passings...
i held it together when rosa passed. not out of might or right just because i knew it was her time. i had made peace with her transition long before she actually moved on. and now, today, coretta. her trasition symbolizes so much to me. it's as if her life presence was the last of my memories from the time that revolution and action was truly lived. i have been spirialing into distractions from the road that is ahead of us. i feel alone in the unchartered territory that we are now facing.
why didn't they leave their stories tattooed in my skin?
how will i know which direction to go from here?
oh, we revolutions are just spinning in circles, digging deeper ditches for our own trapped exit. i want to collect their stories in cheesecloth bags, bind them beneath my tongue so that i may always breathe their truths. i am holding strong to their legacied memories and hope.
it's like our biggest big sister is gone now. she has left the world to us and i still want her guidance. i want her leadership and light to navigate me through this dark time.
i have swallowed my pain in this moment. it is resting somber in the pit of my belly, resentful that i have not yet birthed my own purpose.
blessings to us all. giving thanks, honor and celebration to and for the ones who have come before. i know you're here with us still. i can feel your energy and love. it's up to me to open my eyes and heart and connect to everything that's around.
i (too) am the light. thank you for modeling excellence and navigating the way.
always love,
l'
it is not out there...
you are in truth the truth you seek.
sweetlove
there are new secret projects to work on. bigger spaces to occupy. pieces of myself that are ready to dry up and fall away. there are parallel universes at work here and i just surrender into the greater knowing of it all. sometimes, i can hear the answers calling to me in their locked boxes and i just wait for them to softly and joyfully unfold into my lap.
inspiration and confirmation are sometimes found in the most amazing and surprising places. it's just good to know that i'm not the only one out here starving myself while overindulging on most wasteful voidfillers.
sometimes my head just tells me to rest, recouperate, believe in something bigger than myself. when times like this come, i am ready to live into the questions, dance into the unknowns, forgive all of the stories and mis/understandings of the past.
i love/d her. of course i did. and always will. i've loved them all. my greatest instructors have brought me the heaviest lessons. i must seperate the learnings from the teacher. each one has piled itself on my back and i can put them down at any moment i choose. they have come to share lessons, not their whole selves. they have come to help me evolve, not to become the burden of my mind. my gypsydust has been found between the toes of more than i could ever imagine. our worlds are shifted and transformed because of the love we share and that which we recieve. this is the dance here. the lesson of letting go and for that, i am most grateful.
and so it is.
love,
me
tides turn...
thanks for new refuge and new frontiers. to the future's mysteries and the present's most alive choices. yes indeedy. life truly is a choose-your-own-adventure type journey. more wonderful unknowns and knowns to come.
and so it is.
love,
l'
spiraling inward
i want to call in sick to work. sit in meditation. pray. fast. stand on my head. sit in hot, bubbled water with smells of patchouli and ginger. i want fresh juices and sweethugs. i want hands to hold and laps to sit on. this is not a motivated moment. instead i yearn to sulk in this place, to restrestrest and feed my self with delicate, soft hands. i am not fragile, instead hard, worn rough and tired. i want rest and gentle conversations. there is light somewhere i know. uncle cb says light is all around us, that the tunnel is only an illusion.
i want soft beds and comfort moments.
i want home.
l'
6 am
there is too much pressure.
i feel as if i might pop.
wemoon~taurus
wemoon 2006for taurus, earth is the energy. during the month of taurus we find our power through our ability to sink deep roots and hold our position. it's time to explore the sensual potential of our body and the body of the mother, as we garden, touch, build, sing, make love, strengthen and manifest.
if you were born while the sun is in taurus, your power comes from your grounded strength and your ability to bring a dream into the world of matter. you remind us that matter can be a sacred vessel: our bodies and our earth. comfort renews you. stubbornness and the search for security are your gifts and challenges.*who me? stubborn! never...
i am very anxious in this moment. confident that 2006 will bring new love, fresh blood, healing and celebration of the road behind and this present moment. i want many things. and lovelovelove,
sweet love is one of the most important on my list. not in the fantastical, dreamland,
sike! fooled you! kinda love...nah buddy, been there...done that and don't need to go back.
i want the real love. the naked, funky-you can be a hotshittymess and i love you because/despite of yourself-kinda love. i want the realness. the sweetness. the sticky love that brings up and spreads out and fills all the crevices.
and i'm sick as shit about this being in seattle madness. there is no short stack of folks to love or be loved by. no. i think i have swollen up like a distracted clam, holding tight my pearls for fear of loosing them again.
(...this is a completely incomplete thought and i am perfectly okay with that.)
l'
gratitude.
there are many things to be happy about:establishing and maintaining personal boundaries.
knowing how far i've come and celebrating my own self in this here moment.
sisterfriends.
lovers.
good food.
patience.
not giving a shizahshit anymore.
peace.
sweet sleep.
gentleness.
good green.
breath.
i used to think that adulthood was going to be this easy place of arrival, somewhere i could just connect the dots and draw a beautiful picture. i used to think it was an 'add water and stir' kinda world. now that i've gotten to this land of growntupness, i realize it's just another breath. it's just another opportunity to put one foot in front of the other and be grateful for the journey.
i was disgruntled and angry for manymany moons trying to be this big shit growntup. trying to glow bright into another self. i've learned the power/magic/juice/love/grace of simply being myself here and now, warts and all, lights and everything.
i trust the journey and follow the bridge. i walk outside of the lines, drawing my own with smudged feet and handstand imprints.
i tell my own story of the path thus far, surrendering to guiding ancestor lights who show me the way.
we are each here in solitude, holding the strength of circled community. we stand with one voice combining individual tunes. there is magic here, beneath this land, down in the center of our soul.
i love myself, perfect and whole, alive and complete, confused and assured, simple and complex.
i am a work in progress dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding*.
i am the love, grace and joy that i seek.
and for that i give thanks.
for all of my loving witnesses, i offer my deepest gratitude, especially to the witness of my own heart.
always,
l'
*thanks to
ani d., one of my greatest teachers on the path.
petrified
there is a vast heaviness there. something seductive and slick lurking quietly beneath the waters. "didn't they tell you that splashing would bring it closer? wasn't that the fair warning?" i couldn't hear past the frantic walls of water that my violently flailing arms created. i kicked the nothingness beneath me, praying to go unnoticed, holding my breath with hope that it would finally dissolve beneath the waves.
(it is too hot here and these burning limbs cannot hold me. the water does not wash me dry. instead i scream silently into paper bags tied tight with expectation.)
i do not remember the rest of the warning. don't splash, they said. your movement will only invite what you don't want. but how do i escape unscathed? how do i transcend this place?
you must play dead, she said. you must face your greatest fear with stillness. you must lay face down in the unknown. completely surrender yourself to it. that is the only way you will ever be free.
my love of lucie
I Am Running into a New Yeari am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me
the lesson of falling leavesthe leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves
poem in praise of menstruationif there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta if there
is a river
braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain if there is
a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel if there is in
the universe such a river if
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water
pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave
-mme. lucille clifton
...
i am irritable. summer saves me most days and for that i pledge my eternal and unyielding gratitude. grumpy, like only hiding under rocks or in the arms of my beloved(s) would solve. yabs says that she cannot worry about future things with her attention dedicated to the present and i dream of days when she and me and nicole will share dwellings in the bay. yes. this will be good. ruhana is bringing brotherman and the beautiful boys to the a. in march and we are planning reunions and house renting for the lot of us. it will be nurturing times for us all.
i dare and leave messages for those i once never called although the love abounds and i rest assured that i am more than enough.
i am fitted in too tight sweaters and while i was once intimidated by the image of myself reflected in the eyes of others, i have finally learned to love it all, knowing that my own perception and reception of myself are all that matter.
i remember horse farm survival tactics, and jazmines and the days that will never come again. i rememeber that womyn that people remind me of, the one of solid roots and presence and blind grace like the caged bird's song. thoughts of some folk still make my skin crawl and i realize more and more the unneccessary willingness to pretend to like them. niceness is usually irrelevant in my book. what's real? what are you really saying? who are you when the lights are off and you can finally exhale into your deflated skin? who who will you become then?
neither your persona nor your silence will protect you.
i got a jones in my bones...
TaurusSome religious traditions preach the doctrine that desire is a major obstacle to enlightenment. To escape from the predicament of your suffering, they insist, you must overcome all of your yearning. But Tantric scholar Daniel Odier believes this dogma is a delusion. In his book Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening, he says desire should be at the heart of spiritual practice. Not all longings are equally sacred, of course: Fantasies about winning the lottery or seeing an adversary punished are not on a par with wanting to expand your capacity to bestow blessings and give love. In 2006, Taurus, consider the possibility that Odier is right. Try out the hypothesis that the most spiritual thing you can do is cultivate high-minded yearnings.
reborn endings/beginnings
i brought in the new year in peaceful, solo retreat, nestled in 10 beautiful acres of northwest woods. i needed to recover something sacred and remember the beauty and power of the earth before stepping into the new year. in preperation, i fasted on raw foods and self-perscribed silence for three days before sitting in circle with soulful community of new friends in a powerful earth mama sweatlodge.
i will not attempt to paint the picture of such a transformative, powerful process. no. just know that earth mother, father sky, sister rain and brother wind have refeshed and woken me new into my beautiful skin and self. to try and talk any more about such an experience would be doing everything involved a complete disservice. but yes. it was pefectly more than i had ever anticipated. the cravings of my heart were fully nourished. i did not want to leave. i could stay on the earth forever.
today, i am back on concrete, moving in spaces of selling, buying, becoming someone new...i am holding on loosely to myself and the knowings that rose in the sweat, in the woods, in the spirit. a sadness has re/emerged and i am craving for the still simplicity of the groves. i miss those spirits and the energy of freedom that is birthed and sustained when consumption, incompletion and fear are not the primary (albeit false) beliefs. i am remembering to breathe fully in the space between...i am staying connected to the prayers that i/we screamed, chanted, cried, moaned, sung in the sweat. i am remembering the voices of the truth before they are bought and sold. i am stepping into my ancient and infinite self.
the rain has washed me new/old/home and for that i am most grateful.
ahse. aho. and so it is.
always love,
l'
