Off on adventures

I'm nearing 60,000 words on my book and it's a pretty groovy feeling. Working on this book has taught me that I'm not really in control of the process or the characters. They appear to have free will and do things and say things that I type out and then lean back in my chair and go, "Whoa! Where did that come from?"

Up next is the climax. I've been procrastinating writing it because I have a hunch about where I want to take this, but I'm certain these characters will end up surprising me.

The end of 2011 nears. I'll be off the grid through the end of the year --
out in the wild and stomping about in the soul grounds. 

May the rest of your year be blessed and bright!

black madonna

black goddess tree.

slicked with offerings --

unintentionally standing out

in a grove

of green,

and orange,

and yellow.

the talk of the neighborhood.

she oils her skin

smooth, like ebony,

and tries not to feel shame

when the other trees

gather and gossip about

her bare-boned seduction, 

the trim quality of her branches,

her inviting, slim trunk.

ostracized,

she receives few invitations

to festivals and petal recitals.

she pretends not to mind

and fills her time digging

in her roots.

she will need the depth

if she is to stand tall.

the birds know.

they can feel the vibration

of her grief as they roost in her

dark limbs.

they take pity

and fill her obsidian pain

with color --

brilliant reds,

cerulean,

mustard -- 

camouflaging her

from restless eyes

and greedy lips.

like wings on the updraft,

still, she rises.

(copyright 2011)

serpent girl

little serpent girl.

at once 

olive,

jungle,

asparagus,

sea, 

and sap.

snaking upward

through bone

and skin,

coiling lazily

in the center

and shedding
old skin.

scales
dripping
like
tears
so
the
fire snake
can
rise.

(copyright 2011)

scythe

puma-eyed moon,

upstaging orion

with its crater-flecked stare.

north always shines true.

winter field.

corn stalk skeletons

dance up noise,

and shiver

as matter is 

stripped,

and sucked,

and teased

 from their

brittle,
bony fibers.

there is no clinging.

no weeping.

watch.
be there.

the bending is fluid,
graced movement.

let go of the reins.

just
let
go.

(copyright 2011)

Stretching the Mind

The peace of this moment can be achieved without travel.

The brain does not actually know the difference between

breathing in this scene in reality and doing so in your imagination.

eagle storm

i race

across the plains

on a blue-coated horse.

sage is crushed

under hoof,

scenting the air

with something

that cannot be named.

a storm on the horizon.
i leap into its heart

and touch the thunder beings.

the rain pauses
its fall
and gifts me with 

a gown embellished
with a million raindrops --

all with a universe inside.

an eagle shrieks in the sky

and talons clash together

as the plunge and return begins.

"wait for me,"

it urges.

"i am coming."

and i trust that this is so.

aho.

(copyright 2011)

samhain -- oh, i miss you so

samhain.

celtic new year.

dark side of the moon.

a day to feast

and remember

the dead.

kids knock on my door.

"trick or treat,"

batman, more kid, says,

and a fairy princess 

holds up her bag expectedly.

a smile tugs at the corners of my mouth.

this is the new way of doing an old thing.

i feel emotional tonight,

remembering my grandfather,

and all my relations,

even those i never met

but who still walk with me.

later,

with love and a kiss,

i pour a hefty amount

of irish whiskey into the earth

for their feast in Tír na nÓg.

a few salt tears

fall into the mix.

oh, i miss you so.

le grá go deo

Saol fada chugat 

Cha d'dhùin doras nach d'fhosgail doras

(copyright 2011)

for bear on a friday morning

old growth pine

and i'm tucked within

the bearded mossy ones.

bear is ahead of me,

scratching itself against wood

to mark the way.

it leaves behind hair

that i reach for

and hold in my hand

like gretel.

faster now,

i jog to keep up

and watch

as moccasins form

over sneakers

and claws

form over

the leather that was
just there.

deeper.

further.

wilder we go.

i stop

as the bear joins

the great council.

"sit with us, young one."

great woman,

ursa major,

comes down out of the caelum

and heats the center.

sparks of light

flicker and dance

us into seed stars

that form

the dna of her hide

and the teeth of her

careful mouth.

i look around
and i'm out there
in the sky
with the seven sisters,
winking back at myself.

all is wild
and right.
aho.

(copyright 2011)

Shifting the gaze

 Breathe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ur-intimitat in der seele

betwixt and between now.

the man in the bog

holds out a golden fish,

"take it, lass.

claim yours."

and i do.

scales become skin

and the gold fashions

itself into a drum

that pulses

in the pulmonary cave.

grandmother sits there

and lights a heart fire

that burns the way clear.

wild galloping in the distance.

i am aonghus's daughter

of the stone and cliff clan.

the ancestors step through.

the veil is thin

and the bones in my body

are theirs. 

(copyright 2011)

autumnal tumble

i wake
to a hypnogogic vision
of animals on stampede
out of the great cosmic cave.

rumbling,
tumbling,
twisting --
the vibratory
reverberations
launch me wild
out of my bed
to join the migration.

i run alongside
a purple horse
and hurdle myself on,

clinging to its mane

unbridled and unbound in the night,
free with my delight.

woman ends.
what bones are these?
mine?
its?
hair flies
who can tell its owner?
who cares.

hooves and feet
fly so fast
that time blurs
and slows
and stops.

in the dreamtime now
with a band of feral brumbies,
the alpha leads the way
through the mystery
and fear falls away
like autumn's dead.

(copyright 2011)

for Grandmother

sunday night and

i am singing to

the water spirits in

my bathwater.

lulling them with

soul music

and thanks.

but, 

then, 

a flute lulls me

out of the bath

and onto a journey

to meet the grandmother

i know in my dreams.

she breathes

somewhere in dakota lands -- 

where the thunderbirds fly

and black elk once prayed.

one horse shrieks by

on his dappled gray pony.

his heart-seared song becomes 

wind on the plains.

i run wild after its words.

"come to me, brother.

come to me, sister.

speak to me."

they gather near my hands

like appalachian fireflies.

whispers, so many whispers.

i pull them to my ear.

"tell me your story, little ones,"

and i weep to hear it:

"i search for the buffalo.

where are you?

be the buffalo

so i can find you!"

i cry for the wolf

and howl

for those buried in teeth.

buried in braids.

buried with hatchets

and guns.

and for those never buried

but who inevitably

became the land

that whispers history through

the night air.

mitakuye oisin.


(copyright 2011)

fighte fuaighte ("woven into and through each other")

gaelic.

my father's tongue.

fado. fado.

anam cara, listen to my tale. 

once upon a time.

in a lonely boat

sat a fisherman

who had drifted far 

from known waters.

he did not know

that other fishermen

stayed away from this bay.

"haunted waters,"

they would murmur.

oblivious, he sat and

his hook drifted

and sank

and flew

with the currents,

reaching down

to grasp and settle

in the bones

of skeleton woman's rib cage.

he pulled,

happy to have snagged such a large fish.

surely he would be seen a hero

in the eyes of his hungry people.

but skeleton woman

resented the disturbance

and struggled and thrashed 

against forced verticality.

her stubborn action

tangled the lines

and tangled her bones

and the kayak above

bucked

and

shook.

yet, for all her fighting,

she continued to rise.

he did not see her bald head surface.

 he did not see her coral-boned body

and the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth

until she clattered before him.

"aggggghhhh!" he wailed

and paddled hard for shore.

but no matter how he maneuvered his kayak,

she stayed with him,

blowing breath across the waters.

he leaped out when he reached shore

and ran across frozen earth.

and she followed behind him,

bumpety-bump in the night.

into his ice tunnel he crawled,

and she crawled behind him,

knee in her ribs,

foot over her elbow,

heel on her shoulder.

at some point

his fear abandoned him

and he looked kindly upon
this boney woman his lines had ensnared.

he sang, "oh, na, na, na.

oh, na, na."

as he gently untangled her

and dressed her in furs

when her bones were set.

and she

laid still 

and said nothing,

praying he would not 

take her out to the rocks

and break her apart completely.

drowsy from his labor and terror,

he soon drifted to the land of dreams.

she watched as some action therein

led him to shed a tear.

with a bony finger,

she reached out,

caught it, and drank it up greedily.

this single tear was living water,

and she drank, and drank, and drank

until her thirst retired.

and then she began to sing

and sang to fill her body with flesh --

with breasts long enough to throw over her shoulders.
sang for hair and pale moonbeam feet.

sang for the ripe divide between her legs

and all the other things a woman needs.

and when she was done,

she sang the sleeping man's clothes off

and tangled in the skins with him,

joining together in a good and lasting way.

...dadme la muerte que me falta...
so that the life i agreed to can live.

(inspired by and built upon clarissa pinkola estes's telling of "skeleton woman,"
which can be found in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves.)

Nearing emergence

waking with taiowa in the shell,

i stir in the void.

form without form.

immeasurability.

no-thing.

spider woman
spies me with her reflector eyes
and spits creative wisdom
onto my forming form.

i use her silken threads

to leap from thought to possibility

and back to the muse.

gestation is a heady ripening.

embryonic dreams
bring me to the she-eagle

and to the two eggs

standing expectantly

amidst twig and straw.

"this is what rests for you --

the sky and the star."

vibrations shimmy into word
and crawl slowly up my calcium antenna,
tuning me into the primordial "yawp."

shell life is a funny thing.

it's soon to be shelved.

and in the cracking,

emergence.

(copyright 2011)

Night Swimming

i swim in deep waters.

layers of green blue darkness swirl around

my copper limbs and hair.

purposeful strokes

of an Otherworld tattoo artist.

down.

down.

down.

i drift.

to sedna -- 

to where she fusses

and fumes

in coral

and sits in piles of 

briny bones.

oh, skeleton lady!

let me sing to you

and comb the tangles

of your squid hair.

release the meat

and let it rise.

unfreeze the sacred hearth!

light heart fires that burn bright!

climb with me

into my kayak

and sail away on waters

lit by the he-moon. 

come to the feast

laid out by your people.

taste the waters

we drop in your seal

for tribute

and know peace.

(copyright 2011)

Whereabouts and a poem

A friend recently commented that I've been quiet here. He'd wondered where I'd gone. My apologies! The truth is that I've been lost in my imagination -- writing. 

I decided a few months ago that it was time to dedicate myself more seriously to my writing than just spontaneous spits and spurts. Since then, I've been running with a group of characters in two different stories -- ideas that came to me in my dreams. It's playful work. I'm really enjoying these characters and the stories they're sharing with me. I plan to one day share them with you in a published format. 

In the meantime -- a poem:

labyrinth

skipping rains

kiss my fingertips as i lean out

and talk to the 

grandmother tree at 11pm.

she calls me "dearie"

and dries my tears with her leaves.

they leave chlorophyll residue on my cheeks

and i tangle myself up in her arthritic branches

to feel earth's heartbeat.

there is no separation.

i sink like alice

into the underworld.

there, a minotaur asks me to walk

the labyrinth with him.

we stroll like old friends

and he tells me the point 

is always to come back to yourself.

in the center i meet a masked man

who tells me he asks.

"asks what?"

"precisely."

there are no answers here.

boreas sweeps up under my feet,

carries me home

to my slumbering self

and to the faeries

that dance on my bed

and whisper riddles in my ears
while i dream.

inside.

outside.

step forward.

turn around.

hold tight.

there's another corner to turn.

turning, turning, spinning.

i get tagged.

"you're it!"

(copyright 2011)

New Website Up and Running

It's official, folks! 

Someone once told me how important it is for each of us to share our gifts with the world. I took this to heart and created a healing arts business dedicated to helping others heal, reconnect to themselves, their dreams, and the world at large. 

Here's my site (still a work in progress):

http://www.bridgebetweentwoworlds.com/index.html

DREAMS -- new blog/website forthcoming

Hi, All.

For the last few years, I've been using this blog as a creative and sometimes personal outlet for musings on the esoteric and metaphysical. It's been a great relief to know that I could come here and share thoughts and creative works with all of you. Even better have been your exchanges, dreams, and stories. It's been such fun! We all grow from those interactions, methinks, which only further convinces me that we're questing through life for that something familiar that we cannot always name.

Since we're pilgrims on a shared path, it makes sense for me to expand this site's original purpose and make it more communal and interactive. I want it to serve and help all of us as we make our way down our respective red roads.

I also want to stay in the flow of what's feeding me these days, which is DREAMS.  There's some big mojo energy there for me and fed, methinks, by my work with a local Jungian. Maybe that energy for dreams is there for you, too. Think about it -- if it's true that we each dream between 5-7 times a night, then that's at least 35 dreams a week that we can sift through to find nuggets of wisdom about our lives. I don't know about you, but I am certainly open to additional insight into my life! The dreamscape, according to some researchers, is one aspect of ourselves which is not affected by the ego. The ego can't touch this terrain, which makes it even more compelling to mine and journey through. 

It's my intention to have a new blog dedicated solely to the topic of dreams up and running within the next two weeks. I plan to include all sorts of resources, articles, links, and techniques to help you remember your dreams, share them, and learn from them. I invite guest writers or those willing to share dreams with the collective community in hope of gaining new insight. What would interest you? What would you like to see? What workshops would help you expand your own personal growth? 


I am INTERESTED!!! Send your thoughts my way! 


So I DREAM!

The Bones of My Mother

athena was born of man

only because her father grew envious

of her mother 

and ate her.

down the esophageal pipe

did metis tumble --

landing in bile,

pregnant with wisdom. 

but some women 

don't disintegrate 

so easily

when swallowed whole by man.

instead

metis nurtured pallas,

gifting her with weapons and verve.

gestation soon gave way to cranium kicks,

giving daddy such a headache

and he had his head split open with an axe--

a creative way to resolve a migraine.

goddess leaped into the world

with a war cry

and purpose,

the product of a botched forgetting.

poor athena.

playmate of boys,

and keeper of athens

and owls.

so comfortable in the world of men
that she forgot her mother's bones,
leaving her father's biology
to dissolve them,

which it did in the 
form of ambrosial gloop 
that the god 
neatly wiped away.

copyright 2011

Who We Really Are...

I've been reading much of Lynn Andrew's work lately--most recently "Star Woman"--and I was struck by the following statement made by Agnes Whistling Elk, one of Lynn's teachers. I loved this passage for its world view and enjoyed the reminder that there are more possibilities for our lives than we allow. Enjoy!

"When you are born, you come from the void. You come from the mystery. You are born out of formlessness from the center of the spiral. You dress yourself with the fine feathers of time and space, and you take on a mind. You think are mind. Your earth walk is a spiraling outward from this center. As you progress, you become more and more earthbound. You take on form through experience and conditioning from your environment. You become encrusted with addictions and what you call time. To stay in form you must develop a mind that is your ego, which again is a function of time" (pp. 65-66).

The passage goes on to share how one can smash this concept of time by dissolving the ego. When the ego has been dissolved, then one can take on the form of other egos and become a shape shifter. And, when that happens, you can become a part of another's dream. For as Agnes later put it, "How do you know that you're not a shape shifter in one form or another? Maybe you simply don't remember what you are dreaming?" (p. 66)

Aho!

 

"IN"lightenment from de Chardin

"Throughout my whole life, during ever minute of it, the world has been gradually lighting up and blazing before my eyes until it has come to surround me, entirely lit up from within."

"The immense hazard and the immense blindness of the world are only an illusion."

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

American Shaman

I just finished reading "American Shaman," which describes the work and life story of Bradford Keeney. This is one of those books that make you pause in the reading of it because there's so much to SOAK UP and ABSORB! In fact, I dog-eared so many pages in my library copy that the smartest idea seems to be to share some of the words with you

"The most common practices currently in use by indigenous healers around the world are:

1. We should be devoting our efforts to honoring the greater mystery in life, rather than to promote understanding

2. Instead of helping people who are upset to calm down, we should encourage them to become more aroused

3. Talk doesn't always help, but dancing, singing, touching, and transcendent prayer are where the action often takes place

4. The role of the helper and healer should include many facets -- as guide, coach, minister, counselor, physician, musician, and trickster

5. Homework, when employed, should involve ordeals, trials, tribulations, and "shamanic tasks," none of which have to make sense to the person

6. People in trouble take themselves far too seriously, and any intervention should take place on a level of play

7. All helping should be a sacred enterprise, in which the spiritual world is integrated into the body, the mind, the soul, and Nature

8. Ultimately, helping and healing are about love; they are about being a part of community (p. xi)

"The history of shamanism is about the dismemberment of self. You must go through your own death. That is one hell of an ordeal, I gotta tell you. I can't imagine anyone deliberately choosing this kind of journey" (p. 48).

"Make me a vessel. Allow me to be useful to this person" (p. 77).

Ways to activate and nourish the sense of mystery:

1.  Introduce more rhythm into your life.

2. Learn to gently (and sometimes wildly) rock your body.

3. Dance, think, and pray in the dark.

4. Bring on the music.

5. Faithfully write down a request for guidance, and carry this invitation with you throughout the day.

6. Bring more absurdity into your daily rituals.

7. Be irreverent with the "why" questions in your life.

8. Remind yourself, constantly, that you will never understand the big things in life (p. 154).

"What Keeney, or any self-respecting shaman, tried to do is get people to abandon their usual ways of doing things so as to create a greater sense of mystery and awe for everyday activities (even for watching a late-night talk show). It is the shaman's (or the therapist's, the teacher's, or the parent's) job to juggle and toss things around in such a way that sacred moments become possible. We don't do this through the usual channels of organizing things for people but through disorganizing them. We must create the possibility of surprise. It can be through a dream, a sudden discovery, or an impulse. The overriding goal is to bring mystery and magic to people's lives" (p. 156).

"As a shaman, I say to people that it is important to enact respect for the deepest parts of our minds and hearts. We need to show and tell the source of our dreams that we take it seriously. We give it the same attention we would anything in the physical world. It's like saying, 'You, my deepest unconscious mind, have spoken and now I am showing you that I listened. Now I will act on your behalf" (pp. 198-99).

Reading the Toltec Prophecies

it's been busy. weeks blur. i rise. breathe. work. muse. breathe. sweat in bikram. breathe a whole heck of a lot more. dream. 

and i read.

a lot. 

tonight it is the toltec prophecies of don miguel ruiz. 

my studies of quantum physics have taken me to some pretty funky places in recent years, and i have noticed a message repeating itself: we are dreaming. all of THIS is a dream that our reason tries to interpret into reality. 

i dig it. 

i also dig this quote from the toltec prophecies:

"During sleep, we do not perceive energy from outside ourselves, but the mind dreams images including an image of our own body. We can talk, see and even fly in a dream. We do not notice that we are asleep when we are dreaming. something makes the connection between the inner dream and the outer dream. That something is reason. Reason is the part of the mind that tried to qualify and understand everything. Reason wants to say, this is real and this is unreal. Reason gives us the illusion that the dream is real as long as the dream has the material framework we perceive as reality. We do not notice that we are interpreting reality according to the dream we are in at the moment" (pp. 12-13).

***

i've been musing on the last sentence and have gone back to a conversation i had with my classmate, david, at our shamanic healing intensive this past fall. he told me that he's hearing that 2012 is about more than just a shift in consciousness. he believes it's about becoming lucid in our dreams. 

what does that really mean? i interpret it to mean that we are becoming lucid and now allow for the possibility that we can change our realities at will -- creating dreams within dreams within dreams. and, as reality shifts, we now allow that it is possible to "wake up" in them. 


so, does this allow that our waking life becomes a dream and our dreams become waking life?

why not? 
it's certainly a more positive reality for 2012 than what popular culture may dictate. 

2011's Tarot Message -- two cards speak

As has been my habit the past two years, each new year I pull a Tarot card to guide me through the year. For those who are curious, take a peek at what I pulled for the past two years.


2009:
http://awalkintheworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/little-whispers-from-universe.html


2010:
http://awalkintheworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/2010s-whispered-message-queen-of-cups.html

I had to giggle when I went to pull cards for 2011 because TWO cards showed up -- the EIGHT of SWORDS and the HIGH PRIESTESS.

It's an interesting pull, methinks, because these cards comes from both arcanas. (Minor arcana cards, some of which are numbered, reflect a typical, archetypal experience - a reflection of what's happening in the outer world. Major arcana cards are larger archetypal snapshots and show how inner changes precipitate external events and vice versa.) Using the cards as divinatory tools, it appears that I will use my intuition (trusting it 100%) this year to make serious, path-changing decisions about the current trajectory of my life. Let's go a little bit deeper.

The EIGHT of SWORDS card, according to the Mythic Tarot card system, shows Orestes in a fearful posture. His hands are up to fend off the three Furies to his right and a stern looking Apollo to his left. He is encircled by eight swords. Dark clouds appear to loom in the barren background.

This strikes me as being a card of bondage and some decision-related paralysis. A decision must be made NOW. One cannot put it off any further. On a divinatory level, the card heralds a situation where there is a call to action, regardless of perceived consequences. One must own responsibility of how one got to this position but acknowledge, too, that with some creative juice, a new way forward is possible.

The HIGH PRIESTESS is portrayed above by Persephone. In her right hand she holds a pomegranate, split open to show its multitude of seeds. In her left hand a bunch of white narcissi trail to the ground. One either side of staircase on which she stands is a pillar; the left one is black, the right one white. Behind her, at the top of the staircase, a doorway opens out onto a rich green landscape.

The writers of the Mythic deck tells us that "on an inner level, Persephone, the High Priestess, is an image of the link with that mysterious inner world to which depth psychology has given the name 'the unconscious.' It is as though, beneath and beyond the ordinary daylight world which we believe to be reality, lies another hidden world, full of riches and potential, which we cannot penetrate without the consent of its invisible rulers. This world contains our undeveloped potentials as well as the darker, more primitive facets of the personality. It also holds the secret of the destiny of the individual which gestates in darkness until the time is ripe for manifestation...Persephone...can only be dimly sensed by waking consciousness, and appears through the fleeting fragments of dreams, or through those strange coincidences which make us begin to wonder whether there might be some hidden pattern at work in our lives.

"On a divinatory level, the appearance of the High Priestess augurs the heightening of the powers of intuition, and implies that there will be an encounter of some kind with the hidden inner world which Persephone rules. The individual may be drawn inexplicably to this world through an interest in the occult or esoteric, or through the uncanny sense that "something" is at work in one's life."

I have a hunch what some of these decisions are about, and I refuse to stay stuck behind a bunch of swords! Here is to a year of action shepherded by self-trust and intuition!

birthing

2011 is here. swiftly out of the janus gates. the year feels charged. energized. promising. i'm excited not only for the unfolding but also for the birthing of this book i'm writing. it is my intention to finish it by the end of the year, if not sooner. i'd like to set it before publishers before 2012 since it will address the shift in consciousness we're all being called to address.

what is finding you this year? what will you give birth to? what energizes you? what have you been putting on hold for too long?

why not dive into action now?

why not now?