Posted on by d

fire cycle fire

Photo by Stanislav Kondratiev on Unsplash | sanguine meander

so many thoughts passing through so quickly i’ve forgotten them, having been driven to the present cyclically.

it started with thoughts on how much i enjoy cannabis and a practice often referred to as ‘restorative yoga’ – a deep state deep stretch that realigns my spine in such an organized, methodical way. it’s an ecstatic process of feeling myself from a multitude of perspectives that all boil down to, essentially, three. the mind starts to run and oh yeah, relax your hip and you’ll literally lower down three inches and focus on the breath, bam, you’re back. do that again. but also, feel free to groan because that stretch is so deep it’s like the hand of God digging deep into your glutes and all around your hip sockets…

i mean, for me it is. fuck yeah feel the self-love. can you blame me for loving it this way? feel free to moan. in the end no matter what kind of moan it is, it is the depth of human feeling. i think it all goes to the same place, that deep well of emotion we are, most of us, so capable of. No fantasies of who we are once we’ve all wormholed our way together through a vast array of the dimensions and expressions we are capable of, perhaps even believing at some point that we’ve finally seen it all – and it’s only then that we stop falling, but we also die.

In these deep centrally connective spaces on my body i hold these visions, some of which are true and some of which need a little more space before they can be released, so they can be let out completely, leaving not even a hair behind. gone. full mobility has returned along with ecstatic release.

i spray the room with magic to clear all that has been let go, to bless and send it further on its journey. may it glide its way out the window and fall to the ground. may its decomposition fertilize soil and create space for new growth, new experiences and new ideas.

clearly, i will also bleed soon. i will feed this land.

Posted on by d

lordy, let it lie.

Photo by Ahmed zayan on Unsplash | sanguine meander

What i wouldn’t give for something to lean on right now. I’ve given up my bed to guests and I’m sleeping on an air mattress in my office, a cavernous room at the back of the house with a creaky floor that sounds its alarm whenever I move. I think a lot in here though. This is where the serious work really gets done. When I’m not sleeping in it, which is usually, it serves as my office and is also where I do stretch and meditate. The wall-to-wall closet at the end of the room has sliding, mirrored doors, useful for confidence-building or alignment but creepy otherwise. i lived in another house like this here too, a large box with mirrored closet doors throughout the house and a spiral staircase. it was like you could never escape yourself. i mean, i get it, but still…

So here I am on an air mattress in the middle of this larger room. I feel adrift on it.

There is nothing to lean on, so I’m driven to complete this thought ride by the desire to lie down. There’s a point in my cycle that’s pretty rational, and I’m in it. Without something to lean on, this is too hard to do.

I’m more interested in dreaming right now.

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

ultralight

Photo by Jason Wong on Unsplash | Ultralight on Cordella magazine's Field Notes | Sanguine Meander

In an emergency, a crayon will light for thirty minutes.
In an emergence, rainbow votives held high
refract prisms on walls and in the sky, flying flares
detract from heat-seeking missiles and take the blame.

Grateful for aim and gasping for breath,
thanks to lighthouses and harbingers
we have escaped death and burn with purpose
like a California wildfire fueled by fierce winds,
choosing our victims with a logic only known
by three-hundred-foot tall flames that take
everything in their wake by storm.

Our prayers reside in droplets of rain
hovering over clouds of smoke that move
from here to New Jersey and wind up
on the news, coating everything in fear
and soot, the tears of mothers dripping down
on things we could no longer protect,
dirty black rivulets making their way south.

Enlightened by loss we remove the handles
from toothbrushes to take every last ounce
of weight off our backs, to ease the days
spent on trails that are thousands of miles long;

Somewhere, someone has recorded all this
for posterity, hoping someone will be alive
to grasp these leftover asphalt thoroughfares,
remnants of dams and plastic hills,
miscellaneous bits of things we left behind
in our attempts to run from ourselves—

Unidentifiable trinkets that melted together
to block the natural paths of rivers
until they forgot how to flow to the ocean.

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.