2010 Comes to its End

And for many of us, thank the powers that be. It's been a hard year. A year full of ups and downs and mostly for me this year challenges. Challenges that have come to guide me through this next phase of my life. And I am exceedingly grateful and blessed. There are years that come as a suprise. There are years that pass by with out much note. This year has been a year of growth for me as an individual and as the free spirit I once believed myself to be.

I am a woman who wants to dream. The time has come to dream big and to act accordingly in the persuit of those dreams. The dream I wish for is simple and clear. It is to realign myself to my path, my bliss, my highest good. To reach further than I have in that persuit. To be true to myself with out going to extreme or wallowing in my failed attempts.

I want to be happy. I want to find love. I want to contribute in a way that feels good to me and to those in my life that are beautiful representations of beings making their own way, on their own paths with their own dreams. And I want to be gentle and be strong at once. I want to find the balance step by step because that is the only way it can be done. It takes time and practice. And I will find my way toward my dreams. I wish that for you too. May 2011 bless us all.

Namaste

New Space

Somehow summer and fall have come and gone. The end of the year approaches and snow is on the ground. These last six months have flown by and I am still on sabbatical (ie: in my mid life crisis). I am living now in a beautiful old house built in the 1920's with friends and looking for work, making art, and voraciously reading and trying to figure out what comes next.

Dreams have been powerful these last six months and find myself completely amazed by the synchroniciy of what I find in the dreamtime. There has been a lot of healing happening for me this year. It seems a mess of anger, emotion and sorrow, but with some hindsight now I find it has mostly been about forgiveness. I am relearning how to build hope, how to make goals and create joy. There is a transformation happening. Something I have been desperatley wanting for the last many years.

There exists a person inside of me who has been lost. I have missed her desperatley. I can see her now in glimmers of the sun on the water, in the twinkle of light through the crystals in my room, through the music I hear and the plants that grow in my new space. And I am grateful for it. 2008 will soon come to an end. I look forward to 2009 with anticipation and happiness. May it bring us all what we need and bless us with what we can imagine.

Flickers in the Tree

The hot weather is finally here. Summer has finally shown its bright face. In the morning the sun shines in as well as the squack of a new born flicker in the maple tree in our front yard. We call it affectionatley Brat, mostly for waking us up in the early hours complaining of hunger pains and boredom. It pokes it's little head out with its red markings on its cheeks and stares out into the sky: looking, waiting. I am sure its annoying call with change with time. I hope this akward noise will metamorphose into something beautiful, or at least less like a teradactyl dying. But we feel lucky, and excited, and hopeful that it will grow into a full fledged woodpecker. This is the first year there's been a baby in the tree. We are proud and check on the little family daily now. Ah nature. What an amazing thing.

And now it is June...

Somehow it is already the middle of 2008! The muse has been sidetracked these last many months and I promise to get back to it now. I have been creatively productive in the interim with art making. And have enjoyed that immensely. I think it is some of my best work artistically. But, that phase has now ended and I begin to think about writing again. Soon...

But first, there were the many months of spring as well. Which, in this house I share, means getting the Dahlia's ready to go in the ground. Three weeks ago we planted over 2oo tubers in an organic farm in Woodinville called, The Root Connection. In this place, the soil is dark and rich. It is magical soil and sparkles in the sun. Why? Because it is filled with tiny pieces of tumbled glass for drainage. What amazing ideas they utilize there. We bring home tumbled pieces of this glass that are too big for the soil. One piece I brought home yesterday, looks like a tiny iceberg. They sit in our windows reminding us of the magic that is happening at the farm. Soon there will be Dahlia's everywhere in all kinds of colors taller than we are. And the cutting days will begin.

In between that and now, I shall write...

Creative Outlets

Here is what I have been doing latley and why I havent written. I have been obsessed with these collages. They are like putting together a puzzle, or making a quilt for someone. I am enjoying it so much, I thought I would share it here as well. Thanks!

Rumi

I have recently become re-enamored with the poetry of Rumi. Actually not only Rumi, but Rumi spoken in Persian with the haunting music of the ney flute played live behind it. I remember hoping it would never end. I remember being transported to an amber desert on a camel's back. Thinking this is what heaven will sound like. All this just before the whirling dervish began to spin right before my eyes... How fluid the dervish was. How transported he seemed to be. Taken from his body somehow to another place, spinning towards the center.

Hard to imagine anything more beautiful, except maybe death. But death that day did not come. Death was there in the room with all of us. And I remembered as I was sitting there waiting for the ambulance, all the deaths that I have been blessed to witness, to be a part of, to sit in stillness with. And those compressed moments are shrouded with mystery, with silence, with reverence and sorrow. But there is often an air of comfort that comes during that time. An air that is like release. You breathe it in and it wafts over you like a blanket, keeping you safe in your grief. Waiting for that instant when there is no more. When the poem of that beloved person's life is over. When the realization that the spirit of that person no longer resides in the shell of the body you know and connect with that person's being. How little the body matters when the spirit is gone. Eerie to be with the body when the soul has left. So hard to let go.

And the spirit of that person begins to feel like an ancient language that resides inside of you. That when you hear that strange language you remember the feeling of that person, their essence. And that language seems familiar although you have not heard it before. It soothes and calms and is intriguing. Like all of us in that room that day listening to Rumi spoken in Persian who died this year 800 years ago. All of us who were transported that day, by the spinning, by the ney flute, by the language of Rumi that lives forever with in each of us naked and true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY80cJ6DM_U

Awash in flame...

It's the how I remember things from that time that is odd to me. The dreams I had then tell me more about my struggle than anything else. It is the only time in my life that I have ever dreamt about fire on a consistent basis. Not just fire in it's beauty and strength, or even in it's demand of respect and attention. But fire like the scourge of alcohol poured on to an open wound. These violent, active images that lay in wait in sleep were telling me the damage that occured then, was far beyond what I could understand. What I may ever understand...

Last night I dreamt about the ocean, awash in flame.

Waves were crawling across a beach as black as night, glowing in hues of red, orange and ocher. The light upon the water was eerie and pulsating from the fires and the intense sunset which was reflected there. Fires alight with voracious heat and flickering tongue, in the water and on the beach. Fires... Everything was burning. Everything seemed haunted and alive. Smoke, dense in my nostrils with the smell of charred wood and fabric, burnt earth. The air hazy, acrid and dry made my eyes water and itch. I rubbed them smearing soot across my cheeks, blackening my tear streaked hands. In this landscape it was hard to decipher between what was fire, water, and sky.

The beach was a long stretch of black sandy grade, slow and shallow. It bore each wave like the tender drip of a torture device. Waves taking their time to spread all the way out before receding back just as slowly. This dark beach was peering out from underneath the orange, vitrescent waves as the water returned to itself again and again. It was mesmerizing. It was frightening. It was beautiful. This scene was terrifying to me, but there was such light here. Such beautiful, dancing, fluid light like glass being blown and wielded just before it shatters. I heard someone faintly say, "Shall I light a fire for you?" But saw no one. I felt no one near.

These many beach fires, they had been intentionally lit. Fire on the beach. Fire in the water. Debris everywhere, in flame. This, the left over burning of waste; of that which is not wanted, or discarded, of that which is left, of that which remains, it is burning... Large sections of debris were in flame as far as I could see across the inlet. The ocean having claimed some for herself, was carrying parts of it away, still on fire, out to sea. These parcels appeared to be the remnants of a ship, a cabin, a structure of some kind. So much of it, spread out so far now. Charred, no longer recognisable here and there burning, scattered, strewn. There was something familiar here, like tea leaves in a cup. This particular configuration seemed right, and through my black tears recognizable like the back of my hand.

The fires on the water were astonishingly captivating. I found myself in a trance staring out at sea, the movement, rhythm and color there. Shadows and light, water and fire, bizarre and unreal. Entranced, I stood, walked, sat in the wet sand, sprinted across the angry beach, finally laying crumpled, exhausted, worn. I stayed on the beach for hours. Sat and held my knees to my chest, found myself in deep sobs of remorse and release. Tear streaks on my ashy face. Face marks on my knees. Eyes inflamed and raw. But I could not bear to not watch it all burn. I couldn't close my eyes. I wanted to see it. I wanted to bear witness. I was home.

I watched it slowly smolder through the evening. The sky turned to black. And as the stars blinked their way back in to being the captors of the night, I was gifted. The blue blackness was luxurious. The color shift from reds to deep tones was soothing, calming, quiet. It felt like a cloak had fallen upon me, weighing me down into the earth. This cloak made of dark, vaporous night.

Suddenly I was aware that Lincoln was here. He was sitting not far from me, a little over an arms reach away and behind me to my right. I wasn't startled, but on edge. I didn't want him to know I wasn't aware of him the whole time. I wasn't provoked by him. I wasn't surprised. Oddly I wasn't even aroused by his presence. I didn't care. There was no exchange. No emotion revealed. No connection. He was just there, observing, being. I was annoyed by it. Repulsed by him. And if I did nothing he would move on. I slept some, closed my eyes in prayer more like, and the night passed, and the dark passed. And he was there...but not for me.

And as the morning light erupted on to the beach, and stars disappeared in the sky, there appeared the beach of my childhood. The beach of Kingston Washington, a pale gray and blue palette, pristine but for the dark shapes on the bank in low tide. The beach now seemed the palest blue silk kimono with black herons in flight across it's weave. So lovely, almost fragile, most certainly fleeting. Fleeting because unexpectedly there were birds. So many birds. Bright birds, noisy and aggressive, not herons at all. Birds who picked through the rubbage, scavengers all.

And I was angered now. Reeling at the strange gull like birds, such lack of respect. Disturbing the silence, the peace, the burial grounds that this felt like. How dare they take that away from me too. These birds were disturbing the dead. Disturbing what had just been in flame. Dismantling again the landscape before me. I wanted them gone. I started to pick up rocks and throw them at the strange birds. And I threw rocks at them harder than I thought I could throw, with better aim, and with more power than I knew I had. And he stared at me, confused. I didn't care. I looked away unfazed. He waited awhile watching me, contemplating my strange action. Then he too picked up rocks and began to throw them at the birds saying, "Good idea".

It had been a long troubled night. And the birds were annoying, noisy and bright. They were tearing at things, and fighting with each other, squawking and screaming in a cacophony of sound. I could not stop them, and gave up my fight. They were on task and quite desperate in their need. I was exhausted and in deep grief and shock. I needed to sleep now. I wanted to rest. I needed to shut all of this out. When I heard Lincoln whisper, "Shall I light a fire for you"? And I replied as I walked away, "Do what you wish, but not for me".