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.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by d

meditation on delayed gratification

written in 2004 as a first attempt at spoken word in a writer’s group i was involved in back in Portland, OR. I had to get drunk as fuck to read it onstage and it just… Didn’t happen. I woke up hungover from wine and failure.

Never actually did wind up fully hooking up with the subject of this poem, tho obviously there were a lot of moments of deep, heavy breathing and claims of tantric practice. We were all part of a very messy and juvenile attempt at polyamory that ended badly. But hey… There’s this.

———————-

no one else will

brave the between –

you and i with

i and i

and eyes locked

we are soul gazing…

my body’s shaking,

heart’s smiling

oh my god you’re so

fucking amazing!

what flows between us

requires other people

to split in two

i know nothing of you

but the sound of your voice

and the strength in your hands

the shape of your lips

how YOU feel in MY hands

what i know is that

i ache all the time

from the profusion of joy

that i do quake in this state

from the coming fusion of we

that the brush of your hand

induces a spasm

makes me think about things

like prolonged orgasms:

like i said, my body’s shaking,

and sweat-making

this is spirit-moving

soulgasm, soulgasm,

soulgasm….

oh yes i spasm

because i think about this

and i can’t even fathom

that it’s any better

than i can imagine

and that’s all i’ve got to go on –

thank god i’ve got a brilliant mind.

i am awake upstairs

awake down below

and awake in every space in between.

this house is a temple

and every room is alive –

all the lights are on

and from the street

i appear to glow

from inside.

i am runnin’ up the bill

an empty glass for you to fill

a full one for you to drink

if you’ll raise me to your lips

and sip slowly

i’ll intoxicate

unless you hesitate

and consider that

perhaps i’m poison

in which case…
…it’s highly likely that

i’ll inflict some damage.

Posted on by d

Panorama

He was one in a series of Scorpios – that series being an extended event I can never really think of singularly despite, at least in my memories, there never appearing much of a break between any them. It wasn’t entirely conscious serial monogamy – there was no way I could have ever handled any of them more than one at a time, though I had a Cancer and an Aquarius on the side They were safe and predictable when the endorphin high wore off, when a little agony began to kick in. sweet, comfortable, boring little snuggles after the scorpion sting.

Yes, my chain of scorpions, each one so emotionally intense and nimble-fingered, each with its own delicious little torture to inflict…

There’s only one I lost track of. We had a pretty epic little minute together. I knew the second I saw him that he’d come to keep my mind off of the unbelievably intense little psychodrama I found myself amidst, living out of my car, sleeping on someone’s floor, spending the next couple of months taking care of a garden most people would never see the likes of before heading off to god knows where else. The thing that was really awesome was that I could see the same thing on his face, too. He’d just come out of an intense and codependent relationship.

It was so obviously meant to be for the next three months. There were some amazing breakthroughs in sexual satisfaction, motorcycle rides through Sonoma and Mendocino counties, and a really fun time at an afterparty in Marin for a convention of worldchangers. We would share a dance floor for the first time that night, and I was a little nervous. Like kissing, or how hugging someone who makes our electrical circuit flash feels, dancing can make or break a deal for me. Oh my god he could dance, and he had so much fun doing it, and we had a lot of fun doing it together, just like everything else we’d done. It wasn’t a reason to want anything deeper, but it was a reason, for me anyway, to just keep wanting more of the same.

He got me a really cool ring right before he kind of dumped me over the phone. i cried a little before a friend pointed out that it was okay since I was already another county away and ambiguous about whether I would go back where I’d been, but the fact of the matter was I probably would have, had I been asked, and I would have been happy to do it for another week – I would have taken anything it was all so good, but I had to accept that as the end.

I wouldn’t speak to him for a second but our last encounter, that I remember anyway, was a heartfelt hug in the middle of my work place kitchen, but it was enough… Enough that he would remain sweet and not bitter on my tongue – and I, hopefully, to him. I felt, implicitly, through that hug, that we were both grateful for who and what we’d been for each other, escape and rebound.

I love a little, low level tragedy, and i had been extremely fond of the ring, part of a collection of northwest native silverwork for sale in a little coastal town antique store – so several years later I still wear that ring. I haven’t taken it off my right middle finger, and so i often wonder what the hell ever happened to him, and I think of all the yum we shared, and then of course, every single time, I start thinking about the rest of the scorpios that fell into that chain, and the mind wanders again to every little deliciousness stored in my memory bank, and nostalgia can just be so delightful sometimes.

I either have some lovely karmic ties with an astrological sign or this is all bullshit and I am simply selecting a set of criteria I am attracted to, repeatedly. I like to say that one thing I have discovered after moving to the west coast is that astrology is often used as justification for being what we’d simply refer to back east as an asshole. “Spirit told me to fuck you over” in other words. I didn’t believe it until I encountered it, but encounter it I did. That shit just would not fly where I’d come from. I felt as misunderstood as some people here did when they were presented with sarcasm or a sense of irony. We did not understand each other in the slightest.

So it has been many years later and I have been here on the west coast for a lot of those years, and I am still sort of looking for the middle path. Mostly I am standing in the middle of a seesaw with my legs spread, sometimes leaning a little one way and sometimes a little more the other, depending on the mood or medicines ingested. Sometimes I fall off and want nothing to do with people at all, and those times can last a while now that I took my Scorpionic duties even further and made a baby with one.

She is beautiful and awesome all-consuming and it means that now I am even more judicious about who I choose to love intimately – it doesn’t happen that often, but it is generally joyous and present when it does, because that moment is really all I can guarantee. I will dive 1000% into that moment, swim to its depths and find the treasure there, and then I will surface and find a way to integrate it into my life, and then I will let its juice fuel me until life and serendipity find each other once again. It’s how it has to be.