'Tis the Season

My family is very small
and live so far away

from one

another.

We are but four:

One in Sweden, north even of Stockholm which has a syndrome;

one in Sweetwater, West Texas, where neither sweetness nor the comfort of soft rain abides, only wind;

One in the city, one in the woods of Colorado.

We sometimes gather, and avoid old wounds. We are careful of one other, cautious of our relative space.

We harbor great love and hurt and vast deep affection, yet seasons come and go when we do not break bread or take quilts down from the closets, nor do we polish the silver in anticipation.

We are few, and far away.

Manna

Manna

by Joseph Stroud

Everywhere, everywhere, snow sifting down,
a world becoming white, no more sounds,
no longer possible to find the heart of the day,
the sun is gone, the sky is nowhere, and of all
I wanted in life – so be it – whatever it is
that brought me here, chance, fortune, whatever
blessing each flake of snow is the hint of, I am
grateful, I bear witness, I hold out my arms,
palms up, I know it is impossible to hold
for long what we love of the world, but look
at me, is it foolish, shameful, arrogant to say this,
see how the snow drifts down, look how happy
I am.

"Manna" by Joseph Stroud, from Of This World. © Copper Canyon Press, 2009.

I made it, and early, too!!

I have successfully completed NaNoWriMo and am sooo excited. The book is an epistolary style, letters from one woman to a childhood friend covering the period 1966 through 2010. It is not in final form, but I like it better than I expected to and may make it a project. In the meantime, I am celebrating!!

Tah Dah!!

The Big Day

Thanksgiving will never be just another day, not even when I had nowhere to go and walked down Suncrest in tears with my loyal Lab Kate; not the year one of my kids and I had a huge fight and ended up at VI for tuna melts and then a movie; not when I was an uncomfortable guest at a relative stranger's table, or ran off to Taos with friends. Not the years we did not get home for Thanksgiving, all those years at table without my beloved parents. It is not just another day for me. Yesterday we made pies and rolls and dressing; today we will make a casserole, potatoes, turkey and dressing for leftovers (when we return from a weekend road trip) as we drink mimosas and listen to The Splendid Table Turkey Triage program. Later, we go to the neighbors, bringing appetizers, wine and pumpkin and pecan pies. This day we will read the papers, discard the ads, watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with the sound off. Monique, my current Lab, will be regularly and firmly kicked out of the kitchen. We will watch "Home for the Holidays" and drink more mimosas, and maybe fit in a nap before dinner. It's Thanksgiving, and we are thankful it is not just another day.

Thanksgiving preparations are

in full tilt. My Sainted Mother, of course, looms large - we made the caramel rolls this afternoon, and they are wonderful, as usual. We are heading to the neighbors' but nonetheless fixing a turkey breast with dressing, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole to eat when we come back from Nebraska - a road trip commencing Friday morning. Why spend Black Friday shopping here when we can hit Manard's in Scottsbluff and observe sunset at Carhenge in Alliance? We are heading out with turkey sandwiches and dressing - hence the need to cook a separate dinner. And our own pie. This year, Leigh is baking a combination pumpkin and pecan for us; pecan and pumpkin pies, respectfully, for dinner tomorrow. We are planning a leisurely morning: breakfast casserole, mimosas, caramel rolls, coffee - ummm, ummm, ummm. I am heading to water aerobics tonight for some preventive maintenance.

I forgot - the last post was a haiku, but this morning

laying abed - I watched a delicate silver sliver of dawn and thought I would try a poem - I have been madly, madly writing for National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and not much else. I was in so much pain during most of October that I did nothing, missed the most beautiful Fall of my thirty years in Colorado - I feel like whining, but it's over and not much could have been done. But I'm back on track with the cortisone and will schedule surgery this month, although it may be as much as three months out - anyway, I started the day with...dawn - and now i cannot recall the haiku - I had two in my head. sheesh.

Pale eastern light dawns/a narrow silver ribbon/on the horizon.

That was certainly not it - but there you are. Notebook by the bed. The morning was so quiet with that grey pearl light behind the shadow of the Ponderosa pines that i didn't want to get up and turn on a light to write. The world's loss, alas!

October 13

October morning
Green and gold after first frost
Ice in the sundial

So, this is the deal

my damned sciatica is killing me, nothing is helping: aspirin, midol, aleve, advil. and i might be feeling a bit sorry for myself this beautiful October day - poor me, miserable, grumpy, and worst of all: limited. so i call my sister to tell her i can't come home in october due to pain and suffering etc, etc. she has no electricity. after 16 years without a decent bathroom, they rewired it and cut off all the power. her bedroom is full of boxes and she's sleeping on the couch. her youngest son has just been seriously injured in a 4-wheeler accident and she's waiting to hear from the hospital. her live-in can no longer walk and she has hurt her back wheeling him around. so hey, there's always a rainbow, right? I have electricity, no 4-wheeler accidents, no incapacitated elderly live-in to wheel around and i still can sleep in my bed. quitcher bitchin.

Theresa of Avila in the Garden

The strawberry fills my mouth, a rude kiss, a soft bruise against the back of my teeth. Red and ripe, voluptuous and sweet. Juice bleeds down the sides of my mouth. It's permissible to slowly lick one's stained fingers, one at a time, eyes closed in prolonged ecstasy. Theresa of Avila in the Garden. I hesitate. The next berry might disappoint, lack the perfection of the first berry: warm and ripe and willing. Hands on my hips, I contemplate my garden, disapproving of its unwillingness to yield. Ogallala Everbearing, guaranteed to bear and yet they stubbornly refuse to send out runners. They tease me with deep green leaves, hopeful white blossoms, yellow-eyed. They hide beneath the wild lupine that cruelly invade my bed. They lure yarrow into their domain, and the yarrow, too, conspires to deny me berries. Too long I have accepted their wild undisciplined ways. No more. I uproot the bed, lupine and berries and yarrow all together. Glean the berries and start over: add compost and ashes. The detritus of life dug into the soil, unwelcome wild yarrow and lupine exiled, unruly scrub oak expelled. The bed now fallow until next Spring, until the Gurney Seed Catalog arrives and the ever-bearing strawberries, glossy and perfect and unattainable, sing their sweet siren song, and I again succumb.

the Zen of Arrival

...was our first assignment: The Road to Crestone, County T, passed the info booth, which of course I breezed by, hoping to see a UFO welcome wagon. The road to enlightenment degraded, literally, from asphalt to gravel, dusty hardpan washboard. By then I'd turned off the Andrea Bocelli and determined to bask in silence. After a mile or so, I began hoping the sacred road grader would make an appearance. The road narrowed; I was sure it was a metaphor.

But of course, we do - come home, the last post

a chimera of sorts, nothing to do with the Thomas Wolfe sort of moment, we all go home again, and again. But it's a going, not a coming...that may be way too esoteric or just plain thick, but I actually know what I mean (going home v coming home). I had my son home for a night. We made peach jam and spaghetti sauce (which got rather lively in the pressure cooker). I awoke this morning with an ineffable sense of loss, a hollowness that I always get when one of them leaves, or I leave them.

I. The Attic Speaks
this is a sort of meditation on the stuff that grows in my attic, coming and going with the to and fro of my various spawn - god that sounds awful. Anyway:

I am sometimes cautioned: "I may have to take that back with me.
I may need it this winter [spring, summer, fall]."

More often: "Can you put this in the attic for me? I can't take it with me, don't have the room..."

And so their possessions come and go and leave indelible tracks on my heart,
reminding me that they are not here, and that even their vestiges are temporary.

I may change that phrase to "...cast shadows on my heart..." rather than leave , etc.

Whaddya think?

II. Untitled

There lies your suitcase
on the bed in your old room.
So temporary.

There lies your suitcase
on the bed in the blue room.
So temporary.

Basta - I have chicken in the oven and it smells wonderful.

Sometimes you can't come home

Not a concept I've ever embraced, but listening to "The Jefferson Hour" this week, Clyde Jenkins was discussing Merriweather Lewis' failure to adjust after the long trek through the Louisiana Territory and said (paraphrasing someone else I failed to note): "How far can you go out before you can't come back?" I think about Terre that way, that he just got lost and couldn't get back. Or became someone else, really.

well, hell

long time, no posting - cuz, jeez, i had this little photo essay on spring but i didnt get the pictures onto the computer and then had more or less a prolonged energy dip wherein i actually considered getting hold of some testosterone in the hopes that i might be energized by that - well of course that wasn't happening. so then finally the photos got onto the computer but for some reason i cant get them onto the blog - so what youre missing is a foot of snow on my deck, the dog covered with snow and a new colt, a little pinto filly. and now we are closer to Bastille Day than to Summer Solstice and all has gone unremarked.

I find my self distracted

by thoughts of my son's friend, Wilson, new mother of a baby daughter born in November, I believe. The talented and formerly independent Wilson has become obsessive over nursing her daughter, bemoans her husband's disinterest and has totally subsumed her life in an unexpected path of frustration, insecurity (how can one possibly be the perfect mother?) and the surprising discovery that once she has become the unwitting vessel for the heretofore wildly anticipated progeny...well, duh. I have so far refrained from commenting on her blog, which I find alternately sad and annoying. Not what she expected - well, she shoulda asked, cuz darlin', ain't no surprises there.

Lower your expectations, give the kid a couple of bottles a day and have a good stiff shot. And tell you what - no one, not children, not husband, not even your own mother - will book you A Room of Your Own.

Love, Virginia

Is Sarah Palin the Paris Hilton of Politics??? Except not that smart.

Are you...

the consensus lady?

I promised myself NOT to blog further about the census, but this I could not resist: Yes, madam, I am the consensus lady. Thank you so much.

MAY DAY

maydaymaydaymaydaymaydaymaydaymaydaymaydaymaydaymaydaymayday

NRFU

It's official: I have been sworn in as a Dept of Commerce census worker - Non-responsive Follow-Up - doesn't that just beg ridicule - FU, Census. I found myself on a raft of unemployed misfits adrift in a sea of bureaucracy - perfect fit, I might add. In its wisdom, or more likely a computer snafu, most of us are from Palmer Lake, where no one received a census form in the mail. Motivation: fresh air and a weekly check, in that order (it being Colorado and all).

Here, Kitty Kitty

I'm thinking this blog might be a little like Schroeder's cat - not unlike the old conundrum regarding the tree that falls unheard in the forest. Does the blog exist if I don't write it? Or don't think about it - well, I do think about it, so there's that. Is it existing and not existing at the same time since no one reads it? Or does it only exist in the past when there are no recent entries? Is it less real if it doesn't fulfill its purpose for existing? I didn't do that well in physics, no surprise there - so quantum mechanics might well be beyond me. But since I did so well in algebra, I do understand the cat, its existence being an abstraction.

Nonetheless, a zwischeraum by definition is another Schroeder's cat - the intersice, the space between rooms or whatever- exists and doesn't exist at the same time, since time itself has to determine when it's real.

The Post-Lenten Resurrection Rag

Lent this year was less than satisfying, although as Fr Jeff stated, we have a propensity for embracing the concept of hair shirts and ashes and eschew the joys of salvation - maybe he didn't state it just that way, but point being - it's easier for us to suffer than rejoice and when we (I) don't suffer enough, Lent has not been successful. At any rate, toward the end of the meditative mea culpas and half-hearted deprivations, I had a really bad cold while reading As I Lay Dying and maybe made up for my lackluster Lent. Maybe. And I thought about to what extent we participate in our own deaths - we do, of course, but how consciously? And maybe Voltaire was correct in his perception of Christ's sacrifice as a form of suicide - condoned by The Big Guy, but nonetheless. When we buy into fate, into our destiny, into doing what's expected that sort of self-abnegation is a little death. A small death, and maybe not so important, but certainly more in the realm of suffering than rejoicing, no? And when, really, did Jesus decide Daddy wasn't coming to save him and game was on with the Roman soldiers? Was he hoping right up until the end that he wasn't going to have to die up there, or at the very least, not an ignominious death - maybe something really spectacular and immediate - more compelling than darkening sky and rending curtains in the tabernacle? Like The Mother Ship. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/11/AR2010041103996.html?hpid=artslot

the moon is crossing uranus

http://www.soulgardencollective.tv/

I lost track

of the rest of March, no doubt due to Daylight Savings Time descending upon us at an obscenely early date, the Ides of March no less. Or thereabouts - I have lost track - days traveling across New Mexico and Arizona, the Petrified Forest (another moving adventure), various and sundry snowstorms - three after aforementioned Ides. And a truly debilitating head cold. But I'm so much better now...really.

Reservoir Road

I went hiking this weekend with friends, up the Reservoir Road on a fine Colorado day, one of those Spring days between March snowstorms when you cannot imagine staying indoors one more minute, when you know why you live here and manage not to resent all the other hikers because you know they cannot resist the day any more than you can. We ran into groups of Search and Rescue teams with their fine brave dogs and realized that a young man described as distraught had sought refuge here in the mountains west of the reservoir. We did not expect good news, but when we heard the search had ended, we were no less shocked. We are parents, we are wives and lovers and daughters and sisters, and our hearts bleed for each and all: the young man who lost hope, the family who lost Ryan, the community who banded together to search for a man who sought refuge in the wilderness between Winding Staircase and Ice Cave Creek. We light a candle, we pray for his immortal soul, that he find peace; we pray for the family and friends gathered in hope and despair; thankful for a community that responds to sorrow and loss and finds a way to continue the search, despite the odds. Back of the beyond, all souls come to rest.
..

and the winner is...tah dah

Not having television, I did not watch the Academy Awards, but of course, managed to surf the web for all the best and worst dressed and badly behaved of the gala. What is it, whatwhat, that we need from all of this? I spent waaaay too much time analyzing JLo v. Sandra and by the way, were Brangelina just too pooped from parenting to show up and look as if they are reallyreally still a couple, or did one of the kids get lost in Brad's horrid beard and they had to cancel the limo? And why, for god's sake, do I care and spend time actually discussing this? Cuz I love the gowns and the jewels and the glamor and I hope and pray that the old broads look stunning. And they did.

We shall not be using...

I received my first rejection letter today - an oddly formal note thanking me for the opportunity to consider my poems, Colorado poems perhaps not fully appreciated in Maine - no knowledge of Limbaugh Canyon or Chautauqua and Sundance Mountains. We throw ourselves into the unknown, our markers familiar only unto ourselves, like buoys defining river channels. I did not feel rejected - oddly. The direct rejection stings so much less than the perceived rejection, the haunting thought that perhaps ... some misunderstanding occurred. I live at the mouth of Limbaugh Canyon, the sun reddens Chautauqua and Sundance with its first rays. I am content here.

The Prince of Darkness

Prince Vince, Princess Hannah and Anton of the Marigny

Steppin' Out w/ the St Anthony Ramblers

I had some pictures, but...

I can't find my USBs - I know I have at least two of them - St Anthony is searching for them with me. I lose a lot of stuff (thus a plethora of S Antonio kitsch), but this isn't the kind of thing I misplace. I'm blaming it on the kids, who do not live here and have plenty of their own USBs, but all the same. So, playing catch-up - Mardi Gras and the WhoDat Finery; Ash Wednesday flings us into our most favorite religious season: Lent. We are so much more likely to understand ourselves as penitents than to see ourselves in the light of transfiguration. We recognize ourselves in sackcloth and ashes, piously doing without. Without something pretty trivial after all. Raccoons on the roof, a Winter Cotillion. More snow, the sauna is fixed (thank you, Max), and I'm putting off having a cholsterol check until after I eat more oatmeal and run around the block. Hannah has now her Swedish residency, so she will be returning to the land of vodka and fish sometime in the Fall. Heather is packing to come back to Colorado (a road trip looms), and Leigh is making paper and art - film at eleven. Or whenever I find the peripherals. March is upon us...lamblike.

all you need is a gorilla and a dream

"Mule Skinner Blues" is a Clive Barker Sundance film - an homage to Beanie Andrew and his trailer park cohorts, all performance artists and dreamers. Odds are, not one of these folks read "The Artist's Way," nor do they ascribe to creative visualization in the meditative sense. What they do is live their art. They perform, they suffer, they believe. The action is documented in a Jacksonville, Florida trailer park - the dream is making a film with the unlikely plot line of Beanie rising "from beneath the murky swamps behind the local junkyard in a blue ape suit" in search of hs severed arm. Miss Jeannie's "DUI Blues" threads its way into the storyline, as well as the tribulations of trailer troubadours and their amours. The point: Just Do It.

"The darkness moves through us in ursine shivers..."

- taken from Vizenor's "St Louis Bearhunt" - and so these winter days shadow us within our ursine memories. Yesterday the snow fell in fat light flakes, as if we were in a snowglobe. This morning dawns cold and bright and brittle light frosts the Ponderosa pines. Yesterday, bearlike, I kept to my den, comfortable with book and tea; today I must go forth into the bright light and secure provisions.

Alas! I tried in vain to find a fleur de lis to adorn my page - Who Dat? The Saints triumphed and all was well with the world. I was so excited I required a stiff shot of Jameson's to calm down. Back to winter for the northern Who Dat Nation.

What is it in the human psyche (assuming that everything else has a psyche and is not subject to this idiotsynchrosy) that causes us to focus on what we have not done, our endless list of sins of omission? Measuring our misfortune by our flaws. The mental flagellation that we apparently so require - unlike Pope John Paul II, I do not scourge myself with my belt, but with my infernal list of Things to Do. At the end of the week, I tote up Things Not Done. Things accomplished are soon forgotten; things not completed are highlighted with my hot pink highlighter. In an effort to mitigate this unfortunate tendency, I am not going to list herein either the things I did get done, nor the ones un-done. But, being the good Catholic Midwestern girl I am, I will not abandon my list, either. I tried that, and couldn't seem to remember to tie my shoes without a List of Things to Do. I'm considering losing the hot pink highlighter, though. Well, it's Saturday morning, and I'm off to finish up the week's list. If I can find it. I will proceed with precarious optimism.

Mea Culpa

Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters

RIP, JD Salinger.

I can't recommend reading Flannery O'Connor before bed. Just saying.

Stock Show - Hog and Heifer Heaven - Yakity Yak

Guess who took no photo equipment to the Stock Show? Hmmmm. And some of us with really fancy cameras. No names. We parked at a dubious parking lot where the attendant apparently absconded with the money and left the cars unattended by the time we had left, around 4:30 - all was well, however. We especially enjoyed the Yaks, a truly intractable breed not fond of halters and especially not fond of packs. The Grand Champion Yak, a 9-yr old bull with amazingly curled and polished horns, flung his considerable bulk on the ground and rolled on his pack. They have a little grunting noise that is their form of communication, and they are talky. Unnnh, unnnnh. The Yak owners and fans accept this behavior and call it the Yak circus. My father-in-law woulda worn out a couple of sticks on those Yaks, I'll tell you.

On to the Scottish Highlanders, who were not being shown that day and generally were reclining in their stalls. There were owners from coast to coast - Vermont, Michigan, Washington State, Oregon, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska. The Highlanders have cute bangs and are shaggy with long horns. Built pretty low to the ground and have to have fans going to keep them from overheating indoors. Norman, aforementioned father-in-law, had cattle in North Dakota; his Highlanders wouldn't come in from blizzards, just lay out on the hillsides dusted with snow and ice. I like the red Highlanders, but they also come in a blonde shade, and I saw some dun colored ones. Some of the owners sport kilts, which is a fine sight at the National Western Stock Show.

We breezed by the Angus, finding them incredibly well-groomed but not so interesting, other than the sight of a 900 lb docile steer being groomed with a shop vac and clippers. (The Yaks would not have tolerated that foo-foo treatment.) Also saw Suffolk sheep in beige hoods and capes, which was a startling picture (not that I have a picture of them). We admired the hogs and Herefords, but none of these were being shown, so they were pretty laid back, especially the hogs. Hogs are much leaner than they used to be, being the other white meat. Not svelte, but not porky, either. And squeaky clean.

The smells at the stock show are pungent, authentic and nostalgic: straw, alfalfa, manure; burnt sugar, barbeque and sizzling red meat. You know where you are, home on the range. The cute cowboys in their tight jeans didn't hurt either. Cowboys come in varieties: cute, rugged, or weathered and you never forget who jeans were made for. Uh huh.

I managed to exit the exhibition hall without purchasing one of those sparkly cowgirl belts, but hey. Cheynne Frontier Days is only six months away, and I can save up for one by then.

Who Dat

Anything I have to say is eclipsed by the Saints' big win over the dreaded Vikings and old Bret. I was on pins and needles and could only run to and fro the TV periodically. Yikes! Tied and tied again. I feared my watching would be bad luck. I feared not watching would be bad luck. No worries, the Saints have the saints at their backs. On to Miami, where I assume, The City of New Orleans will be temporarily relocated.

Yeee Haw

Saddle up, cowgirls and boys, it's Stock Show time in Denver. Went to the parade last week and was reminded of what so charmed me about Denver in 1977 when we moved to the area. 1977 Denver was still Cowtown Denver. The Longhorn Saloon, Lane's Tavern on West Colfax (which literally did not have a men's room - there were trees out back), and Shepler's in its heyday. If you went to El Chapultepec, you were escorted from your car to the bar by a bouncer. No foo-foo Lo-Do goin' on. Attached are pics from the parade, graced by a local old girl in her Western finery - Ms Mary Lowe Green. Pictures courtesy of lb holden, talented photographer, papermaker, bookbinder, et al.

Giddy-up.

The longing for the dance...

I went out dancing Saturday night - at the bowling alley. We know how to party in Palmer Lake. My favorite dance band, "Reckless," and their groupies, my friends and dance partners. Danced my tush off. Danced the "stuck" out of my hip. Went home and took a hot bath with epsom salts.

We used to dance until 2a, shut the bars down and then go out for breakfast: eggs and bacon and country fried potatoes, toast and coffee at Grimm's Cafe. Home before dawn.

Now we dance until 10 and go home and soak our old bones. Just as happy.


"Desire, desire desire.
The longing for the dance
Stirs in the buried life."

From "Touch Me," Stanley Kunitz ("Passing Through")

Communion

For Suzie and her Mom: Communion

The cornmeal snow crunches and squeaks beneath my boots, like coarse sand or grains of rice. Suzie told the stories of crystals and of rice, withering with regret and shame; sweet and pure with love. Words matter. Words heal us and comfort us. I will not attempt the experiments: talking to the grains of rice or whispering to the crystals. Some things I take on faith. I prefer to believe. I need to believe. Transubstantiation is magic. God is in the Host, in the wheat and in the water; the Goddess is in the hands that bake the bread and form the Host. Each and all, we are in the transforming words, we are the blood of the wine. We kneel at the altar of redemption. We are worthy.

Five Degrees and Holding

Benet Pines Retreat - Burning Desire

Das Blog - January 5 2010

I packed up Christmas today. I placed an old white sheet on the floor and dragged out the brittle-branched tree, stripped of its holiday finery. The ornaments, the Mexican creche, the candles and the wreaths and the big creche from Annapolis rest in Christmas nests of old crumpled newsprint and used plastic bags. Despite my abhorrence of Commercial Christmas, I find myself at WalMart, seeking bargains in red and green plastic storage bins. I score two 21-gallon bins and a wrapping paper storage bucket with a top hat nearly as tall as the bucket itself. Christmas fits nicely, boxed and ready for attic exile. Every year I dread unpacking everything; every year I cry as I pack it all up. Every year I buy more lights.

Day 3, Benet Pines: Enter Laughing

into the new year, into a new decade. Dancing Goddesses, live and in color. The Circle of the Sacred Sisterhood blessed us all, each and all. Light, love, laughter. In memory of Odetta: This little light of mine... I'm gonna let it shine; let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Retreat, Day 2

The cold metal gate of the dog run comes off in my hands, I hustle Mo into her pen, squeezing through the narrow opening to drop off a food dish, a ham bone, my guilt at leaving her all day and most of the night. I jerry-rig the gate and drive off into the cold bright morning, ready for meditation. The proverbial fingers of dawn caress the Eastern sky. Up and at 'em, cowgirl, get out your meditation rug.

Sins of Omission -
a prose poem under construction

This is what broke my heart: these sins of omission, these things I could have done to keep you, to heal you, to cherish you. These pearls locked in unforgiving shells, safe, inviolate upon the shelf. Homages to stubbornness, to brittle righteousness. Prideful withholding of gifts ungiven, unforgiven. Gems locked forever in hard rock, geodes uncracked. Delicate, complicated conch shells, whispered stories unheard. Loving glances averted, words locked forever into the harsh coffins of small square diaries. We lost the keys and burned the pages. Raw empty spines remain. This is what breaks my heart, what we break ourselves upon, yet do not risk breaking open. We do not risk the vulnerability of light, the terrifying light of love, of grace. We are safe, yet have risked all, have denied truth for the sake of pride, for the pride of safety. We crash upon the sandy shores, untried waves retreating with tide and time. We hide behind the moon, her tattered veil hiding our unshed tears. We break upon one another, in love, in passion, in withholding our deepest selves. What is the heart of the matter? The unbending? Opening the hard-shelled oyster to find only a flawed pearl? We break upon our need, we break upon ourselves. The heart beats on, broken, transmuted into ashes, into regret. A heart un-read, the translation lost.

+++++++++++++++under construction++++++++++++++++++++

Zen Writing Retreat - Day 1

I left my homework to the last minute (morning of the retreat, of course) and found it made no real difference (naturally) - the curse of procrastination is success in spite of it. We are twelve women, two instructors and Susie the yoga queen - wounds to bind, clarity to seek, yoga to practice. We inhabit a house at Benet Pines. As the afternoon light weakens, we seek comfort in afghans and tepid tea. We write, under duress, our assignments; we see who we are. I neglect to mention my blog.

We Welcome the New Year
The silent dawn of New Year's Day blankets Chataqua Mountain, as the
cold blue moon slips into Limbaugh Canyon.
Resolute in her departure,
She takes with her, her shadow - last night's Dark
Companion.
We are left, then, in a bare newness,
A soulful tabla rosa, stark
And bright in its promise
and in its unknown terrors. jeb


"Through the bee, we come to eat flowers, to eat light, and by those intricate sugars we ourselves ignite." - Jane Hirschfield, "Making Soul"

"Language-making isn't incidental or ornamental to human consciousness; it is its center, its essence." - Norman Fishcer, Zen Priest, "Why I Have to Write"