of commercial enterprises. It is an efficiently run city where public servants take pride in their work and everything is kept clean and gleaming. I only have vague memories, but this is what I have been told, and have seen in elders’ memories. The military trains in camps on the outskirts of the City, not too far from the prison camps, from which many of the troops are recruited. Nothing is left to chance; little is wasted. There is freedom for the citizens in their private lives, but only insofar as they obey the public rules.

My name is Caela, and I am of the witchfolk. That is what we were called on our home world, Earth, centuries ago. Where shall I begin? There was that ancient era when a craze for genetic solutions came with advances in genetic research, as the histories tell us. Fashionable parents of that age reveled in their ability to choose special gifts for their offspring through the miracle of gene manipulation. It was thought by someone with the clout for the research dollars that there was a crying need in their society for people with enhanced empathy, minds that could probe the minds of others – maybe as clinicians, maybe as spies, maybe as weapons. We were used for all of those purposes, and not to our benefit. We became vilified, feared and hated by those who did not share our gift. Naturally, we tended to band together, to marry and live within communities of our own, of those who neither feared nor revered us but simply knew us as we were, as people much like themselves. Bonding together in enclaves within which we felt accepted and protected, we left the others to develop their fears and resentments. We had natural advantages in myriad social situations, able to know what others felt, to enhance those feelings or divert them to our purpose. Of course, some of us had used those advantages unscrupulously – although that very empathy in some ways puts a damper on the advantages of manipulation over time. Thus, there was actually much less abuse of our abilities than was expected by the general population.

Over time many of us learned to keep our abilities to ourselves and blend in more with the mainstream. By the time of the big wave of colonization, most of us were quietly assimilated, not particularly noteworthy. Still, many of us hoped for less constrained lives on a brand new world. Those who came to this planet, Eden, so named because of its bountiful natural resources, did so as common recruits like anyone else, looking for the possibility of paradise. Genetic engineering technologies did not ultimately solve Earth’s problems of over-population, pollution, depletion of resources. The solution came from the science of space travel, the brave new adventure of colonization. As star travel and planetary exploration permeated the media and popular imagination, the idea of leaving the troubles of Earth behind to start over on other worlds became a common dream. People from all walks of life became enamored of their own fantasies of what they could become given such a new start. People from all walks of life ultimately made the journeys, took the chance, found themselves vastly far from home, and, perforce, created new homes which they were privileged to build from scratch, in league with the others who had made the journey with them.

Between Worlds #12

Nothing is promised. A great deal is possible.

Singer’s sisters, Mirra, Cali and Arla, were cheerful, responsible, warm and witty like their mom. Even in appearance they resembled her and each other, though they had not yet achieved her manner of calm wisdom. Though they might appear less vivid younger copies of Maris, each had her own distinct flair and essence. They were all wizards of cloth, weaving, sewing, designing clothing and other useful textile wares. They had their own cottage industry, producing for their own use and trade as well as teaching others who wanted to create their own clothing and furnishings.

Though no one had thought the need to come up with “money,” there was plenty of rudimentary trade. For big projects, work and outcome were shared. It was expected that everyone help out as needed. Beyond that, individual enterprise took over. Tools were shared on rough timetables open to disruption by urgencies. Adaptations often had to be invented suitable to available resources, repurposing, devising tools and processes as necessary. Of course there were angers, resentments, frustrations, but this is where the skills of empaths excel. There are those naturally soothing presences who help to keep good feelings flowing. There is not the kind of awkward or tragic miscommunications to slow useful negotiation. It helps that there’s plenty of cohesive goodwill, shared sorrows and celebrations, respect grown from working together, playing together, sharing humor, philosophy, and everyday concerns. Recipients of an interconnected web are intimately in tune to enlightened self-interest, true vested interest in success for all.

Between Worlds #11

Caela found she could heal in another way. She knew without thought that she had profound feelings of empathy, profound insights, much more than was ordinary for the extraordinary people of whom she had been born and nurtured. She had from earliest times learned without knowing she was learning to encapsulate the feelings driving into her from all around that she might work through and understand them without being overwhelmed. It had always been like a special extra mother within her teaching and protecting, perhaps an extra gift from Letta who had not been able to learn such necessary protection well enough for herself.

Though little girl Caela had tried and tried to use this gift of separating, working through feelings to move in with care and incisive healing, to help her beloved mother, Letta, cope with the demons that crippled her mind, she had not the power to effect that cure. Letta had not learned to protect herself. She had not felt the need in her protected environment where her naturally strong healing abilities had given her a fine, well-respected career. She had never expected a need to prepare for her denouncement or the escalating troubled times eventuating in exile from the life she depended upon for emotional anchor.

Though Caela’s efforts to heal that breach continued to be heartbreakingly unsuccessful, the failure did not deter nor break her. It was like layers of strength being built by practice and reflection. She found, bit by bit, that she could look into the core of dis-ease and injury to encourage and accelerate natural healing processes of those who suffered. She was also drawn to learn about healing plants, meditative practices, techniques of touch and movement. Not all callings are so strong. Perhaps she had been learning from Letta, even from the womb, to take this offered gift farther, to develop the instinct for self-preservation needed to make it a blessing rather than a curse, even should her world fall apart.

Lev had been a writer in the city, a journalist of wry social and political commentary published regularly in the most popular news magazine. In this new life, he was finding artistic and physical outlet in learning carpentry – a craft he had never been exposed to in his former life. It amused and amazed him how much he enjoyed working with his hands to miraculously create a useful product. He had been quite appreciative of Maris’s skill in weaving beautiful fabric of the fur and plant fibers of their now farming community. He continued to appreciate her creative skill, even more so, as he learned his own craft. Former city business types were having to relearn how to be alive, become people they had never known they were, processing radical change, a broken linear norm revealing to them that it was only a convenient fantasy. For Caela it was all perfectly natural, the colorful adventure of life.

Between Worlds #10

Jase was Singer’s father, not Aron. She had heard Maris talking with her father, Lev. Aron was Maris’s husband, father of her three daughters, though apparently not of her youngest, her son, Singer. When the troubles started getting serious back in the city, Aron had not felt his wife and children worth the sacrifices of standing by them. He was not an empath, had only married one. He had become resentful over the course of that marriage, feeling that Maris was better than he was in every way that counted. She was, but not because of some special talent. She was naturally practical and loving. He was naturally neither. He had been young and charming, confidentally ambitious but privately shy. Over time he had become uncomfortably aware that this wonderful prize of a wife he had won neither made him a better man nor failed to see his flaws. Be careful what you wish for. Keep your eye on all the clauses and subparagraphs. Relationships won’t heal us, only give us comfort and anchoring when we do the work to heal ourselves.

If Jase were Singer’s dad, not Aron, Singer was full empath, unlike his sisters. Jase was a sweet, good-humored drifter of a guy, strong and smart, always ready to help out, but mostly a loner. He and Maris had been close friends since childhood, back in the city. Neither were the kind to deny their feelings, or broadcast them. Maris and Lev had become good friends since the relocation. She was at the moment ranting a bit, reminiscing a bit, in the company of a friend she found easy to talk with. He was happy to listen. He certainly had his share of venting, ranting, sharing memories secondhand. His wife, Letta, Caela’s mom, had become unreachably ill, unable to participate in conversation, to show evidence of reciprocating his love which he now sometimes felt bordered on tragic.

Like children everywhere, Caela picked up bits and pieces of gossip and common knowledge listening to adult conversation as it drifted through her day. She had never met Aron, but did feel the distinct negative tinge given to memories of him by those who had known him. Everyone loved Jase. She supposed Singer had gotten the better of the bargain without consciously thinking about the matter at all. She loved Singer and Maris, similarly though differently from the way she loved Lev and Letta. They were all family, intertwined lives.

Though she was a few years older than Singer, they were left to play together while the grown-ups worked, often looked after by one or more of Singer’s sisters. There weren’t a lot of children in this new community. Everyone did what they could to make sure all were cared for, all the necessary work got done and done well. Everyone taught what they knew, shared tools and techniques, learned what they needed to. Separately and together they figured out how to make a life that worked. Singer and Caela took on what chores they could as time went on. Still, there was plenty of time for playing, just being, figuring out who you are and how that’s done. Friends are good mirrors, sounding boards, brain-storming aids, quiet companions.

True to Maris’s intuitive naming, Singer loved to sing and was incredibly talented at contriving a wide range of soundings from his voice and various musical instruments he was finding ways to fashion from what came to hand. He could keep those around him singing and dancing as well, lightening chores, enlivening leisure. Certainly he was quite a popular figure, central to celebrations. He took this popularity in his gently smiling way, always generous, always bubbling with fun. Music is magic. It excites, inspires, and heals.

Between Worlds #9

Young Caela was able to adjust and thrive because she was tuned in to herself, to her own perceptions and power. Her parents, Lev and Letta, they exist within her, but so does all that psychic energy moving through her. To make use and sense of that, she needs integrate experiential impressions, integrating a trusted sense of self.

How moderate can temperatures be? Do we have the ranges we do have because of some specificity of size or shape or orbit and distance form our Sun? I’m not picturing Winter on Eden, despite its frigid everpresent reality for me here and now on Earth. Fall I can see, the harvest season. But why not several harvests like in the sunny warm states? Out in the farm areas beyond the city’s structures, they have greenhouses, even hydroponic technologies from the ship. Even if the planet has a variety of climate zones, they may have settled in an area less likely to freeze. Would it be sweltering in the Summer in the city? They would know how to build for minimizing that, design to encourage cooling winds, maybe have air conditioning. They would plant trees according to ecologically thought out plans for shade and water retention and air cleaning. The cultural norms would include a slowness of outdoor perambulations, light-weaved clothing. I see bright colors, even in the enclosed atmosphere of the built-up city. There is an appreciation for art, culture, color, design. It’s not that they don’t enjoy diversity. They are worried, frightened, that they will be left behind, out-classed, unable to successfully excel in competition for what they think to be scarce resources, even such nonmaterial resources as public appreciation and prestige, as well as whatever passes for wealth in their culture. They have closed themselves in to this city. Those of true valor and adventure have gone off exploring. Those who can’t abide fences and rules have been sent to the outer reaches to work out their destinies as farm labor or defense trainees or bucolic eccentrics.

People jammed together with their secret inadequacies and fears can build up a psychological squalor. People who present as clean, upright, hard-working citizens can be harboring petty and grand mal demons who rule over their potential better natures and insist on penance without respite, respect or concern. The empaths are not immune from demons, though are to some extent insulated from personal devolution by their mutuality of feelings, the ability to if they so choose never be alone. They will be able to take advantage of distance from the closed in city to develop a culture of their own design. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The dialectic of socially evolving mankind prevails. This is not a story about man against nature or man as part of nature, but about human nature; but we are not alone in the Universe. There is no clear division of background and foreground. The picture includes waves and landscape and sky and all the rest, as far, as near, as detailed, as the artist bothers to render; as the eye bothers to see. All I can do is look deeply into the crystalline vision, and respect, describe, reflect my impressions, my perceptions, my emotions and their creations.

Between Worlds #8

I understand, compassionately, that too much choice is overwhelming to an individual trying to navigate a reasonably safe, reassuringly livable, life. That should not excuse or glorify obstruction against less usual ways, more ambitious or far-seeing strategies. Caela does not feel the pain or outrage of the outcast. She is happily enmeshed in her community, comfortably acknowledged. The solitude and self-directing she has carved out to accommodate her gifts, honed into skill for her best contribution, are well respected. If she wants to leave the group to follow her own dreams and visions, that is her choice and right.

The newer generations of her people no longer keep an outcast identity. They are woven into, continuing with their own threads, the rich fabric of a community that creates their experiences and goals. Her daughter, as an integral member of this younger, self-integrating generation, lives in a large home of like-minded self-identified professionals and their children, sharing familial chores, responsibilities, celebration, physical and emotional care. Caela is happy on the outskirts of the community in her small, cozy cabin. She visits and enjoys visitors, but spends much of her time on her own.

I am learning who these people are, slowly gaining their acquaintance. They are more real, immediate, than the world outside my self-absorption has become for me. I ask questions about how they live, what their world gives them. My grateful mind forms moving pictures, so beautiful, engaging. The scenes, the backgrounds, change to meet my changing expectations. It doesn’t matter if I ultimately put it all together in cogent words. It is the world I need now to be formulating, a soothing, enlightening meditation.

I keep getting caught up in the details. Lovely, soothing details, like doing sums in grade school. Weather. What would the differences in planetary physics do? And even if I am no scientist, how have they developed economic and cultural norms? How have the planet’s – let’s call it Eden – natural lifeforms (because if it is capable of sustaining life it probably already does) dealt with the invasion of life from Earth? I surmise they would have brought embryonic and seed life on the spaceship to continue farming once land was reached. Would there have been combinations, mutations, some species devouring others to become dominant in that ecological niche?

I recall attempting some preliminary research about space colonizing, some proto-musings about this race of genetically engineered empaths that seems to have morphed in my subconscious into Caela’s witchfolk. At that time I got too caught up in immediate living, abandoning forays into an imagined far future.

If I get too caught up in these endless details I could ensnare myself and be unable to continue. I can let them percolate, let the questions come to a head and seep through my imagination. Looking deeply into my metaphoric crystal, I can watch these people, see their details play out, feel out what feels right for these far off colonists and their descendants. In the mysteries of time and space and fantasy, I can watch these people I command into existence assemble into their customary daily lives for my inspection. See the scenes. Note the salient points. Feel the poignant stories. Those devilish details don’t daunt me. They will fill out as they will, as I will, once the grounds percolate and become more clarified, more real than reel (omg, what mixing of metaphors, what a mish-mash of maudlin strings). Willingly giving myself over to this fantasy, somehow this is who I am, at least for now. It feels right and safe. It’s like I want to be scared, but can’t feel it. But what is there to be scared of? I am protected by the great power of prepaid bills and social anonymity, the strongly purring cat beside me, the blessings of alcoholic bliss, and a total lack of real world responsibilities. Whoever the Hell I am, must be some mumbo-jumbo mystical power there. Caela would know about that kind of power. I see the beginning of a beautiful friendship, despite the boundary difficulties between worlds. As long as I’ve only myself to answer to, reality can be whatever I agree to.

Between Worlds #7

Tom has left several concerned messages: why don’t I respond? Isn’t he my magical companion?

My wine glass needs refilling. The curtains are drawn against impending dawn.

I thought of calling Danny, but there’s too much to say. I’m not ready to say any of it. Thank Goddess I have this time, this place, to dissolve and, hopefully, resurrect. What do people do when their reality fragments and they have no realistic choice but to keep moving forward, doing the day job, paying the bills, supporting the family, acting responsibly? Guess that’s why pharmaceutical companies make the big bucks on anti-depressants. Then there are those who crack and become homicidal suicides. It’s always the quiet ones, so they say. I can understand that. When I was more actively alive, I was so much noisier. Not that I’m about to be outwardly dangerous, or actually suicidal. I’m just going on a little sabbatical within a dreamscape.

I can see her now in her teen years. She is full of passion and purpose. She is in love with the lover of her life, waiting for him to pursue her. She is happy and reasonable and ready to take on the world with no idea what awaits her. Transitional times.

Caela wouldn’t have the astrology as we Earthlings developed it, being under different skies. Still, I see her as a Scorpio. She is a healer by going within and sharing deep content. She has power of her own, independent yet entwined in her relationships, deeply intuitive, a person of total integrity. Talk to me, Caela the naturally wise, of the integration of my soul. I feel split into ethereal bubbles wafting into unknown space. I will concentrate, become as one with my imagined healer. I know you will carry me through into my best destiny. I will learn and emulate you, my very personal hero. We will become a legend in my mind to carry me forward.

I am moving forward, though not at pace with the outside world. I am on my own time and space with my own reasons. I am on my educational sabbatical, exploring an other world, other ways of being human, to discover who I am, separate from everything I’ve known.

I get to overdramatize in my own private theater. And I harm none, I get to do what I will, imagine what I will, will what I imagine to hold me with divine mothering arms, rock me with lullabies and fairytales. Twilight’s future is the heroine’s journey.

Between Worlds #6

I feel a kinship to Caela. It’s not just because she is a creature of my mind, woven from bright bits of thought, feelings, fantasy. It’s like she can see inside me and understand as I look into her, learn her. She does not look like me. I envision her as slightly tall, strong frame, dark hair and eyes, swarthy skin, quiet, pensive, yet with a strong sense of somewhat ironic humor, a merry open laugh, sweet loving smile, mischievous grin, dancing countenance. She is intelligent, not erudite. She is compassionate, loving, kind with that strong solid kindness that tolerates fools with enduring good humor, never maudlin, never haughty, but never obeisant or credulous. She stands tall, moves gracefully, takes in each scene, each lesson, each conversation or reflection deeply, holistically, completely. She is intimately connected to her people and place, yet always able to stand apart and accept her own vision. She is quite imperfectly human, and very comfortable with exactly who she is. She loves and lives without reservation, yet with deep, complex reflection and an eternal sense of wonder. She is not representative of her people nor her time, yet she is completely enmeshed with them.

I feel comfortable with her. Her presence in my mind calms and inspires me. She is an amazing friend and confidante. I feel compelled to tell her story though it is nothing like mine. Probably there are metaphoric parallels that I, my deeper self, knows I can learn from, can delve into to discover my own intimate secrets, to grow and heal. If I fall into this other world of my own creation and never return to conventional reality, it will harm none and expand my horizons. But that is getting way too ahead of where I am now. Most likely I will go through this little experiment in traversing into a different realm, find myself on the other side an experienced dimension-shifter, cosmic traveler, no more lost to insanity than most who dare to follow the art star to personal freedom and multiple awareness.

Okay, Caela, tell me a story. Tell me stories for a thousand nights in whatever time zone we can agree on.

My mother told me stories all my life. She was very certain of the line between fiction and fact; but she was also aware of the kind of truths that can best be understood through myth, fairy tales, poetry. Celia, in your death bed, do you see and understand your morphine dreams? Are you just fading away, or are you finding answers to your lifelong mysteries? I know you no longer need or want to talk to me, to share with anyone your last ecstatic visions or drooling pain. Will I feel that why too at my end? Right now I only want to live in my spinning fantasy with Caela on her world where it is all quite wonderful and far away from here. It’s not that I get to control this world of my creation while the real world is too far out of control for me to come to terms with. It’s that I get to make wonderful discoveries, to leave the routinely painful neighborhood of planet Earth and think big thoughts, experience my wild and crazily manifesting dreams.

Pandora wants to cuddle, presses her purring body against me. Another magical companion on my road to Goddess knows where.

Between Worlds #5

Who do I think I am? Secretly:

Once upon a time a princess grew into a queen, and then into a crone, and then into a legend that never dies. When all she wanted was a world that made sense in which she could feel free to be alive. But that makes no sense. That’s not me. Must be the alcohol talking – in vino a lot of nonsense, hyperbole, and sloppy thinking.

Caela wouldn’t need wine. But they would probably have come up with a process for making fermented fruit juice, along with everything else they would need to come up with as a community creating their own existence outside civilization as they had known it. So much to consider in creating a new world. I suppose this one happened bit by bit and all at once like most endeavors over time. Is that how it happens? Threads and consequences moving together imperceptibly until there you are, hemmed in by rules and customs and history? If we travelled back along every thread to the less than conscious decisions creating consequences along the way, we would probably find much better ways of making it all work out. But I’m not that conscious or conscientious; nor are most people getting by or getting behind in our narrow little worlds. Those with real vision come off just sounding crazy. Caela’s people, despite their unique situation, would most likely fall into their own level of complacency over time.

Goddess, what would you have me do? I feel there is some purpose of yours in all of this, not just my little personal devolvement into insanity. Of course that feeling of destiny could easily be a symptom of insanity.

No doctors! No prodding or psychotic drugs or setting myself up for nasty incarceration or reindoctrination to normalcy – whatever that is. I will follow my own damned path, wherever. So, Goddess, I guess we are in this together until you abandon me too. Those dreams of sinking into mushy ice on blue frozen tundras, there is a way through, beyond – or am I frozen in stasis, merely waiting for the frostbite to reach vital organs? It all remains to be seen. Walking unsteadily between the worlds, I could fall forever I suppose. But wouldn’t that become its own level of complacency, falling without thought, receding into a normative back-drop for lazy, selfish, morose self-entertainment? Let’s pretend there is a future-place where all the threads come together in colorful, festive array that make perfect sense on reflection. It’s just a matter of making it from here to there. So, dear imaginary Caela, what can you tell me?

Between Worlds #4

Hours melt into hours, navigators’ objects move across the sky outside this progressively filthier window. I feel the luxury of my hand losing itself in soft fur as Pandora purrs beside me on Celia’s couch. From time to time as it occurs to me, I pretend to write cogently, for something to pretend to do. Yes, I know there are vast ventures of exciting adventuring, or even simple chores I could engage in, if I could engage. Gulping down wine when the feelings get too close to the surface probably is not helping my thinking to find coherence. The radio music gives me an illusion of being somewhere, some connection to a greater world out on the airwaves. I can ride those airwaves like a magic carpet to imaginary places, people to whom no responsibility can be owed or expected.

I somehow hypnotically manage to do the few daily chores necessary to maintain me, cat, plants, to keep real squalor at bay. Going through those motions with minimal consciousness is not responsibility. I don’t have to answer for or explain myself, keep up a conversation or show appropriate emotional responses. How did such simple everyday bits of business become so exhausting to even contemplate? It’s not just that I’m not the person others expect of me. I am no one at all. There is no cohesive sense of me to explain or hold together an acceptable identity. My memories don’t feel of me but like some old tv drama series of connected stories. Do you remember that episode when Persephone and Tom made love on the beach at dawn, hidden in the water though there was no one else around to see? Or that one in the earlier seasons when Danny explained to little Persephone why he wouldn’t be living with her and her mom anymore? Seasons and seasons of this long-running soap opera in which nothing is ever resolved; no strong central character emerges complete with her happy well-rounded life, a joy to her friends, a boon to her neighbors.

Or is that Caela, the refugee? Not that I think I can find myself in her; lose myself in her is more where I’m aiming. But maybe, Goddess willing, I can lose myself in her, live out her story in my inner movie, to find myself later, after the show, curled up in the shelter of some hidden woodland tree, a sprouting seed learning how to be this new creature as I become. Or maybe I’ll just get lost in my own insanity, no good to anyone. Happy pitty party to me, lazy and selfish and brazenly morose.

Between Worlds #3

I am Persephone in her mother’s home. It is Demeter who has been taken by the minions of death, her body barely holding on to life’s sweet definition. Strangers minister narcotics to soften the veil, blur the journey.

That is where the dream comes from. The potent journey; the aging mother, crone, no longer a complete integral of her tribe, no longer anchored to her long-time position in life. Is she called to a sacred mission? Is she a possible guide to my own salvation? What do I need to be saved from? The endless days that make no sense, unanchored, dependent on inspiration? It is getting dangerously close to dawn on this not long enough winter night. I can’t bear to see the light as if ordinary routine of weekday activity could be my expected, accepted norm. I feel so much more naturally alive in Caela’s world, as I diligently figure it out in a faithful inner theatre of cinematic splendor. This has got to be a good thing, this insistently reveling imagination that hugs me with warmth and ecstatic emotion. So much more than a distraction or psychotic state, I believe it is meant to heal and elevate. But what do I know, pretending to be somewhere other than this sad little apartment in this sad little neighborhood, someone more grand than sad little me.

This lassitude is not like me, or not like the me I like to be. I do remember other times when life was too much with me and restlessness without activity overtook me. I need a visionquest. I can attain that even from this restraining lassitude by projecting my mind onto another, more vital, life. I can follow that path of no resistance, encounter demons and deities, solve the puzzle, claim the prize, reemerge, shimmy down the beanstalk refreshed and reinvented. Perhaps I must. It’s hard to know, living on all these levels, in all these layered dimensions of cosmic meaning to random happenstance, how to go about continuing.

It’s not the drugs – anyway, they are only mild antidepressants along with that old central nervous system shut-down stand-by measured in proofs below 30. I’m a self-medicator from way back; but I have considerably grown up and cut way down. I refuse to touch Celia’s pain medication, even though she left quite a nice stash behind when they evacuated her. Or, what is the word? They removed her from her former life to watch her die. I should evacuate myself, get back to where I once belonged. I should get over this private pity party and find my way to be useful and productive in the world. I am drawn into this fantasy universe as if it were the one that was real. I imagine channeling is like this. So now I am the gypsy witch of fairytales casting my scrying eye into other worlds. Anything’s better than being nothing, no one, lost, drifting, alone.

Yeah, melodramatic and untrue. I have wonderful friends who I just can’t seem to reach out to. But, you know, I know, I’m used to being alone. It’s restful, familiar, delightfully irresponsible, just me. Yet I’m never alone with my insistent imagination ever entertaining me with charming characters playing out stories. I will self-indulge for awhile, take advantage of this luxurious lapse into insanity to see where it lands me. I can’t think of any reason not to that makes any sense to me. I’m sure if I get too loud the neighbors will complain. Just a ditsy witch with her cat and inner crucible, listening to jazz, smoking herbs, drinking wine, writing fantastic journeys. If Celia wanted more from me, it’s too late for her admonishments now. Danny wanted nothing from me. Maybe some absolution, but I’m not in that business. What do I want from me? That’s the question worth pondering. Maybe Caela will tell me as I follow her visionquest through the brave forest, discovering who we are, what we can do, where we belong.

Between Worlds #2

Gentle eyes, but much more, eyes anyone could stand before with no shame. Self-evidently these eyes were ready to accept and respect what they saw.

She speaks to me sometimes. No, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

She speaks to me in my own voice, though, perhaps, in a different register. She comes to me in a dream, a recurring dream. It was so clear and powerful. She is beautiful, full of life, full of magical power. I feel safe with her. Perhaps she is some kind of totem, spirit guide. Perhaps she is someone I could become, in the fullness of time, as some kind of metaphoric singularity, familiarity, familiar inner voice who has always guided me.

I feel a special affinity to cats. They are so completely themselves. I love the strong sensual flowering scents of Spring. Yet, I am a creature of the Winter of low lights, of shadow and multiple realities.

I call her Caela.

She makes me happy in a special, secret way. I have a sparkling, shining secret. No, it’s not schizophrenia. In a way, it is sanity. She helps me to understand who I am, who I could become, free and self-empowered. She is like a fantasy mother who is giving me everything I need to face my fortune. She is a gift from me to me.

Moon in Virgo, maybe? I’m losing track. It’s all one long wintry night.

None of that life so mine so few months ago seems real to me now. I am not that person who lived there. Can’t go back; don’t have a clue how to go forward. Celia’s still taking care of me – I have no financial woes. I can stay here for probably longer than I would ever need to, meeting all my 21st century needs, even indulgences, without having to concern myself with paychecks. One less thing.

Pandora cuddles up to me, lets me blubber and cry all over her. She doesn’t make the demands of human friends for coherency, consideration, a semblance of self-control. Yeah, I miss me, miss them, miss us. It’s like I’m being told, simply, in strict terms, that here and now I am not that girl, that womanchild. I am not clear on who this metamorphosed me is becoming. A great, golden cockroach comes to mind. But I am not ashamed. I have no family to fail, no social position to lose. I am not a golden butterfly, simple grace flying from flower to flower. Often I feel like a wraith, between worlds – not of one or the other. Am I my namesake? But in what realm am I Queen? No, I am not taking over your place, sweet Pandora, so solidly Queen of the household. There is solace in the awareness of another life, a natural way of being

Between Worlds ~ Persephone to Caela

Between Worlds ~ Persephone to Caela

I want to write her story, but it isn’t ready to write. I imagine it as a painting, swirling colors and intricate spectral figures, everything moving at once, a kaleidoscopic panorama. When I was a kid, I used to wish on the Moon, the big Full Moon. It was so much grander than any sparkling star. I would twirl around and around on the dewy summer grass, electrified by blinking fireflies. Then, I would flop down to watch the sky swirl like a Van Gogh Starry Night.

What kind of Solstice celebration would she have? Would they have comparable seasons? They would have to have a whole new system of astrology, if anyone bothered with that Earth-based lore. They would have ceremonies, celebrations, dancing and romancing and offerings of special performances to keep in touch with the mysterious. They would be a spiritually aware people, happy in the shared wealth of their culture. They would know to honor, value, celebrate the individual as the ultimate resource of the common wealth. Empaths have no ambition based on suspicion, no need for hierarchical arrangements to be secure in one’s place. The year, or whatever passed for one, would no doubt fall out differently than our years. What constellations might appear? How many moons? Does it matter? Important occasions are marked, harvests and births, rewards for hard labor, sacredly meaningful losses that we move beyond through honoring sacrifice. What else must be honored, must be held holy? There would be celebration for the occasion of the moment when the spirit is strong within the tribe, when there is need for release, tears and laughter, impassioned artistic rendering, raucous song, frenzied dance, the strong scent of blazing emotions gone wild in the loving safety of tribal union.

**************

She found the children, understandably frightened but so far unharmed. The telepathic ability which had condemned their parents had helped to save them. She knew this to be a time of crisis, a crossroad, which must open an opportunity to end this unnecessary enmity, these unnecessary tragedies.

Caela was called. She chose to answer. She was uprooted as a child, but within the caring arms of community. Within that communal embrace, she was able to learn her power, use it for the communal good. She enjoyed a happy, balanced life with family, friends, fulfilling work, peaceful spirituality, the grace of natural beauty. At the point when her life as it had been had taken her as far as it could, she was called to a sacred journey, a mission for her own continued growth of soul, and for the transformation of a world long divided, a healing of the wound dividing the people of her world. It all came as a natural progression. She was always given all she needed to be able to give what was needed by those she served.

Manifesting Destiny #57

Moon in Gemini

There was that November, the last one I had spent with Celia and Pandora before now, after that August when Brent had wrecked my car (sweet birthday present from Daddy Danny) filled with his big drug score and gotten incarcerated. The drugs were out of my system by then, but not the need for them. No physical addiction, but I lived in a fog jumping out of my skin. I felt trapped by being alive, stuck, nowhere to go, nothing to be done. What is it in us that picks us up and keeps us going, even thriving? I was more feral then, a wild creature in a cage.

Danny was good for sending checks for cars from afar when he was flush. Celia was good for my critical disdaining for her sanity while mine was missing in action. I wasn’t much good for anything. I mean, I had been putting my life together, so I thought, after the whole Mark massacre. I was taking classes, thinking about career paths, imagining a future that almost looked normal. It’s not that it snuck up on me. I did sad a lot. Crying myself to sleep was pretty much a nightly ritual. Pandora, bless her kitty instinct, would jump up on my chest, looking so curiously with those big green feline eyes.

Celia would talk, soothingly, about whatever happened to be going through her mind, current events, literary allusions, dissecting the meaning of a common phrase. She wonders a lot about connections, how things come to be as they are. I was having a life, slowly putting it together. Then I wasn’t. It didn’t matter anymore. It was so much easier to get high and let Brent make the decisions.

Not that this fantasy driven druggie was much of a decider. He had things figured out in simple terms: stay as high as possible, making it work by partying and selling drugs. I was the cool chic of his fantasies, supportively sharing his habits. Symbiotic we were, like AIDS and cancer.

I don’t blame him. How can blame be applied to someone so obviously irresponsible? He fulfilled my fantasies, which were admittedly dark. It was a nonrelationship based on needs we each had for self-nullification.

After he achieved ruining his life, putting it in the solid hands of the criminal justice system, I felt cheated. Not that I was adverse to freedom from legal consequences or even bitter at the loss of my ride. I felt I was being unfairly forced to confront myself again.

I had been arguing with Celia about some theory against her I had come up with, based on the occasion of the anniversary of Aunt Marie’s death. One of the guys Brent and I hung out with told me about the accident and subsequent arrest, which he had found out about the way people are always knowing things that I don’t. Yeah, I was wasted. Not on any one drug, mind you, but whatever combination Brent had lying around. He was eclectic in his distribution.

Why am I thinking about this now, dissecting my earlier years? Right, the last time I lived with Celia and Pandora, before I took off without a word. Well, I did leave a note:

“I’ve got to go. I’ll call you when I know where I am. Don’t worry. I love you. Persephone.”

It was shortly after my birthday, before Christmas. Danny had sent me a largish birthday check, a couple of grand, giving me travel money. It wasn’t enough for a cool new car, but a bus ride was a welcome moving through scenery while I avoided thinking about what was to come. I had the luxury of a lovely hotel room to start off in while I pretended to figure out how to proceed. Naturally, I ended up on the streets on Christmas Eve, ready to be taken in by some lonely single looking for holiday companionship. Yeah, it looks bad for me. But, bit by bit, I really couldn’t tell you how, tell me how, I got better. I found myself living a life I could enjoy, found people I could love, found work to stretch me and help me to see what I could do. It doesn’t always work out that way. Lots of people get lost forever. Not that my salvation is an ongoing certainty. I do understand. People get scared. We realize the vastness of uncertainty. We grasp at whatever looks like permanence.

My dreams have been disquieting, quick cut images that carry no sense of coherence. It is dark most of the time. Stark dark tree branches stand out against cloudy sky. Well past the big celebrations of harvest, it is time for somber thought, preparing for the coming winter.

Manifesting Destiny #56

Moon in Taurus

The powerful Taurean Full Moon pouring mist-diffused rays into the night, sends a stark chill with its celestial light. Under another such moon, another time, another home, when Pandora was a fluffball delight, I can hear sadly exasperated Celia insisting I listen to her.

“You can’t just lie around in your bathrobe being sullen and angry. Where is that going to take you? I know you’re not going to do as I have. You already know what I have to say. You are going to have to figure out what you want to do with your life. It’s your time. What will you want to see when you look back on it?”

Eventually her nagging got to me to the point that I pulled myself reasonably together and visited our greater community’s community college. Celia had brought me a catalog to look over, to see if I had any interests to pique.

Part of my problem with high school was that I had no objection to learning, but a strong objection to routine disrespect. At the community college everyone was more adult, respectful of the time and effort going towards useful education. There aren’t the academic requirements like those for getting into a real college, the institutional transition between high school child and professional adult. We self-select, each student pursuing personal goals. It is thus an environment much more conducive to learning than compulsory public schools. They say some of the charter schools are good, starting with a philosophy that kids will learn if you let them, help them get where they are going. We humans are born needing to fill in the confusion with whatever we can find and figure out. We are curious little mimics working away at learning how to be human beings in the background conditions of the here and now we become aware within. What we learn becomes the basis of plans toward big picture goals. What we do with our labors gets circumscribed by perceived need to acquire property, be owned by appropriately valued possessions, positions of responsibility, picturebook family, respected social roles, or not.

What do I want to do with my life? I find a great deal of it caught up in irrelevant activities, even outright stupid, self-defeating activities. These are all what I do, not meaningless. When I look back there is embarrassment, regrets, and insights into myself and my world. Adventures and misadventures replayed, recited for fun or commiseration, they become little gems of sensual recall to treasure.

I do understand the desirability of some organizing principles, organized knowledge to apply to purpose. Today we can learn about any section of a vast store of knowledge through the user friendly internet. We can muster some discipline, outline a plan, and fill in instruction layer upon layer at our own comfort level. We can, alternatively or at whim, melt hours surfing from captivating wave to the next, imbibing the heady mix like a drug. It’s all valid, spent time, learning, doing, effecting who we are, what we look back on.

Who do I want to have been? Celia says she is satisfied. She lived on her own terms. I may see her routine, her circumscribed little life as I interpret it, not satisfying at all. She laughs, gently but in true humor. It’s not been about those routines for her. They are the soothing well-worn structure within which she enjoys that self-made internal world, her real home. I have a home like that, though vastly different from hers in specs and decoration. There are points of similarity where we grew up together, shared in mutual private world visitation.

We see people in their public performances. We think we know who they are, peg them into a labeled box. We have no idea. Is it acceptable to ask: Show me a glimpse, or batter a panorama, of your world.

In my daily living now I watch the one constant person I have always depended upon moving away from her commitment to life. I feel as I imagine Arjuna would have on the field of battle, struggling with the vast issues of life, death, purpose, destiny.

Manifesting Destiny #55

Moon in Taurus

After Mark was dead, our son was dead, I remember feeling hollow, pointless. I had thought I had what I wanted. I really was happy. I had my very own life, my own family on my own terms. Defiantly, I intended to name him Lucifer, the morning star. We would call him Luke I supposed. Mark insisted on his last name. Luke Dante who never was. Everyone leaves, bare trees with no certainty of Spring.

I felt hollow, yet angry, hurt, yet again abandoned, cast from Eden … if I want to go there. Poor, pitiful me. Is it some lesson I’m not getting about self-sufficiency or compassion? I really thought I had shown I could go out on my own, that I could love unselfishly. Maybe it’s not about lessons at all, but just life, random inevitabilities.

Celia took me home from the hospital. She took care of me, part nurse, part loving friend, no demands or recriminations. I was, by turn, sullenly morose, viciously outrageous. She took to talking to me about bits of her life, almost randomly. It was like she described little vignettes she had thought about until they became objective stories, not personal to her. Maybe she was trying to show solidarity in disappointment. Maybe she was just looking for something to say in response to my silence. Maybe she had decided that I now had enough experience of my own to share these secreted memories, to be a confidant.

She had not felt free to share her feelings or serious thoughts with her sisters as sisters do. She was more of a young but more reliable third parent to them. Marie was something of an older somewhat disdainful but loving sister to her. Helen, who was closer to Celia in age, would sweep Celia out to her studio to see her latest painting, talk of art and life in that breathless excited way she had when fully engaged. Celia loved them as family. I think she was hurt when Helen so abruptly deserted us, as was I.

People are always having to get away. It’s not you. They love you. But they have to go. Did I do that to Tom? But I am returning, as I have to Celia. A different, older I, but still the essential me will be with him in the Spring. Celia beyond any doubt will be in hospice by then. She doesn’t want me with her at the end. She says she doesn’t want to have to deal with what others are feeling during her final experience. It is not something she wants to share. Her life has been a lesson in self-reliance. She has learned to depend on herself as ever-present friend. This departure for her is a private matter.

I will have to pack up Pandora and find an apartment back in the thick of my once and future life, or whatever life I am led to, back with Tom.

He would be cast as one of those English gentleman officers in period romantic fiction. Always correctly polite, he manages to convey an unseen sneer when not acting sincerely. Thus, we inner circle few always know exactly what he is saying. He awaits my return, but not alone without consolation, or companionship in his black silk sheets. He is staying well entertained while missing my presence, assured that this time will pass. I don’t know that he won’t leave me or I him, permanently, some day. I suppose unless we die together one or the other is inevitable. Long before death parts us, we may well disband for other reasons. We may well be in each other’s blood, be in love forever. That’s not what keeps people together. I don’t know what does. People stay until they leave. Sometimes they return with tales to tell and scars to display. Sometimes they’re gone. Of course most of us, for the most part, glide by each other as strangers, maybe here and there relating through some little bit of business or sharing a joke. People are unreliable. All we really have is ourselves. But no, not entirely the truth. We have people, some people, for whatever time we share. The stories, the jokes, the hugs, it all adds to the whole store of experiences we can build up for ourselves. We are made more by the people who have been with us. Yeah, some people, if we let them, if we are complicit, tear us down, take away from who we had been. I guess in a way that’s adding too, depending on what we do with it. Art, you know, all those crazy feelings, trying to make sense of them, move them around sensually, find the hook, the core that pulls it all together into a form that can be shared, sold, put on public display. Yeah, spinning out to avoid getting stuck in confusion.

We get inside each other, then leave those left behind to continue the relationship alone.

Manifesting Destiny #54

Moon in Aries

I put on high energy rock music and danced to exhaustion just to get it out of me. I suspect I am genetically predisposed to depression which I unconsciously treat with activity. My paternal grandma has been described to me as crazy, clinically out of it though kept safe at home without chemical or institutional incarceration. My dad is clearly alcoholic My mom sublimates her sadness with activity.

Depression is rampant these days, not only to sell pharmaceuticals. We are only built to take so much concentrated stress without cracking. I laugh at talk of foreign terrorists infiltrating to kill us. The real threat is all the barely hanging on when they hang on no longer and have convinced themselves they need an honor guard to flank their suicided souls. Or maybe they think they are being merciful to their victims, taking them along on the great escape. In any case, what do we think we’re doing piling on no win scenarios in a societal crucible without enough provision of emotional safety valve exhaust?

Dancing’s good for getting out what ails. Swirling into screaming into wide open displays in carnival mania must be why such traditions exist. Humans, we are biologically emotional creatures. Restraint only goes so far before we need to break out. Is that what war is really about? Yeah, land and ideology and fear of strangers, but couldn’t those issues be handled with our well vaunted reason if we weren’t chomping at the bit to spit out a bloodthirsty yell of emotion breaking out of restraint? Kids, puppies, kittens, little creatures learning how to use our bodies, fight just because we enjoy moving our muscles in that connective sport until the pain of battle wounds catches our attention. Athena, body daughter of Zeus, sprang forth ready for battle, and is known as the Goddess of Wisdom, patron of democratic Athens. Are emotions, as well as relationships, sacred mentors meant to move us toward wisdom if we are willing and attentive students? What’s the point? We live. We die. Then there’s another crop living, fighting, dying. So, big deal, or rather no big deal, if I get wise through my unique tawdry mundane suffering. It’s no achievement if no one cares or profits.

Look at Celia, so stalwart, so bravely self-sufficient, so wasted now, wasting away. For my little time, I get to what? Flex my muscles, dancing, playing, running away, even making love, random occurrences. I know, I’m trying to make sense when the prescribed answer is having faith.

Faith can be so confusing. Faith isn’t based on sense; but magic is. Magic isn’t about exchanging mumbo-jumbo for gold. There is a strict structure of rules within which magic allows itself to happen. Faith is kind of like quicksand, but more pernicious. There is no solid ground. There is no safety net. Survival happens. Or not. There is that greater unknowable purpose that makes it all okay. I know magic works, often better than mainstream science. Faith, well you’ve got to take it on faith. There is nothing but room for interpretation, for crazies and cranks to wield their faith-hewn swords. So, maybe the place to start from is: I am aware. Look at all the scenery whizzing by as I scope out my environs. That bit was quite nice, very pretty. Eeuuww, that’s so sad, all that nasty bloody roadkill. Look, I painted my name across the sky. Now look, the light is fading. My name has faded from the sky, below the horizon. Perhaps it will rise again with the dawn.

It’s not so much blind faith as an eyes open ongoing relationship with whatever higher power calls to you through life. Look at me: aren’t I the philosophical one! Named for a goddess she is, perhaps a goddess in training herself. Yeah, little old immortal me, burned in the flames of immortality all over, neglecting not so much as an Achillean heel. Cleansing phoenix flame encourages transformation, new lives for old. Like that “Doctor Who” timelord regeneration, or am I mixing archetypes too irresponsibly? Too flippantly conflating metaphoric musings? There, I’m back in relative good humor. No one gives an internal peptalk like you, Persephone. Thank Goddess.

Thank you, Goddess, for never doubting me.

Manifesting Destiny #53

Moon in Pisces

I’ve been sleeping so much more than usual, actively wanting to sleep. It’s not physical tiredness, but a strong desire to dream. I get such beautiful vivid imagery in my dreams. Deeply personally meaningful jumbled vignettes of scenes, feelings, incredible camera shots no camera could capture because the images are all imagination, keep calling me back to play. Far from restful, these dreams give me intense work-outs. I am more then compensated for any lack of exercise in my more constrained waking life.

This place isn’t big enough to take much housework. Two adult women and an aging cat, all naturally clean creatures, don’t require much cleaning up after. Long late night walks and romps in the park are not the same level of activity I had been used to in that more daily active life I had worked out for myself. My energy, motivated movement, exuberance, have been low, my agitation level on the rise.

This is a generally contentious time of year, peace and goodwill be damned. Not only is the US holiday season secular, it is brutally consumption driven. It is the race to being in the black for businesses of many brands by the end of the year. Thus frantic anxiety abounds. Now that the election hysteria is fading, the holiday hysteria comes to the foreground. There always has to be something overwhelming our senses so mainstream America keeps pounding the treadmill without thought. Well, yeah, those busy brain cells are taken up with how will I juggle the bills to keep the credit flowing? What can I get away with getting for Aunt Sue or my obnoxious co-worker who makes such a big deal of these gift exchanges? The junk mail catalogs are pouring in, filled with glee and cheer as only models of over-priced gaiety can provide.

Until the year my aunt died, Celia and I celebrated in high bohemian style with the crazy artists at the farm. It was a warm and witty fantasyland that I thought of as normal real life. That first Thanksgiving when Celia and I were confronted by our scant number, she did her best to inaugurate family tradition. Even a small turkey was obviously too much for our small family, just Mom, Persephone and our aging cat.

Back then it was Mao, named by Danny before I can remember, in my (and Mao’s) baby days, for the infamous Chinese leader. Mao was intent on keeping us in line. Big, black, loudly opinionated, he had a notably different temperament from sleek, sweet calico catpanion Pandora, who I see currently stretched out watching over sleeping Celia. Mao was still with Celia when I went off with Mark. He died in the Spring before I returned, while I was caught up in my to me astonishing pregnancy. Lonely, several months later Celia adopted baby Pandora, late that summer. She was only a few months old when I moved back in. We go way back, don’t we, Pandora dear?

For our first Thanksgiving on our own, Celia settled on stuffing a smallish chicken. That Wednesday night, on her way home to start the long holiday weekend, she picked up fresh cider from the farm stand. While the chicken roasted she whipped sweet potatoes with maple syrup, spices and cream, cut up fresh salad veggies to dip in a homemade luxurious green goddess style dressing, home-baked a pumpkin pie. We listened to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” while eating our “Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat.” I was too thankful to be sullen. My family had unraveled. I wanted to believe in what was left.

I always loved Thanksgiving, not “enjoy,” love! It’s my favorite secular holiday. It’s not the food or traditions, certainly not the now exposed ugly history of European colonists and their native hosts. It’s the peacefulness. Late November gives me tingles. Sagittarius, season of my birth, gives me a rush of peaceful inner power. I feel it strongly, every year.

Some years Celia would invite friends without local family obligations. If there were more than us, she would roast a small turkey which we would eat from well into the next week in various recipe guises. That first year with Mark, when I was till seventeen, I brought him for Celia’s Thanksgiving dinner. He was actually grateful to belong, still devastated by the restraining order keeping him from his kids.

That was before the whole bitter custody fight that landed him supervised visits. Mark, Jr. was like four or five that year; and little Alex was only like three. I had only met them briefly a couple of times. One of his wife, Delores’ big concerns bringing her to the point of legal restraint against him was keeping her kids from the influence of their no-good father’s teen witch tramp. Celia hated that I was with Mark, I now can see with good reason. Nonetheless, she treated us both graciously, as family celebrating together. It’s not phony with her. She doesn’t deny her feelings; she allows other feelings to surface for the occasion.

This year it is already evident Celia will not be up to holiday chores. I am the one who must rise to this occasion. I thought of asking for Tom to join us; but I know that is both selfish and ill-advised. Celia deserves this last Thanksgiving to be about her, not as host to even a most cordial guest.

Goddess worshippers, attuned to the movements of the Moon, are theoretically aware of the sacredness of each day. Giving thanks for each day’s blessings, taking solace for each day’s disappointments in the magic of each night’s transitional movements into a new day, we celebrate life. Dreams can heal us, inspire us, take us to places of special personal meaning so beautiful that we know we are blessed. Thank you, Goddess, for the magic of dreams.

Celia, I wish you dreams of Danny. In your ever more frequent fade-outs from the real and earnest world, I hope you find yourself back in that perfect time when you were complete with love. She does tell me sometimes that she was dreaming of him, of them, of happiness. Reality as we interpret it in our private minds is not much different from a dream. A strong belief, acted upon, is not so different from a truth. We can have it all, everything our great big hearts desire, if we can be not so particular about our definitions, or boundaries between dream and real. Not so far from the cross-quarter, the veil may still be thin. Ah November, time of wonder, a crossroad time of year!

Manifesting Destiny #52

Moon in Capricorn

Danny often told me, during our infrequent conversations usually initiated by his drunken phone calls from whatever bar or party on his end, how much he still and always loves my mother. Like he is for her, Celia is Danny’s one true soulmate. He explains plaintively, perhaps hoping for my absolution, he was no good for her. He excuses his weakness by embracing it. He was not cut out to be responsible, to settle down, to fit into an ordinary life as she seemed to need to feel secure.

He may be little better than an indentured pet to Gwen, but she does know enough to let him wander on his short leash, to not make demands beyond simple rules, to keep him benignly distracted with new scenes and exciting people, fun, fun, fun for all her children while she basks in their attentive glow. She didn’t take him away from us. She was his convenient excuse and meal ticket.

I wonder, though, all those dramas, miscommunications, assumptions about what was important, even urgent, back then, how meaningful any of that has turned out to be. Neither of their lives apart were fulfilling or magical as their time together. Could they have found a better solution had they been thinking clearly without clouds of guilt and shame, perceived self-inadequacies? They could have created within their relationship byways for their separate paths, separate adventures, to then store in familial framework of their own making.

Wanting differently, using different strategies, coming from different experiences does not mean working at cross purposes, does not necessitate contention or contradiction. Engaging with those of other perspectives and methods can give us all more to work with for more pervasively useful results. If we could start from a base of respect for ourselves and each other, with a true will to work out what we must so everyone’s interests, needs, concerns are addressed, the results could well be so much better than ever anticipated. Expanding borders, making room for everyone involved, we can create better models, better blueprints, better structures, projects, lives. Privately, unilaterally, deciding based on individual weaknesses and fears you get bicoastal misery instead of mutually nurturing caring family, untraditional as it may turn out to be. Tradition has its place, which is not about getting in the way of the urgent now. Tradition is better as a practical garment that can be altered to fit than a one size fits all straitjacket.

Celia wants to vote, no matter the lines. At least there’s no snow in the forecast. I registered here once I knew I would be staying through the election. Celia did succeed in inculcating a sense of civic responsibility in me. She does not take her right to vote for granted. She informs herself about the issues and candidates, even for local elections. She’s the one who told me that local elections are where democracy is most likely to be effective in everyday lives. All those little local decisions about the public services we use all the time are the outgrowth of local politics. The big national stuff is mostly out of the realm of real democracy. We elect people thinking they can do what no one really can, especially not government.

People in this country act like there are only governmental services, policies, projects and profit-making businesses selling their products and services. Yeah, there is that private family and social life sphere where we do each other favors, help each other out voluntarily without legal coercion or profit motive. It seems to me that we forget the very important nongovernment, noncapitalist civil sphere. The old concept of the public square is a place where we meet not only as marketplace to buy and sell our wares or to exchange political harangues or make social connections. We come together as members of a civic community to work out solutions our perceived common problems, to indulge in civic pride with beautification projects and cultural opportunities. Community self-interest is best at providing enhanced educational programs and otherwise generally improving the conditions in which we all live together. It makes sense that if each little community were well loved and cared for by civic minded participants, the whole country would prosper.

Celia has not had much in the way of community in that sense for most of her life. She keeps herself informed. She votes. On occasion she writes out her opinions on issues she has particular concerns about, sends letters to newspapers and political representatives. Her concern to make me aware of politics grew out of the more activist role she and Danny and their friends took in protesting anti-Vietnam, pro-Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, for all late 60s/early 70s era. I have a more educated understanding of the political structure and realities of this country than I see evidenced by most of public opinion. So many people screaming out on the airwaves, the internet, in public and private, show they have no idea of how this country’s government is designed or meant to work. They just want laws to tell everyone to do or not do whatever their moral codes or economic prejudices assure them is the proper course. There is no talking to them rationally, no swaying them with facts, certainly not compassion. They know what they know; they’re right. Anyone differing is wrong. In this sense I hate politics.

I, as well as Celia, am so tired of the bickering around this election. I hate the shrieking cries of the wingnuts who refuse to see that one wing will never fly. To move forward as a nation, all wings, the whole of us, must move together, each doing our individual essential part.

Manifesting Destiny #51

Moon in Sagittarius

Celia takes folks as we are. It wouldn’t make any sense to her to try to change us. We are going to be who we are. Ultimately practical, she works with what is.

Marie was more of an idealist, highly critical if you were below her standards. She treated me like a princess, as did Danny. Celia treated me, treats me, like another human being, one she deeply loves and is aware of as independently aware.

She knows how to pass, naturally falling into appropriate chit-chat, even mannerisms. She has long been practiced at blending in, almost part of the background. There must have been so much ugly tension in her childhood home, first with her dad’s parents and sisters in the mix piling up against Celia as a package with her Mom. Then, when they had their own home, there was all that tension between her parents, Tony and Angie, who shared no genuine love or respect for each other. She learned to stay out of the way, a neutral bystander, ever pleasant and courteous, never a target for ire.

Danny is a charmer, of everyone on whom he focuses that expansive smile. He can be loud and out of place in a lot of places even so. I tend to get carried away with my emotions and sense of self-important drama. Celia made us normal. In public people would see her as that nice lady. A nice lady with an eccentric family, but they must be alright because she is just like us. It was not her way to be judgmental, to demand that others fit a preconceived idea of what she thought they should be.

Tonight she was genuinely solemnly joyous with me in the Samhain ceremony I improvised for us. Celia is well steeped in literature of ancient lore, philosophies, rituals, psycho-social manipulations before the advent of science as we know it now. We put together an altar of candles, safely separated from the dried leaves we had fortuitously gathered before the snow. We arranged bowls with leaves, smoldering herbs, salted water for the sea and tears, and sang incantations I had written earlier in the day. I had also found appropriate music on an internet radio station so we could fall under the spell of song, dance, smoky herbal aromas breathed in deeply, coalescing into potent personal ritual. We held hands moving slowly around the altar, gracefully flickering shadows of the candle flames. Moving closer together, we whirled hugging each to the other. I could feel her waning energy. Eventually we sat looking into the candlelight, silent, mutually aware, entranced in the subtleties of the moment.

Celia needed to sleep. She sleeps still in short naps, but ever more frequently. I have time to think and feel uncomfortably, letting those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings do as they will, not imposing my will to turn them away. They say the veil is thin tonight between the worlds of consensual reality and spirit. If I let myself be off-guard, perhaps wise or lonely spirits will share tales or visions with me. It’s not insanity if I label it a dream.

Is it insanity, though, that is to be feared, or the bureaucracy seeming to be in the business of making life harder for those who have become overwhelmed by their own circumstances? Insanity might be fine, might be some entranceway into a more profound knowledge and way of being human if we labeled it in that direction. One person’s or people’s insanity might well be another’s religious experience.

I’m not realistically nonjudgmental like Celia. I expect people to be sane enough to make room for the spiritual insanity each of us may privately experience, to make room outside of that practical consensual reality for the spirit world to infuse through, expanding our definitions of normal human behaviors and relationships. “And ye harm none, do what ye will.” So mote it be.

I blow out the candles, look deeply into the darkness.

Manifesting Destiny #50

Moon in Scorpio

October snow on Tom’s birthday away from me. How romantically poetic! Celia, Pandora and I, warm and cozy, drink luscious cocoa (well, not Pandora) and watch the early winter surprise. It’s like a reprise of those special snow days when Celia’s office and my school both closed, though the snow is nowhere near such conditions. In those days it was an unexpected holiday. What do they do for that special time in places where it doesn’t snow? Monsoon or tornado days don’t seem so peacefully picturesque.

On a whim, I put on a Christmas music cd. Christmas, at least in America, is a secular celebration. No need to be Christian to get sentimental about these old tunes. I felt like a Hallmark card cozied up with Mom and Pandora wrapped in soft warm afghan smelling of childhood, with hot drinks, safe from the wintry world.

We never went in for all the bright lights and decorations. We enjoyed the simple elegance and wonderful woodsy aroma of each year’s fresh cut tree picked carefully from the tree farm. Once it became brittle and lifeless sometime in January, we would solemnly, carefully, burn the remains and thank the tree for its gracious visit. For an atheist, Celia has amazing awareness of the sacred, of the life-force of nature. She never cared for arrangements of picked flowers, but requires living flowering plants in her everyday ambiance.

I sent Tom a commemorative collage of homemade poetry and borrowed pictures (because my attempts at drawing express nothing but my maladroitness), carefully arranged in an email message to express love, admiration, adoration. I know he will appreciate the gesture. He has told me he doesn’t like fussing over his birthday because it usually is so contrived. I gather there was a lot of attention to form and little to substance in his home (or, rather, homes) when he was growing up. His parents travelled a lot and dumped Tom and his older brother Ty in boarding schools and camps, but sometimes brought the boys along if that was the current whim. Growing up rich is not necessarily as much fun as one might imagine. Through all that he somehow became a romantic and lover of substantive expression. He can be a severe, consummately fair critic of my work, of any artwork he notices. He fully acknowledges, appreciates, admires when it comes out right, when the art works, expresses exquisitely. So, no lazy good enough when the work is meant for him. I put in full concentration, focus, emotion, and practiced restraint. Capture the essence, make it sing as if angelic choir. Celia was happy to give me the concentration space, and to listen intently and respond with insight based on her wisdom and love as I bubbled over babbling about him and how well we fit. She is happy for my special extra glow, warmly encourages me to talk and talk in the way the presence of that glow turns my words into a magical litany. The ebullient wealth of my feelings shines in her sharing of my glow.

What is wealth? I have no interest in wasting my time accumulating money. That doesn’t mean I am not motivated to work. I am driven to work for the intrinsic values of the product and the work itself, to myself and my community. Given the opportunity, we seem to each have work that is intrinsic to our life. Jobs done with a passion, out of enlightened self-interest or fascination with the project or the pleasurable stretch of effort are jobs better done and lives better lived. Money has no intrinsic value at all. It is not an effective noun, but a verb, a symbol of action. It only gains value by being exchanged for valuable goods and services. The producers of goods and services are the nation’s valuable assets. Money is a myth, a hypnotic suggestion used to enslave. The system gets fixed so people feel helpless to provide for our needs without selling out our lives for a monetary wage. Who do we think are those who provide these necessities? We could be doing even better work providing better lifestyle options, more fulfilling and comfortable lives, by turning our understanding and attitude in more self-loving and community appreciating directions. All those experts talking in self-defining convoluted language, sniping out their petty differences or insisting on their agreed upon models and theories, we allow them to make the frames as if they really were elite. Economics is simple, trade so we can each do our calling and have what we need to be healthy and productive. Sharing makes us all wealthier, not hoarding or enslaving. It’s all a matter of what we invest our wealth in — our time, talent, skill, energy, ideas, joy.

I send you a wish wrapped in a deeply imagined kiss, dearly loved Tom, for many magical wonder-filled Solar Returns. I know nothing bought with money would possibly thrill you more.