Desert Dreamin'

I've written down my dream night last night in detail because it feels important to me. As usual, don't read on if other people's dreams bore you because this retelling would most likely drive you crazy! For me, this is a good place to document my dreams for later.

I dreamed I knew exactly what to say to hurt Mario. So I said it. I was very cruel. Later I was talking with Ingrid, woman who is going to teach a year long rune class (in waking life). She had all these dolls and some clothes, all made by her. They were extremely expensive. I thought she was gouging people.

She started yelling at my friend Jenine, trying to get her to buy something she said Jenine had taken home. I stood up to her and told her she had no right to talk to Jenine that way. She backed down. I had taken home one of her tops. It cost $1,800. I surreptitiously put it back. (I've been looking into taking a desert plant spirit medicine course but it costs $1,800, which I think is way too expensive.) In waking life, she's very kind; in this dream she was imperious. Despite all of this, I think I was still going to take the rune course from her.

Then I was preparing for a meeting with Ron Perlman, his wife, and his daughter. (Not his real life wife or real life daughter.) We had been in love back in his "Beast" days, but we had never done anything about it since we were married to other people. I hadn't seen him in years, and in the dream, I knew I hadn't seen him when my nose was so swollen and distorted because I felt so ugly. Now since I looked more "normal" I could see him. We drove to meet him. I saw him unloading something from his truck for his new store. I stopped to say hello but he ignored us, so I turned the car around.

Then I was helping with some kind of movie library before our meeting. They were going to make Ron a suit out of this fabric with brightly-colored squares. I thought it was awful. He wasn't sure. I held the fabric up to myself and they all saw how awful it was. I said, "Just go as you are. You look fine." He was wearing black slacks, a kind of dull gold shirt, and a brightly colored tie that clashed. I went up to him and said, "Just take off the tie," and I helped him do that.

Then we were in the park. His daughter was running. I was worried she'd fall in this dip in the ground. I picked her up and swung her around. Her eyes were amazingly black. I put her down. His wife was there somewhere and so was Mario. Ron sat in a chair (?) and I stood behind him and put my hands on his chest. He said, "I knew you would understand." (I don't know what that meant, but it was a deeply personable and affectionate moment.)

It was dark in the park. I sat on the grass and momentarily worried about ticks. Next to me was a tall grassy mound or hill. I looked up it. When I looked down I saw these tiny white flowers everywhere. I said, "Fairies." I saw something in the grass.

I reached down and picked up a black rosary. It was beautiful. The beads were made out of some kind of matte gem or material. The metal pieces had the signs of the zodiac on them. Also, the metal centerpiece (or maybe where the crucifix was supposed to be) was a mermaid, or at least a woman/goddess head with long flowing hair. I thought I should probably turn it in because it was so beautiful and someone would miss it, but I did want to keep it. There was more in the grass, maybe even rune pieces, but I woke up.

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Chief

Once again I started a post, but I couldn't finish it. Three times today. Am I becoming wordless? Last night I dreamed I was giving up words. Someone asked me, "What do you really want to be then?"

I said, "Chef."

Last September, I dreamed I was in a restaurant kitchen while it was closed. I looked around nostalgically at the stainless steel shelves and the bags of supplies and other things in the kitchen. I fell to my knees weeping. Someone came over and said, "What? What?" I sobbed, "This is all I ever wanted to do. My whole life." I wept with the grief of dreams unfulfilled.

A perplexing dream.

I write about cooks, restaurants, food often. It is my particular leitmotif, I suppose. But I don't think I have some unfulfilled dream of becoming a cook.

Today I started reading A Platter of Fig and Other Recipes by David Tanis again. A few pages in, I started crying. This happened when I tried to read it before. He describes a life of community, nourishment, cooking, eating. A life of competence. A beautiful life.

I don't understand this grief around food and restaurants. It can't be I literally want to be a chef. I rarely have a sense of smell. I have so many food restrictions. How could I ever be a chef?

I throw some words together, stir them up, and create sumptuous stories—not incredible meals.

When I was younger, I thought cooking was "women's work," and I didn't want to do any women's work. By the time I realized that was stupid, I had lost my sense of smell and I had so many food restrictions that every trip to a restaurant became fraught with danger. People stopped inviting us over because they didn't know what to cook. My life became smaller and smaller. I was sick for a long while and saw hardly anyone, except for the birds, bees, and trees.

Now I'm back in the world again, but breaking bread with people still does not happen often.

Tonight after dinner, I made Say No Cheese Cake. It's gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free, and it is delicious. (Furious Spinner readers might remember this recipe. I can't link to it. For some reason, my archives on FS don't work.)

It felt good to make the No Cheese Cake. It also felt sad because cooking is so non-sensual for me. I can't smell anything. Smelling is so vital for cooking and eating and being in the world joyfully.

But I suppose this means that for the day, my "dream" came true. I was chef. A pastry chef.

Now Mario and I will go eat my creation.

The recipe is below.

We used fresh strawberries for the sauce to go over the cake. We cooked the strawberries until they merged together into a beautiful red sauce. Mmmm. Enjoy.

Say No Cheese Cake

Filling
2 lbs tofu
1/3 c agave syrup (or to taste)
1/3 c maple syrup (or to taste)
1/2 c coconut milk
zest of one lemon
1/3 c fresh lemon juice
2 1/2 T arrowroot powder
2 T vanilla extract
1/2 tsp sea salt, or to taste

Crust: Dry
1 1/2 c millet flour (or quinoa or combo), freshly milled
1/2 c arrowroot powder
1 tsp baking power (or 1/4 tsp baking soda)
1/4 tsp fresh cardamom power
1/4 tsp salt, or to taste

Crust: Wet
1/3 cup olive oil
1/8 cup agave, or to taste
3 T maple syrup
1 egg (optional)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. To make the crust, combine the dry ingredients. Mix well. Mix together wet ingredients separately. Add the wet ingredients to the dry. Mix well. Without the gluten flour it is very sticky. Keep your fingers wet and it's a bit easier. Press the crust into a 10' pan. Bake for 5-10 minutes. You want it to be done but not too hard.

For the filling, put everything in a large blender or cuisinart. Blend until smooth like sour cream. (Pour over the crust and bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until it's golden brown and doesn't jiggle a lot. Let it cool and then cut and serve with fruit sauce over it.

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Dreamy Desert Life

It's evening here at the Old Mermaid Sanctuary. Mario is making us vegetables which we will combine with Amy's frozen dinners which we will microwave. I'll take some Vitamin B to make up for the Vitamin B the microwave kills. We don't have a microwave at home, so we only use one when we're on the road, usually to heat water or to cook the occasional frozen dinner.

More than you wanted to know about that, eh? Read on. It only gets better. Or worse, depending upon who you are.

We've been here a week now. It usually takes me about a week to acclimate. Before that time, I'll usually have a backache, a rash, depression, cravings for sweets. And I dream. I have had more dreams here in a week than I've probably had in a year, and remember, I can sometimes remember half a dozen dreams a night. (I'm now going to tell you some of the dreams, in shorthand, more for myself than for you, so if you get bored by dreams, skip on down to when I start taking about something else. Although I will tell you there is nakedness, drugs, and food.)

I asked my psyche and the Universe for big dreams, to help me decide what to do while I was here. In one dream, Mario and I travelled to some exotic place to see some wonderful thing but something happened and we ended up on this kind of hospital. I thought, man, I don't want to be in this place with sick people, just stuck here. And then the hospital began to move. It was a train. I thought, wow, it's all about perspective.

I dreamed I was teaching. I had dream after dream about doing workshops and teaching. I woke up and wondered if I should do that while I was here instead of writing.

I dreamed one of my health care providers was dying, something with her immune system, and she came to tell me about it with Regis Philbin. I thought maybe if I put my hands on her I could help her, but I was afraid I would get the illness, too.

After my uncle died, I dreamed I saw dead people. One of them was my friend Sheila who died a month before Linda. Someone else, too, but I can't remember who. I was so happy to see her. I thought she was alive, but she said, no, still dead. And something about running around naked with or without these dead people I could see.

One day I got a book from the library on plants and shamanism. I opened it at random and read something about having to abstain from sex and eat a particular diet in order to be able to talk to the plants. In my never-jump-to-a-snap-conclusion way of being in the world, I said to Mario, "What horseshit. I don't need to stop having sex or eat a certain way for the plants to talk to me. If the plants want to talk to me, they will." So that night I dreamed of ayahuasca, which is a combination of a couple plants prepared in such a way that they create a sacred (and psychedelic) potion that shamans and others use for healing and revelation. Mario and I went down this long stairway and at the bottom was this huge bin of bright green goop which in the dream I knew was ayahuasca. (Even though in real life the drink is brownish.) People were standing and lying in the ayahuasca. I said, "No way. I'm not doing that." I am not the type of person who should do drugs." I figured the shaman was a fake. He said I didn't have to ingest it; I just needed to immerse part of my body into it. I didn't want to do that, but I did, and Mario disappeared.

In another dream, a Native American man was telling me about the plight of cayenne workers in another country. Days later I dreamed of cayenne again. This time I was melting a dark chocolate bar, putting chopped nuts in it, and adding a bit of cayenne to it. I kept making this again and again in my dream.

I suppose the plants were speaking to be after all, without me giving up sex or food.

I had many more dreams, but that's enough.

Mario and I have been walking in the desert every day. We don't walk in the wash much because of the filthy "no trespassing" sign. Instead we go to the monument a mile or so away and walk amongst the saguaros and prickly pears and other desert flora. Today my father and my sister came out and we walked together. We saw a jack rabbit. Only the second one I've ever seen. They look mythological. Exaggerated. Lovely. Slender. With the longest loveliest biggest ears I've ever seen. Before my dad came, I asked all the wild things to come to the sanctuary, so my father could see them and know that he still has connections in this world. We saw the jack rabbit, and storm clouds moved overhead.

On Solstice, Mario and I walked in the park. And I began a new novel. I won't say anything about it yet. I've been able to start novels lately, but I haven't been able to finish them. So we'll see what happens.

I had more to say but it's late at night and I am tired. I almost always get depressed when I come here, and it happened again. But I knew it would pass and it did, as soon as I began writing. When I write, it is one of the few times in my life when I feel a part of life, when I am not lonely. It's such a strange thing. Now I shall go to sleep and see what wonders await me.

May You Dream in Beauty!

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Dreams Are Made of This

Happy Thanksgiving to you! I hope you all had a grand holiday and that you all ate too much, or too little, or just right. Whatever rocks your boat. We fed eight people and still had leftovers. Our boat was rocked.

We borrowed a long table from the Methodist Church across the street. I moved things out of my room, and that's where we set it up. At first it looked very institutional, but I borrowed a long blue tablecloth from a friend. Then I put our blue place mats around the table and set different plates on each place mat. Some were Fiesta ware. (Yes, this is feasting geekdom, friends, so I'm spillin' the details. Remember, I am Martha Stewitch.)

My mother gave me the Fiestaware years ago, so it was my way of bringing her to our meal. By the way, Mom sought out Fiestaware back when no one used it—back when it still had lead in it! I also used some Talavera plates Mario and I had gotten in Mexico, along with some plain Pier One plates. A small burnished gold cauldron was the centerpiece. I filled it with evergreen twigs I found outside. Next to it I set a small crystal skull. (A mini-Crane.) On the other side of the cauldron, I put a beeswax turkey candle that my beekeeper friend gave us.

We prepared an organic heritage turkey using East Indian spices. (We used this rub here for our template and then changed it a bit.) We also roasted sweet potatoes, onions, carrots, and mushrooms. For our stuffing, which was vegan, we used gluten-free rice bread and added celery, onions, some olive oil and salt and pepper, and then roasted it all up. We also made our standard quinoa with lime juice, scallions, and cilantro. Our friends brought salad, cider, and desserts galore!

Our turkey got done before everyone arrived, so that was a bit problematic. But we just cut it up anyway and then rushed our friends to the table when they arrived. We had a buffet set up in the kitchen. Everyone grabbed a plate and made it through the line. Mario and I sat at opposite ends of this long table. Before we started eating, I welcomed everyone and said how sacred it was to eat with people. We were sharing food and becoming a part of one another. Then we honored the directions and elements.

Beforehand, I did a meditation/journey to the Old Mermaids and asked for a gift for everyone at the table. They gave me eight gifts, plus an extra one since it was Mario's birthday. I wrote the gift on a small piece of paper and curled each one into a seashell. I blessed all the seashells and gifts and did some Reiki on them. Then I placed them randomly around the table so that I didn't know who was getting what gift. Just before we ate, everyone found out what their Old Mermaid "medicine" was. Mine was Crow Medicine.

We ate. I don't remember what we talked about. I was up and down from the table. That's one thing about hosting a gathering like this: I'm so busy I rarely have time to concentrate on the glory of the gathering!

After dinner and desert, we remained at the table and did an exercise using tarot cards. I brought out most of my tarot decks. Everyone oohed and aahed over them and then each person chose which deck s/he wanted to use. I gave them all yellow pads to write on, and then we each started a story: A woman learned how to be happy and healthy. Or a man found his one true love. Things like that. (This wasn't my idea; this was one of my friend's inventions.)

Then we each picked three cards from our decks. We looked at the pictures and wrote a story (beginning, middle, and end) based on our interpretations of what we saw in relationship to that first sentence. Surprisingly, given I'm a novelist, I was finished before anyone else. While they completed their sacred tales, I took the faery and ancestor offering plate outside to the Old Oak, said a prayer, and left the offerings.

Three of the people had to leave fairly early. The rest of us sat around talking about all sorts of things. Like what kind of lives we want to live. Later still, Mario and I and our overnight houseguest did dishes and kept talking.

When I went to bed, I curled up to Mario and said, "I'm just going to decide to be happy." He chuckled. "Just like that?" "Yep." So I lay in bed unable to sleep for a long time. When I started to get grumpy about this, I thought, "But I'm happy." It wasn't denial. I still couldn't sleep. But I was happy. What did it matter if I couldn't sleep? Eventually I would fall to sleep. Life would go on. Wouldn't that be great if it worked? If we could all just decide to be happy?

I dreamed and dreamed. And dreamed some more. In the first dream I remember, I was on my way home. I was supposed to turn right to go home, but I turned left. And I drove away, into the forest. It felt so freeing. In another dream, a man was walking around on the stubs of his legs; he had no feet. I didn't like looking at him. He said to me that you just have to deal with things. "You might think I was hurt in the war, but I wasn't." He had been a soldier. "Or you might think I got this doing something noble. But I didn't. I was crossing the street and I got hit by a car. You just have to deal."

Yep.

I got a good deal Thursday night. I spent the day feasting with good friends. The next day one of my guests wrote and thanked me. He said he enjoyed spending the day with his spiritual family. I liked that. Maybe we do have all kinds of families we can love and gather with. I love my biological family. I love my spiritual family. I love my community family. I love my tree family. I could go on...But I will spare you that.

Blessings, my ether family, and my family of sister and brother mermaids.

May You Feast In Beauty!

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Dreams

I'm having lots of dreams these days. These nights. Mostly in the early morning, I think. The other night in the midst of a long dream, I performed a healing. In the dream. I walked by a young man on a hospital bed. He was gravely hurt. I started to go on by, but I thought I could help him, so I decided to try. I went over to him and put my hand on his left side where his injury was, and then I put my other hand over his mouth.

A few moments later, he opened his eyes. He was well. He was going to live. He rolled over and looked at me. He said, "I have not been good during my life." I shrugged and said, "It doesn't matter. You don't have to be good. It's up to you now what you want to make of your life."

This reminds me now of Mary Oliver's Wild Geese, doesn't it?

She writes, "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Ah yes, Mary. I need to remember your words. Always. Perhaps that was what I was trying to tell that young man on the hospital bed, the man I had just brought back to life.

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place in the family of things."

May You Love in Beauty!

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Princess & the Flickering Screen

SFPSFPSFP.

You wanna know what that is? Me trying to be demure and not actually type shit, fuck, piss. Excuse my freaking French.

But then my heritage is French.

Am I upset about global warming? Yes, but that's not why I'm going to rant. The concurrent meltdown of our economy? No. No, and no.

I have been doing library work all day on the PC they sent me because my work iBook died (as all you weary readers remember). Actually, the work ibook isn't actually dead: it is on life support. I've got a vise with a Kerr canning lid on it to keep it running. If I had an actual workable computer of my own, I'd take a picture and show you.

But I don't. And my eyes hurt sooooo much after a day on this freaking computer. (At one point during the day, tongue planted firmly in cheek, I said to Mario, "How do people live like this?")

I didn't tell you that I did go and buy another laptop. Mario sold some of his old magazines and we got enough to buy a used computer from someone on craigslist. I won't go into many details except to say it was a weird experience. Okay, I'll say a little more. The woman first said the computer still had Applecare. It didn't. Then she said it was 18 months old. It was three years old. And she said it was in perfect working order. BUT the screen flickers, which we didn't notice when we picked it up. So I can't use the freaking thing. And and and, she didn't have the disks right then and she kept complaining about being a single mother and we have to be quiet because you'll wake up the baby and I'll look for the disks later. And later, when we called and asked for the disks, she accused us of harassing her! (With Apple computers you can't do anything without the start up disks--can't get your mail, can't put in your preferences, can't even change the town on the weather so you can get weather for your own town--the horror, the horror.)

Upshot is, we have five computers in this house now and I can't use any of them!!!!! So we're going to sell the one we just bought--if anyone has any money left to buy it--and then that's it. I'm computer-less.

I'm trying not to panic about all this. I'm going into that scary place. How will I make a living? How will I ever write again? (Yes, I can write on legal pads but my words will have to go into a computer eventually and I ain't got the bucks to hire anyone to do that!!!!)

Panic, panic, panic.

My problem is that I do very well on vacation. Once I'm home, I don't do so well.

On the upside, I got an art piece into the juried art show here in town. And next Saturday I'll do a reading at my library to kick off Ruby's Imagine. And there was a nice article in the paper about me. And I got into Kindling Words next spring. (I wonder if I'll be writing by then?)

So I'm not sure when you'll hear from me again.

I'm thinking maybe I'll go out into the world and wander. Become a mystic. Why? Because I like the sound of mystic rather than bum.

Last night I dreamed of leprechauns. It was grand. This dream was filled with men. I was getting married. But things were going wrong with the wedding plans and were out of my control. I was in a...panic. And then there were these leprechauns. (Did you know that the Irish god Lugh was probably the "model" for leprechauns? The god of light. And leprechauns were the treasure keepers. The guards of all that was precious. I guess in the dream I was the treasure.) They were dressed like men in my dream but I knew them for what they were. And when I thought all was lost and I wasn't going to get my wedding, the leprechauns and the other men, headed by my man, the man I was going to marry, came to show me they had arranged everything. I was going to get my wedding, my ceremony, my ritual outside under the trees. And my man kissed me, this beautiful, short, silver-haired man. What a kiss.

Just thinking of it makes my panic fall away. I just have to let all this useless stuff go. Swim with the Old Mermaids. Dance with the leprechauns. Ahhhhh.

Okay, maybe I won't become a mystic. I actually don't think it's a viable career path.

Maybe politics.

I shall go upstairs now and see my husband. He's annoyed with me because I won't let him look for another computer for me. I can't let another computer into this house until we rid ourselves of some of the ones we have. I'm afraid they will keep multiplying in the night when we're asleep.

Off I go.

May You Compute in Beauty!

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Sweet (and Savory) Dreams Are Made of This...

It's so strange not to have a computer. I was Zen with it for a long time, but now I don't even have a work computer. Three ibooks going belly-up in three months is pretty frustrating. And the MacBook makes me sick, so we're selling it. They've redesigned the screen—some new technology—and it has a glossy screen. So Apple and I are parting company after twenty years. Sad but true. I've never had a PC, so this will be very strange. I'm looking for used stuff now. It's what I can afford!

I don't know if I've ever been so...up in the air in my entire life. Never been so indecisive. Never been so unfocused. Never been so idle. Never wanted to run away so much. And that free-floating anxiety is as bad as ever. Plus asthma attacks. Plus severe depression. Plus no sense of smell. It's very odd. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I had a dream last night that I went to this restaurant. I was in the back, in the kitchen, looking around. I think one of my friends worked there. (I've always loved working in restaurants and being behind the scenes.) I looked around nostalgically at the stainless steel shelves and the bags of supplies and other things in the kitchen and I suddenly broke down and fell to my knees sobbing. Someone came over and said, "What? What?" I sobbed, "This is all I ever wanted to do. My whole life." I just wept with the grief of dreams unfulfilled. Later in the dream, I was trying to catch a train to somewhere. But I missed it and I was running to catch up to it.

I don't know what it means. Even now it makes me cry thinking of it. Aren't dreams odd little gifts? In "real" life, I don't think I ever wanted to own a restaurant. I used to talk about having a bookstore restaurant, but I've been to a few of those: Books and food really don't mix. But it is interesting how restaurants figure into many, many of my books, and food figures into nearly every book.

Well, time to do...something.

May You Eat in Beauty!

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Soul Places

I still don't have a computer. Well, technically, I have a computer; I just can't use it because it makes me sick. Yet I find it quite liberating, actually. I'm remembering those summer days when I used to sit under one of the big old oaks in our yard back home with pen and paper in hand and I'd just write. One book a year. I loved it. Me and the trees and all those tales.

I'm still not ready to write again. No one character has flown into my imagination and stood with her hands on her hips and said, "Do you know shorthand? Cuz I got a story to dicate."

It may happen.

I went away for a week to a training. I told you that, didn't I? It was an unexpected surprise. After the workshop had started, the teacher called me and said come on down! So I did. I've worked with Sandra Ingerman before and was charmed with her down to Earth way of seeing the Visibles and Invisibles. I was impressed by her compassion and desire to learn and teach what she knows in a non-dogmatic way. Anyway, I wasn't supposed to be able to go to this workshop, but then she invited me when they found an extra room in the basement of one of the houses at the retreat center. (Regular readers might vaguely remember I attended the five day Medicine of the Earth in Santa Fe a couple of years ago when my friend Barbara and I drove there.)

I quickly packed Sunday night and drove to Damascus the next morning. Once there, the workshop organizer took me into one of the houses I had never been in at the retreat center and we wandered around until we found room E in the basement. My sense of smell was gone so I had to rely on her to tell me whether it was moldy or not. She said it wasn't moldy, it just smelled musty, like a basement. I wasn't sure there was a difference, but I told her not to worry about it and I hurriedly tried to get set-up in the few minutes before the workshop began. I plugged in my hepa/VOC roomaid filter. It was so cold and dark in the room and rather desolate-looking. I mean, come on, it was in the basement and I am not a fan of basements.

But who cared? I was there! I went to the main house where the workshop room was. I looked around the circle. Where was I going to sit? Forty-two other people had already crowded around. But I found a spot. Later it turned out I was sitting between two of the four people I knew.

For most of the first day, Sandra talked about the mechanics of "soul retrieval." Most indigenous people believe that illness has a spiritual cause. What medicine men and shamans did was go into the spirit world (or that place where you can interact with the Invisibles) and find out why a person was ill. Many illnesses involved "soul loss." They believed that trauma or shock could cause part of a person's essence, vitality, or soul to get lost. The shaman's job was to bring the essence of the person back, so that she was whole again. (We learned about this in Faery Doctoring, too.) Shamanism is based on results. If a shaman or shamanic practitioner—as those people who do healing but who aren't indigenous healers are usually called—doesn't get results then no one came to them for help.

I love being in these circles with people who are trying to figure out the world. I love being in circles of people where I can talk about hugging trees and talking to the Winds, Clouds, Mountains, Rivers. It is so relaxing to be amongst people who see the world as it truly is: Alive! Responsive! Communicative!

Strangely enough, I slept during this week of training. I went into my cool little dungeon and fell right to sleep. This was extraordinary! The first night, I dreamed we were all in the big room together, all the people in the workshop, and Sandra raised her arms and we raised our arms, and then we dropped down to the floor and slid toward the center until we were all touching and linked and our bodies created a beautiful colorful mandala.

Many things happened during the week. We worked hard. Every time I go to one of these trainings, I'm amazed at how difficult and tiring and invigorating the work can be. We worked from 9:30 a.m. until about 10:00 p.m., with breaks for meals.

A German couple were in the house where I was staying. The man attended the workshop; the woman was on her vacation. They had lived in the U.S. for five years and they were looking forward to going back to Germany. Finding community and friends here has been difficult for them. They said they'd meet someone, like their neighbors, and the neighbors would say, "Great to meet you. Let's do dinner or something." And then my new friends would say, "Yes, great. Tomorrow?" And they'd try to set a date, and nothing would happen. I said, "Don't feel bad. Generally speaking, Americans don't really know how to create community. I have the same trouble!"

My favorite times were sitting and talking. One night three of us were left around the altar, talking about writing and publishing and wondering when we'd get up and go to bed. After the fire ceremony on the last night, I walked around in the dark with one of the women who had come from Germany for this workshop. She was disappointed that everyone had scattered right after the ceremony. She wanted to stay up and sing and dance. She wondered if something was wrong that everyone left afterward. I explained again that most Americans have a difficult time being in community—and also, it was hot. "We are a tired people!" We stopped at a moonlit meadow and listened to the coyotes howl. When I joined in the howling, the coyotes stopped! Oops! That same night, I went back to the house and talked with the German couple.

For the most part, the weather was great, especially for August. By Thursday, however, the screw had turned, and it was about 100 degrees out. That was also the night we did the fire ceremony, inside because of the fire danger. Inside the house where I was staying. It was hot inside and out that night, except in my little dungeon room. My room was divine, and I was so grateful they had given me that room.

On the last morning, someone was asking me about my writing. As I was answering her question, she and another woman started teasing me about how I seemed to be unsure of my writing, how I almost belittled it. I was embarrassed. I told them I didn't usually do that. I was a champion for my work. But lately, I had been unsure. I was very uncomfortable with the conversation, and I soon left and went back to sit in my cool little dungeon by myself. As I sat there eating a boiled egg, I said, "Okay, Kim, you're always complaining about not having community. What the hell are you doing sitting here alone?" So, I left my comfy dungeon and went back to the dining area. I sat with a couple of friends.

As usual, I was one of the last people to leave when the workshop was over. I took a couple people out to the big Old Doug fir on the property. It is old growth, probably 600 years old. Can you imagine? Some of my favorite times at the workshop were spent with trees. Sometimes I think that the answers to absolutely everything is in trees.

Now I'm home. Within hours of being home, I learned they were going to spray the blackberries across the road at the school and the area outside the office where I work once a week in Vancouver. The next day after I got home, a little rat dog chased me into my house. All my triggers were being...triggered. Coming home is always the challenge—to bring what I've learned into this place. To walk in beauty everywhere. To create sanctuary everywhere. To be an Old Mermaid wherever I am.

Sometimes I feel so lost. I have moments when I feel at home. When I feel whole. That is something. That is a grand thing.

Other times...

After I got home from the workshop, as soon as I could, I went out into the woods with Mario. A few feet from the threshold into the forest, we spotted a single shoe. Mario and I looked at each other and one of us said, "Oh look. A lost soul."

It seemed like an image out of a dream, full of symbolism and depth of meaning. I stared at the shoe for a long while. Then I left it on the path for someone else, just in case they needed it, and I walked deeper still into the forest.

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When In Need

A friend of mine told me about an incident that happened between her, her horse, and a doe. She was on her horse in an open arena when a doe came into the arena. Her horse began trembling. (The horse was relatively young and inexperienced.) And the doe was strangely aggressive. In fact, she began to charge the horse. My friend could just imagine the body blow that was about to come; she knew how traumatized and (possibly) hurt the horse would be. My friend waved and shouted and still the doe charged.

Then my friend called out to her dog who was up by the house. "Jack!" she screamed. "Jack!" And Jack, who is nine years old and blind in one eye with tumors all over his belly, came racing toward them. He was full of vim and vigor again, barking and growling, and he herded the doe right out of the arena. (He's part Husky and Border Collie.) All was well. She saw the doe the next day, by the way, with two tiny fawns, and the doe was "as peaceful as can be."

A couple nights after my friend told me this tale, I dreamed I was walking down a snowy country road by myself. There was snow everywhere and the house was far away. Across the field, I saw a line of dogs, maybe some wolves and bears. They saw me and they were all charging toward me. I knew I couldn't run and get away. I didn't know what to do. So I screamed, "Coyote! Coyote!" And Coyote came running toward me and the dogs, wolves, and/or bears veered away from me. Coyote had saved me. I rubbed his head and hugged him. All was well with my world.

Isn't it great when you call for help and it comes, either in ordinary reality or non-ordinary reality?

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PD PD Rain

Yes, you heard it hear last. It is pouring down pissing down rain. My peonies have given up. They are splayed on our sidewalk. The poppy petals are folded up like little orange umbrellas. The Old Oak and Old Maple are swaying with the wind, the rhodies, too, perhaps enjoying these spring showers. I go out and I feel wind-whipped. Yes, I bow down to you, Wind, and will do whatever you like, whatever you want.

Something so beautiful about watching the clouds move across the gorge, down low, in a slow dance, oblivious to me. Do they know I watch them in awe?

Yesterday I saw an old friend I used to work with. We were together five days a week for seven years and then we weren't. She has been one of my favorite people for as long as I've known her. She had such a positive optimistic spirit. Then she get fibromyalgia. And a year ago her mother died. And she lost faith. Got depressed. I can relate. When did I lose faith? Shall I count the times?

I have had a such a fortunate life that it feels stingy to be faithless. And it's not like I don't believe in anything. I believe in the Wind, the Moon, Stars, the trees, bears, coyotes, the rhodies, poppies, bees, the love of my sweetheart. On good days, I believe the divine is in everything and everything is divine.

How do I define divine? I don't define it as a god with dogma. I don't define it as god at all. What I'm talking about is indefinable. It is the creative flow that trickles, roars, surges, floods through all of us. Godus.

Anyway, my friend and I talked about how much these deaths in our lives have affected us. How it is difficult to have faith in anything when you watch people suffer and die. And yet we have to allow the sadness. Perhaps it keeps us from doing anything too drastic. Like throwing off this life for another one.

It was so great spending time with her. I was getting dressed near the end of our visit to go out to dinner with Mario and Marcus, and it was fun to have a girl around to tell me if this was too tight, if this color looked all right, talking about the weight we had gained, knowing who we had been and who we are now. Both of us wondering: Where are the women we were? It is strange when you look in the mirror and don't see yourself, when you see photographs and wonder, "Where did I go?"

I hope it isn't another year before we see each other again.

I've been dreaming. Did I say? Dreamed I was a wordlord, like a landlord only with words. And I keep dreaming specific words. Jessup. Mallard. Last night it was Chip. Chip was the name of an androgynous person who was helping me find my way. He was a she who then was a male. Or seemed female and then was male. He was so sweet. So young. We were going to run off together and I asked him his age. "Thirty-three," he told me. I thought, "Well, he's only ten years younger." (In my dreams!) As we were about to leave together, I told him I was married. So he left me. When I woke up, I felt as though I had lost someone very dear to me. When I told Mario, he said, "Well, if it doesn't mean you're getting ready to run off with some young stuff, it's probably about mourning your lost youth." Geez. That's pathetic. I looked up what the word meant. The name Chip is a rare nickname for Charles which means free man. But more likely, chip is part of me: a chip off the old block. Funny how all the words I'm dreaming are male: lord, jessup, mallard, chip.

Mario and I went with our friend Marcus into Portland for dinner. Much fun. Afterward we came home and Mario did the dishes while I sat by the heat and Marcus found us something to watch on TV. We finally settled on the movie Snakes on a Plane. It was funny. Of course my eyes were averted for about three-quarters of the movie, but it was good to see Marcus and Mario laugh. It's always fun to be with people when they're laughing, isn't it?

Now it is midmorning and I haven't gotten any work done. I'm going to start writing on I, Assassin again, I think. I've thrown out 166 pages and all the characters and I've started anew. I've only written a page, but I already like this woman much better than the other one. Her name's Tess Connelly.

OK babydolls. Time for me to go commune with nature and my own creations.

May You Spin in Beauty!

p.s. They fixed my computer. Yeah!

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Poppy Season

'tis the season. For poppies. They are everywhere. Orange everywhere. During the day, they're shiny little suns. At dusk, they fold up like umbrellas. Little orange umbrellas. I love, love, love, love, love them. They exude life, to me, life and love. Don't know why. They just do.

Most of the poppies around my house are wild. But I've encouraged them. Talked to them. Pulled up the grass around them. Mario too. He has mowed around them with our little electric mower. If one falls or gets trampled on, I shake them around my steps so the little seeds fall onto the ground.

The ones in my flower garden are all ones I planted. Or seeded. Orange gorgeous luscious California poppies.

I've planted Oriental poppies, too. Ahhhh. All different colors.

I've been doing more than just worshipping poppies. A bit.

I've been spending as much time outside as I can. Out in the woods. Hanging with the trees. The birds. The green green greenness of my world. I sit on the ground deep in the woods surrounded by trees, mostly cedars. They grow up forever. I sit with the yellow wood violets. Over there is a deer's head orchid. Oh man. I love this place. I listen to the trees, search out bones, stories. It's all there.

I'm not trying to do anything except get through each day. Not trying to fix myself. If I feel bad, I feel bad. If I want to eat, I eat. If I want to watch TV, I watch TV. Well, you get the idea. Sometimes I sob and sob. I miss Linda more than ever. And sometimes when I think about what happened to my mom, it feels like a nightmare. I keep wanting to tell her so many things.

But this is all part of the process. Trying not to fight it.

At night, I sleep. One night I slept 12 hours, another night 10 hours, 11. And my dreamworld is so rich. One night I dreamed I lost my laptop and toolbox. It was an inside job. I was frantic. Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Especially when the dreamer is a writer who is wondering if she will ever want to write again. Another night, I told a rich girl that when the world collapsed—and it was going to collapse—the rich were going to have the worst time of it because they didn't know how to do anything. (Funny dream!)

Last night in my dream, Mario and I decided it was time to go home.

And this morning I felt more at home. I worked in my garden. I pulled grass from the poppies. I did library work. Played cards with friends. Thought of a new angle for a book I was working on six months ago. Wondered if maybe I might start writing again.

Who knows?

It's poppy season.

It is enough to worship poppies right now.

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