blue streak about red bricks painted white

The red bricks were painted white. An old kind of white paint mixed and rolled on the bricks before paints had so many names and stores competed with artist pen sets for all the colors one can find on a palette.  Milky white, white before the crystal shines through it; off white, egg shell, satin white, oyster. Every expression of color a competition for how mozzarella will tickle your tongue or niacin will creep through your blood and itch your neck. Any clam shell she had ever seen was white like a clam shell; not like milk; or every broken wave lighting white when the sun was at three or four o’clock and set to focus on the breakers like a spotlight. Rolling white and roaring white, as the blue green wave rolled through. It is not the water that moves but the energy through it.  Every wave is an illusion of movement; as if the water is moving from one area to another. The Indian Ocean eventually coming to the Jersey shore and every wetland on the coast holding something of the Mediterranean and the Aegean within. The Pacific, one Jupiter-sized ocean, carrying every river and Lake Baikal from Russia, even water off the deep sturgeon and all of it rolling into every otter’s paws like a cabbage of energy, that is really, layers and layers of energy and detritus of many oceans and currents, rolling into their paws or filtered through the feathery gills of baby clams.  Every leaf a wrack line and watermark from the Yangtze, the Yellow or the Seine rivers.  Why not bring Paris into it? After all, those kicks of the Follies surely moved the air and birds’ preening feathers loose caught this wind and moved onto the Seine and into the ocean and through the currents, rolling, rolling to the Jersey shore. Why not?  Or the Danube, blue dancing on the edges of the red cabbage. Well, where else would that blue come from except the Danube?  Dancing on the red cabbage like the white moths touched by yellow but owned by the air and moving through space, time and energy to your garden.  Wave and crest, colonies of Monarchs, moving through time’s patterns since their own generation did not make the crossing but left it to cascades of sparrows to wing through the air, stir up the cosmos and move the whole pilgrimage along the curve of energy, the ladle of abbondanza, the plenty crowding out of the great Horn and all of it, ending in the colors of the evening, the deeper blues before the dark, the warmer reds, the sweet colors of skin with summer on their nets and the lunar curve of children’s calves and thighs walking through the sand; small sprays of grains whisking past their toes, as one or maybe more look back for the dolphins, always ready to come to the surface when you’re not looking; always there the day before when you should have been.  The summer feeling like always.

the dream to be human

under the tree and away from the city; beneath the moon but far from the sea. salt is in the air.  grass circles around the bare earth where the deer wait and have left the bones of the tree roots exposed to the night. here is where the deer wait to become human. the tree is magic but only because it is an integral part of the whole scene. you can see clouds of air from the deer's nostrils. it's that cool out this evening when they're trying to be human and their breath is that warm. there is no music in the tree because it is winter and the leaves are in another reality not even dreaming of their unfurling. winter's brief gusts of winds have a sound. they feel lonely. 

why is it that deer would want to be human?  only they know. only the human that imagined this story knows. 

when we have so much trouble being the best of what human has been storied; why wish that upon an animal that can come and go in silence and know the intimacies of winter, difficult and not, that brace their sides and frost their snouts. 

so much of our time together as family members or friends; as extended family or in-laws or outlaws, those of us not legally in-laws; or as people we know through work or from the stores we shop at, so much of our time together is about the experience of becoming human. each encounter a way to open up more of ourselves to this experience that in the story of the deer is something to be desired.

my friend brian died recently. for him, his leaving was a part of his experience that he believed will bring him close to his ancestors. he is on a journey. his human qualities still to unfold after leaving this life.

in this life or the next maybe we are like the deer waiting under the tree. it is the night that transforms them if they wait under the tree in the moonlight with winter near and the wind quietly passing through.

Unwind like the Milky Way

Chaos theory is a balm now that we know we can’t know everything.  Now we think we can at least know what we don’t know and the rest, locked inside a beautiful pattern, will unwind like the spiraling Milky Way as it spins through our time and travels into the outer galaxies of existence.  Implied in some distant future is an enfolded sense of security which will unravel during the years and rescue us and our culture from the nonlinear, chaotic realms of the present.  

And so as you twirl through the evolving turns of the labyrinthine slumber you could imagine that a loss of passion caused a pattern that  would someday be able to weave back into your existence; that, in essence, it would come back to you as prayer answered or mandala, and finally, as a part of your braided psyche.  

The chaos or loss of pattern, like a dropped stitch, was caused by some initial conditioning which you ran across in your life.  Remember when you were told to rein in your passion, hold in an ability to go full out. 

Conversations with Nic available at  http://amzn.to/14jUNUs

 the wild blue is available at http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i

the fate of the compass, the wrong turn and rabbit rabbit September 1

Inevitably, we will follow the threads of spider woman in all directions.  We will head in all the directions because we look for what is necessary to survive.  Midway between true north or deep south you will notice that there are many other roads on the way to the other directions.
Of course finding a different degree of change to bump up the journey and spice the trip could go on forever.  All that we experience is a part of the weave.  And we will weave from the belly of our experience and from the neural network in our brains.  Perhaps creating the longest scarf in the universe to trail behind us as we go on our way into our uncertain direction.

This is the way through, after all.  It’s not a break into the air or a door opening, it’s a change in our understanding, a commitment to a direction.
Conversations with Nic - a mytho-poetic journey through the lands of withdrawal.  http://amzn.to/14jUNUs
The wild blue - a prose poem about the movement from grief to resilience that is about personal loss but also how we are connected to our world and how our lives are folded back into the world again after we lose people or places that we love.  http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i

the good, the bad and the chipmunks

If anyone had wanted the goods on me they would have had it the other day. I knew there was a chipmunk in the house. It was hard enough living with that reality. I know my cat can hold the reality of a chipmunk living in the house and still get a good night’s sleep. She did it two nights running, best I can tell the amount of time that poor thing was stuck in the house.  But Molly would check the grates and sniff around the study now and then during the day. That’s what made me suspect the critter was in the house until I finally saw it and confirmed my suspicions.  But when it came out into the open, well, I just wasn’t prepared for the next part.

I was on the phone with a good friend asking for a recipe.  That’s when I saw it and it saw me seeing it.  So it wasn’t my imagination.  All the books and everything that I kept tidying up over the last few days wasn’t an indication of a new behavior pattern from Molly.  She kept to the usual items we left as a release valve on the counter tops for her to knock over.  Empty creamer containers from the diners; empty skate cases from the beach. Anything that made a nice enough sound when falling on the wood floor and then had the added benefit of making a good sound as she practiced driving the ball down the soccer field.

When I saw the chipmunk and it seemed to go, “Cripes! She’s here too!” it ran back into the bowels of the house; first by the dining room and then I lost track of it and feared it went into the bathroom or the basement. I was hoping it went into the bedroom after losing the dream of it opening the front screen door and leaving of its own free will.

This seemed like the time to run and get Molly and lock her in the study. She was behind the French doors in the front room and banging the doors so much that their weak excuse for a lock wasn’t going to hold much longer. I’m not sure if my concern was more for the chipmunk or me trying to pry the chipmunk out of her jaws.  But I knew I didn’t want to face either situation.  I grabbed her and she must have thought we were going to go hunting the chipmunk together because she was eager but didn’t squirm out of my grip.

Once I got her in the study I starting whooping and hollering to rouse the chipmunk from wherever it was and drive it into the bedroom. Well, that poor thing must have freaked. Suddenly, I saw it run to the bedroom and then try to escape through the open windows. But the screens stopped it. It ran across the bed, ran into each windowsill but the screens were there every time, blocking its escape.

Then it looked like it was coming at me. My neighbor just got done telling me the other day that they do that - run right at you.  I totally freaked.  I screamed and yelled as I jumped on top of the bed. What a sight that must have been. I think I could have jumped higher than Michael Jordan at that moment. My heart was racing.  I kept on hooting and hollering really loud and the chipmunk was running amok.  'Oh shoot', I realized, I’d have to get off the bed, run to one of the windows and pop out the screen. I did just that too.  And don’t ask me how I moved so fast because I have no idea.  I jumped off the bed and unhooked the latches that held the screen in and pushed the damn thing out of its tracks and onto the flowering hastas outside.

Then the critter was trying at the windows again but the wrong ones. Damn.  It was trying for the windows but expecting the same results, no pass to the outside.  What’s that saying about trying the same things and expecting different results?  The definition of crazy. But clearly not the definition of chipmunk.  It kept trying the same thing but expected the same results.

Honestly, I wish I could tell you I know just what happened and how it got to the open window the second time but I can't even though that's all I was focused on. But when it got to the window with no screen it was just staying at the edge of the window as if maybe it still didn't have access to outside.  This time I yelled so loud I thought all the neighbors would be calling the cops.  I swear that the force of my sounds is what finally gave it the final push out the window.  It leaped. What a leap! If there were Olympics for chipmunks, really, when you think about it, there should be, it would have won the broad jump. I don’t know who displayed more valor that day. The chipmunk or my cat Molly. It certainly wasn’t me. By the way, nobody called the cops. So much for neighborhood crime watch.

Conversations with Nic available at  http://amzn.to/14jUNUs

 the wild blue is available at http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i

Resources for the road home

from Conversations with Nic -http://amzn.to/14jUNUs

You often create your own resources for moving on.  There are landmarks, some wisdom recipes, and other ways of knowing that are laid down like tracks for the trains but you frequently miss these or find them after you’ve gone through something.  You’ll find yourself saying, “Oh, that’s what that meant.”  It’s an initiation.  It’s a natural desire to learn something on your own.  Possibly going through these trips and transitions activates something in us that would otherwise lay dormant if it was handed over.  I came to recognize the rules of the road as I went along.  An important one was that I couldn’t change Nic.  Not a chance of that happening.  But I could alter my consciousness.  That’s how I freed myself from his pull and moved on.  And I learned about my desires.  My desires and Nic’s are much like the use of smoke itself.  Sacred and profane.  Going on the road was a way of announcing to my psyche that on this level the conversation and the journey were about my desires not Nic’s.  Before, it was all about Nic.  What he wanted.  Where he wanted me to go.  These trials are a part of journey.  If I could find a creative response to them I would be on my way home.  Creativity is a word I now freely exchange with desire because the more choices I could create the less chance of being manipulated by another.  

            Arise, wake up, and go home are three definitions of the word origin that resonate with my journey.  In finding your roots, returning to your true nature, you will wake up as they say people do when walking their true path.  All three meanings represent various levels of spiritual consciousness.  Including, getting back to basics, to your core self before someone or some element’s desire co-opted your own.  To return to your truth, arise, wake up, and head home.  It’s a pretty neat package.  Getting home is the tricky part.  There’s nothing in the hero’s manual about how you’ll go or how long it will take you.  After all, this isn’t a job regulated by the unions.

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the wild blues is available http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i