Posted on by d

that one and this

i felt in her a kindred spirit, one who needed both a buffer from the world and space to observe it.

what kind of love was this, however, in which trust allowed for full creative expression? it was not what i felt i had. it would be the death of us, i was sure, the day i truly came alive again.

some things are worth the suffering. i needed to return to the world and expand again in it. both of us were innocents. we had empty toolboxes.

it’s okay. there is loss there, but loss is okay. there are gifts in it and i welcome gifts. for weeks though, i questioned what kind of person i might be: i was feeling expansive and social and willing to let my guard down and have energetic exchanges. i wanted to know where my grief was. I know better now, though, that really, it depends on the archetype. There are four of these who accompany me on my moon cycle, and I embody one at a time.

Fun stuff, being a woman. We are shapeshifters.

This is an interesting exercise, of once again dedicating focus on my cycle this way while I simultaneously experience deep loss and major transformation, both of which I  welcome as co-pilots on this new journey. Take me where I need to go but if I may be so bold, let’s all put effort into a gentle landing. This is the inward time, where I harvest, and likely my grief is here, waiting for me to take her in and acknowledge her presence. I still do not know but I don’t judge myself for it anymore either, and I no longer worry. We will see each other when we do.

 

 

 

Posted on by d

where the roots of it lie

i decided to mess with her head this afternoon. i’m not a violent person, she was telling me, but someone had made her very angry. blew the top right off of her.

but i didn’t punch her, she said. i could have, but i didn’t. i’m not a violent person.

we were sitting by the river and i was high and so was she, and she’s savant-smart so i went for it to see if we might be able to talk philosophy and so i said yeah, there are people i have wanted to punch too but i didn’t do it, but i still thought about it. so what is it that makes a person truly nonviolent? is it when you simply don’t think of punching someone anymore when they drive you to rage, or is it the choice you make not to act on impulse or to indulge that rage? the latter would suggest that violence and rage are innate, instinctual things that had a point when our amygdala served more of an upfront purpose.

If the latter is the case, then more than likely some of this fear is imprinted in our genetic expressions, our limbic systems, and originating from a scarcity fear that turned us from peaceful garden dwellers in fig leaves to the warring, post-Saharasian tribes that may have given us our first real, violent inclinations. it’s one theory, anyway.

i liken this particular question to that of freedom versus determinism. i find great comfort in determinism, of course. it gives me purpose and meaning to look for and stay focused on. i am here with a purpose and that purpose is… bam. done, kinda. i will just go and do that.

freedom seems terrifying in comparison, like the difference of being in a lush and comforting forest versus facing a great wide open plain. it is easy to see which i prefer – the forest is as a womb to me. the field has nothing to hold up the sky and is too full of too much possibility. and again, i’m likely operating from my amygdala. i’ve done a lot of work the past several years on rewiring some things around that, but at one point in our evolution, we shifted to bipedalism so we could see over the grass and better keep ourselves fed and out of danger, so… it’s in there, that fear of the hunted, and it’s more about collective species damage than individual trauma (add that to our united misfortune, though, and that person suffers even more than most. they are always watched). It might do me some good to channel the raptor, to fly over the plains searching for prey, but i am not really interested in hunting anything, and I do not want to kill.

what i want is trust, strength and indulgence and a consciousness that has a very sharp eye. i ask myself what it is that i want from other people. the next step is to cultivate those things in myself.

when i remember to do this, i’m forced to be honest about what it really is that i want from others and what is mine to fill. what comes next then, are those joys that can only be shared through conscious communication with others, endeavored and indulged in with a much higher level of clarity, sincerity, and courage. and maybe some dirty words (actually yeah, definitely some of those. i’m a fan of spoken word).

oh, courage. one sometimes needs so much of it to be vulnerable. shame is maybe the biggest curse to befall us; it cuts us off from joy and catharsis and the sloppy wet sounds of life. we lose out on the answers to questions we don’t ask.

 

Posted on by d

no explanations

it’s a quiet corner to practice in with no one really listening in. it’s a large, serif font, which for some reason encourages me to scatter things with consonants. also, thought journeys, mind wanderings, those are one of my favorite things about this human experience. i am compulsively inclined to share mine.

i’ve been getting my space in order, which is a frantic morning endeavor on weekends when my daughter goes over to her dad’s. my day of order is destroyed within an afternoon of her return, a massive art project spread across half the living room floor but who the hell am i to deny that process?

she’s eight now, and her latest passion is drawing sacred geometry mandalas with compasses and rulers and coloring them in and so that just lives in the living room and i am okay with that, because that makes so much sense. by all means zone out on that, kiddo. heck yeah.

but on the other hand, disorder outside reflects disorder inside and I have lost the balance between responsibility and recreation because the most responsible thing to do, really, is to enjoy life and make art and be outside and have water running over your dusty and sunbaked skin and also you gotta work, mama, and you gotta study, and you also need to see every single long-lost friend that passes through, because people always pass through in the summer and it’s good to connect and reconnect with people and so here we are. and if we enter the system we are trained from the start to struggle with working during the summer and then eventually there we are, thirty years later, going crazy on an afternoon in june while the world comes alive and the flowers start to bloom and i’m sitting in a windowless office with fluorescent lights.

no.

i am resilient but in a different way. i strip down to my skin and spread my legs in the sun.

everything is a cycle and it flows like that, the rise, the rise, the rise I got and then that great release or maybe death, and this cycle, for me, is also changing and behaves now as it never has before. It is always new. It is all so intense, from the various places my body presents discomfort to the little sensors on my skin, to the way I handle it all, yes, all of it, and form a state that is just another little layer of barrier because of the hypersensitivity that presents, because of the set of tasks required. i can handle these things with a toolbox.

But this is who I am: I am made up of things that bubble up and pour out of me when their names are called. This blood drips out when i stand, copious and dark, and the first time it came out like this it frightened me. i thought i might be dying.

i’m not, but the crones are waiting for me, so now that i am alone again i take it out to the garden. there are plants out there that love the moon and this land is still so starving and dry. this is now the chosen duty of my womb, this metallic and irregular offering of gratitude as this process and i prepare to part ways in the coming years. we will learn new rituals for these 3am journeys when i wake up with the moon shining into my bed, but the moon will always kiss my face gently, she’ll kiss my face like she’d fucked me blind just hours before. wake up, wake up, that was so rich. let’s do that again.

Posted on by d

blood mysteries.

Blood mysteries, moon cycle, moon cycles, women, bleeding, moontime | sanguine meander

that’s the thing right there that i was looking for, working toward. i was riding an edge as long as i could until i couldn’t anymore.  i fear for my high-thread-count sheets but what delicious and intense release: i feel as if i have cultivated something, and wow it’s 11:11 right now and i wish for all the good and wonderful and beautiful things of this world to be of their most radiant power.

i had to let go of thinking i might be a narcissist for wanting the very large space required for more deeply examining myself. my therapist says that if i have to ask, i probably don’t have to be too concerned that i’m a textbook case, but likely i’m far too self-absorbed and should be less worried about the lint in my bellybutton or these thick thighs that grew up around white people too long. i spend a lot of time alone though, on purpose, and i’m learning so much, and it’s all useless and important. Some things: a) examine patterns of abuse more deeply because you haven’t graduated yet and b) there is great value in a good energetic fluffing, in working with tension as a fuel for creativity. yes. what would you call that? sapiosensual? that’s me, tho.

i smoke a joint in the back yard with a friend and then forget for a minute that she’s standing there because i’ve started to remove the dead flower heads from a big sage bush. she stands in the dry grass next to me and i think oh god, i gotta not do this right now, no matter how compelled i am. i want to stand here and groom this plant, to encourage a second round of bloom. I am intoxicated by the scent of tobacco flowers nearby that open each evening for the impending moon and i drift easily. I sometimes go to such pretty places this way. also there are oars in the boat.

and so i reframe this whole situation, just like everything else recently that i “want right now” and realize that if i don’t obsessively trim back the sage bush while my friend stands around bored, I will have several more opportunities to groom it and breathe in the jasmine-y scent of the nearby tobacco plants, which have produced all these otherworldly white flowers that awaken several of my senses. of course, this could all be different, too, if my friend was intoxicated by the scent of these tobacco flowers, if my friend wasn’t bored by plant pruning. it’s a big plant. we could have really been going at it.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by d

when reality starts tasting like a columbine again

I had forgotten myself for a while but today I actually had to go and jump in the river. Channeling this kind of energy appropriately isn’t always easy for me, but here I am with another opportunity to do so.

And there’s also the option of submerging myself in ice-cold water for a second. When I remember that I’m human again it’s always a good little thrill but lord, yes, I need to keep cool.

A jump in glacial runoff and snowmelt it is. Those who know me know I must be hot for this. Those who know, know. We can’t help ourselves, even when we’re aware of ourselves. We ignite. There is no shutting this off without the death of something. It has to be carried and surrendered to and it has to be owned. The moon pulls strongly on women like me. me encanta.

I run these enchantments up and down my body, over and through, the explosions of colors, the expansion of the sky, the slightest touch of shiva’s fingertips. This particular meditation is my favorite. Every so often I shiver, but I go only as far as the edge. I don’t want to leak this. I want the essence to stay in me for a while, to save it for the expression of conscious devotion and unity.

Until then, the river and I, we understand each other. It pours its melted ice over me to cool me down, to shock me back into consciousness.