arise my soul and sing

now does our world descend
the path to nothingness
(cruel now cancels kind;
friends turn to enemies)
therefore lament,my dream
and don a doer's doom

create is now contrive;
imagined,merely know
(freedom:what makes a slave)
therefore,my life,lie down
and more by most endure
all that you never were

hide,poor dishonoured mind
who thought yourself so wise;
and much could understand
concerning no and yes:
if they've become the same
it's time you unbecame

where climbing was and bright
is darkness and to fall
(now wrong's the only right
since brave are cowards all)
therefore despair,my heart
and die into the dirt

but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss--
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything's nothing 
--arise,my soul;and sing
 
~e.e. cummings

Today is quantum transformation! Yesterday was future fantasies.

today is sunrise over the mountains and power lines

Today is...

Today is the cosmic game.

My Friday FB update was "Today is paradise." I've been just so entranced with the enjoyment of today. I've been exposed to this concept for so long - "Be here now," "Be present," "Live in the moment," etc., but I think mostly my mind comprehended it before as a mental concept rather than as an is-ness. 

So I'm beginning a "Today is..." project, doubly posted on FB and here.

Yesterday's was, "Today is dark chocolate."

Viva hoy!

Deep Terrain

I was pointed in the direction of reflecting on GRIEF a few days ago. Strange, I thought, as I feel so overjoyed to be alive right now. Thinking just a little more about it, I realized that wherever I am in the moment, I am standing and walking through a deep terrain that contains much more than what is obvious. That evening I rediscovered this poem, written two days after my grandma Shirley's birthday, less than a month after she passed away, seemingly quite suddenly. 

It's good to remember that all our stories need to be told.

1.9.07

Deep calming breaths are not possible right now

A concentrated attempt, an elongated, nostril-flared focused sip

Is thwarted as the air is diverted, released through a deep hole

Between my breasts, both sides buzzing with the living’s speeded heartbeat

The soul is not at ease, cannot be stripped of its suffering,

Needs to be bathed over and over in tears,

Sung to over and over in wailing lullabies, bubbling down into

Sniffling attempts again at the breath of life

The prana which will feed each organ and cell

The rocking ebb and tide, apparently not so endless

Catch, catch, catching against a jagged rock again,

To wail the widow walk’s howl to the sound of the sea, relentless

Breath which keeps coming in and out, without that feeling of fullness

As a deep emptiness sits among apparently thriving systems, buzzing

Along with all the exchanges, receptions and pathways required

With mysterious flexibility and commonalities

Somehow this buzzing complex system receives its heart’s message beyond blood

And connects so deeply and un-physically, that the corpus can be annihilated

By a memory floating down neuron streams, can do things beyond reason,

Beyond belief, with the strength of that unseen powerful force,

And can create a growth or an emptiness in itself in response to so many

Factors beyond the scope of generations of rational study

The hole is deeper than the depth of my torso,

Like an endless well with a bottom somewhere,

A child not ready to drop a coin in and find out where

Or what lies down there, breathing and squinting into the blackness

To make out ephemeral forms that remind her

Of what’s most important, even though it never looked just like that.

A faint hum from under the breath hugs the hole

Blows warmth on a blazing ember losing its outside fire, still hot

To the core, and opens the windows to let more air in

And sing joyfully discordantly out to the trees whizzing by

In sweet full summer of life moments that resound

Through the cold snake of a tunnel

When that coin is dropped.

Teddy Sampson

On International Women's Day, I'm celebrating my great great aunt Teddy Sampson, who starred with Pancho Villa in The Life of General Villa while she was still a teenager and 2 years before Villa ordered a cross-border attack on Columbus, NM, which is about an hour and a half from where I live now.

In this photo, it's Teddy on the right and aunt Anne on the left. They were two of my great grandma Mary's sisters.

She later married silent film actor Ford Sterling, and continued to act in silent films for about 10 years. I wonder, did she stop making films because she was she too old - in her late 20s?! - then? She lived all her life in CA and never reconnected with her family back east. Even though I mostly resemble my dad's side of the family, I bear a resemblance to aunt Teddy. Her birth name was Nora, and I was almost named after her.

Which came first, the phallus or the egg?

I held a shiva lingam yesterday, a sacred stone from the Narmada River in western India, which resembles both a phallus and an egg, and is considered to hold energy of the divine union of male and female, among other positive qualities. When holding it, what kept coming up for me was seed. A seed holds everything needed for the full manifestation of the plant/universe. It is tiny, and usually well protected. Its being is part of a dynamic of relations, movement, nourishing and receiving. It may be called potential, though I see it more as the whole universe in a turtle shell. It's all there, it's all perfect. You can hardly see any of it, but with time you will see an ongoing cycle, that continues from that same seed when the plant it becomes dies and rejoins the earth and becomes part of another plant and many other forms of life.

I haven't been here in a while. My life has been full of tumult this fall and winter, both harmonious and discordant. I'm realizing as I write that I haven't been here because I don't feel that the blogosphere, no matter how small mine may be, is where I want to process what's going on through these times. Still, it feels good to remember that I have a place to begin a conversation, or an expression to a quiet ear, about whatever comes up...