Beauty & the Beast

Some days I notice the light shining through a brilliant red leaf & my perspective shifts so the whole world looks beautiful.

Some days I just can't see, or I don't notice & I miss all that beauty.

Some days I do notice & even all that beauty just isn't enough to soothe the broken feeling...

So..."Ring the bells that still can ring..."

The Oh-So-Much-ness

My last post was March 10th.
That means it's been almost 4 months since I've posted anything.
The interesting thing to me is that it actually felt like longer...
Like another lifetime...

I've been caught up in Life, or, as I like to call it:  The Oh-So-Much-ness

Oh, so much cooking; Oh, so much cleaning; Oh, so much making music by hitting one object on another object (and the related: Oh, so much defining what can & cannot be used as a drum/drum stick...)...

Just now, I am at the end of day 5 of a 7-day yoga intensive.
I have laughed, I have cried, the muscles & bones in my mid-back are talking to me quite loudly; I have not slept nearly as much as I hoped I would (though I fall asleep in in class during Savasana & Pranayama every day).

I am missing my boy *intensely*...

The Dad messaged me that they slept in this meadow last night.
So much sadness, so much joy; I ache.

And, each day, my belly grows.
Who is this new little one?
Will s/he ever know this Dad?
So much joy, so much sadness; I ache.

Oh.  So.  Much.

Love.

Dec 6th

Frost Art On My Windshield This Morning

I Went to the Woods Today...

...because I needed to be surrounded by beings much larger, older & wiser than myself...

I walked for a ways & then wrapped myself around a (Madrone) tree & sobbed.
And she held me.

I feel so lost right now.  Unsure how to be a mother, a friend, a lover, a co-parent, a human...

Later, I lay on the ground beneath a huge & gorgeous Redwood.

And she held me too.  And the Earth.
I felt cradled.

There were an abundance of small, magical, beautiful beings...

And I came home with some peace in my heart.

June, July, August, September -or- Life is Good

Mama-Love

Wild-Haired Artist-Boy

Held

Blossoming

Grateful For

Unbearable Lightness of Being

Moooooooo

Big Guy!

Tender

Turtle-Friend

The Last Moon Before He Came Home

Mimi's

Life Will Break You - by Louise Erdich

Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that,
and living alone won’t
either
for solitude will also break you
with its yearning.

You have to love.
You have to feel.

It is the reason you are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart.
You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens
that you are broken
or betrayed
or left
or hurt
or death brushes near

Let yourself sit
by an apple tree and
listen
to the apples
falling all around you in heaps

wasting their sweetness.

Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

The Future

 

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

If You Want to Change the World

If you want to change the world… love a woman-really love her.
Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.
Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.
Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing-
every winged one, every furry and scaled one,
every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one,
every not yet born and dying one…
Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.
If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.
If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet,
you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.

If you want to change the world… love a woman-one woman
beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason,
beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety
and all your superficial concepts of freedom.
We have given ourselves so many choices
we have forgotten that true liberation
comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire
and burning through our resistance to Love.
There is only one Goddess.
Look into Her eyes and see-really see
if she is the one to bring the axe to your head.
If not, walk away. Right now.
Don’t waste time “trying.”
Know that your decision has nothing to do with her
because ultimately it’s not with who,
but when we choose to surrender.

If you want to change the world… love a woman.
Love her for life-beyond your fear of death,
beyond your fear of being manipulated
by the Mother inside your head.
Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her.
Say you’re willing to LIVE with her,
plant trees with her and watch them grow.
Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty,
by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess
through your adoration and devotion.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
in all her faces, through all her seasons
and she will heal you of your schizophrenia-
your double-mindedness and half-heartedness
which keeps your Spirit and body separate-
which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self
for something to make your life worth living.
There will always be another woman.
Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one
and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars,
trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.
Man doesn’t need any more choices.
What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine,
of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing,
of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots
strong enough to hold the Earth together
while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.

If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman .
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.
Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
No, she is not weak in her codependence.

If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through
until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,
her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.

If you want to change the world,
lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.
Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger
and love a woman…
beyond all of your striving for greatness,
beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you
if you would only take her in your arms
and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.

What if peace is a dream which can only be re-membered
through the heart of Woman?
What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine
is the key to opening Her heart?

If you want to change the world…love a woman
to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm
where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth.

--Lisa Citore

Things I Love Right Now

It's called a Reaper Bun (doesn't that sound deadly?!?) & it's basically a croissant, dipped in butter-sugar & baked.  Yeah, deadly.

This book is amazing. I am totally re-inspired.




This song makes me cry every time...

Words for Today

 

What the Body Says

I was born here, and

I belong here, and

I will never leave.

The blue heron's

gray smoke will flow over me

for years

and the wind will decide

all directions

until I am safely and entirely

something else.

I am thinking of this

this winter morning

as I sit by the fire

and the fire in it's red rack

keeps singing

its crackling song

of transformation.

Of course

I wonder about

the mystery

that is surely up there

in starry space

and how some part of me

will go there at last.

But I am talking now

of the way the body speaks,

and the wind, that keeps saying,

firmly, lovingly:

a little while and then this body will be stone; then

it will be water; then

it will be air.

-Mary Oliver