Peace Envoys

I’m sitting outside with Mario, on our back patio. It is near the end of the day. Mario is reading. I am looking around our yard. It’s not really “our” yard. We don’t own it, but I have lived in this place longer than I have lived anywhere except in my parents’ house. It feels like ours.

I am looking up at the Kuan Yin Peace Garden.

Kuan Yin is holding her concrete fan with her left hand and looking out toward me, yet not at me. The angelica I planted near her is stunted, probably from the acidic soil. Near Kuan Yin is a concrete birdbath and shells my neighbor gave me. I wish more flowers grew around her, but I don’t want to think about what’s “wrong” every time I look at her. Just like I don’t want to look at my yard or gardens and think, “I have to cut this, weed this, plant this.”

I just want some peace.

I created the Kuan Yin Peace Garden some years ago, after 9/11, when this country was about to go to war. I had to find some peace in all the strife. And my landlord had just “trimmed” the Doug fir, causing all sorts of creatures to scatter because he’d disturbed their homes. My peaceful backyard felt like a mini-war zone. And it looked like it. So I found Kuan Yin and the bird bath and some flagstones and I put them near the butchered Doug fir. In time, plants grew, all volunteers. Now it is quite lovely.



I feel as though I need a Peace Garden again. I need to unwind the knot in my belly. I recognize it. The last time I had it was when my father had heart surgery. The time before that was when my mother died. Now I think it’s an accumulation of work stress and working too much, not having enough down time. I need swaths of time where I don’t do anything but stare at the sky or listen to the wind through the trees.

Doesn’t everyone?

So I’m unwinding.

I’ve taken time off from work. For two weeks I’m going to try and not do any library work. I’ll try not to go into the city so much. I’ve gotten rid of my TV service—did that a few months ago. Trying not to read or hear any news. I was walking on the Mystic Trail nearly every day, but that made the knot worse. Every day I encountered some human being who was disruptive, rude, alien.

I’m not a people hater. I’m not one of those people who hates my own kind. I don’t prefer animals over people. I am almost always happier in the woods than I am in a crowd of people, but I often prefer being in the woods with my own kind.

Hmmm. But how many humans are my own kind?

Trees feel like my kind. My plants feel like my kin.

Lately, people bother me. I am angry most of the time. I wonder why people can’t act in a way that doesn’t annoy or harm me. Even as I think such thoughts I want to laugh because I know it’s ridiculous, but I don’t laugh. I’m still annoyed or angry.

Recently I lost my tribe. At least, it feels that way. It battered me a bit, this loss. The details aren’t important. I feel unmoored. Haven’t got back on my feet—or maybe like the Old Mermaids at first, I haven’t found my land legs yet. It was such a surprising thing to happen.

Ah well. Let’s not pick at that wound.

I can see my garden from here. My gardens, plural. The marigolds are so bright next to the greens. I put up a fence and hung prayer flags all around. They’re not actually prayer flags. They are pieces of fabric I ripped and then tied onto the fence so that the deer wouldn’t hurt themselves in the dark and the night. I don’t know if that works, but I did it.



Next to the vegetable garden is my massive and amazing rosemary bush, along with my sage bush and lavender bush. This is the first time the lavender bush has bloomed in several years. It was damaged in a storm when we were in Arizona one year. I was going to cut it down afterward because I thought it was dead, but I left it. Now it’s in bloom again. Near to the bushes, I recently planted a tobacco plant. I love being surrounded by warrior and healing plants.

Maybe they are my peace envoys.

As I gaze up at these plants, as I think about them and listen for their whispers, my mood lifts. I believe plants can heal anything. And I believe they know everything.

Yesterday, the knot was so tight in my stomach I could barely breathe. I took one of the quilts my father made for me and I went outside. I lay next to my medicinal herb beds—near to the comfrey and black cohosh—and I put the quilt over me. Closed my eyes. Listened. Felt the grass beneath my fingers. Breathed, breathed.

Later I got up and went to my rosemary bush. I lay next to her for a long while. She’s been with me for more than twenty years, and I felt like I was spending time with an old friend.

When I got up from the rosemary bush, a bright yellow and green spider was walking up my arm. She was so beautiful I nearly gasped.

This morning, I got up and spent time with my plants, watering them, feeding them, pulling “weeds.” I talked to them, sang to them, even as I was pulling some of them up, explaining why I did this and that.

Afterward, Mario and I walked down to the river. I was glad it was just Mario and myself sitting on the shore and watching the Columbia River move toward us and then away and then toward us and then away.

Once we got home again, we worked. I am most at home and happiest when I am doing writing work or when I’m out in the woods. Today was a work day so that’s what we did. I finished editing Whackadoodle Times. Then Mario worked on the covers for The Rift and Pricked: A Jane Deere novel. We used one of my photos for the The Rift and I found a photograph on dreamstime that I liked for Pricked. I want the Jane Deere covers to have a grunge fairy tale-like flavor, and I think this cover starts the series out nicely.

Now I’m listening to the day unwind. Too many dogs are barking. Machinery in the background. But I breathe, in and out, in and out. I look up at Kuan Yin. She looks so peaceful.

Of course, she’s made out of concrete.

She’s also surrounded by greenery, mostly plum trees. Behind her are blackberries, a young hawthorne tree, several young cherry trees. Towering above her is the Douglas fir.

All is well, all is well.

I look over at Mario and he smiles at me. I smile back.

I know peace will come to me again, too.

(Here are the covers we worked on today. These are jpgs so the detail isn't good. These are first drafts for the covers. My name needs to be smaller on The Rift and some other things on Pricked, but so far, so good.)

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Some Pics

After a family reunion this weekend, we decided to drive up to Sedona. Fortunately, there was room at the particular inn we stay at. I love Sedona. And what I love about it is being outside, walking amongst the rocks and trees. I felt very relaxed and happy there. Next year we might have to move the Sanctuary up to Sedona for at least part of the time. I took some pics. You can look at them here.

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Photos

I just realized you can go see my photos on FB now even if you don't have a Facebook account. If you click on the first photo on each, it'll go to a bigger photo and I've written some about most of them.

Sonoran Desert photos here.

Flower photos here.

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Deserted

It is 38 degrees outside. Brrrrr. Mario went and turned on the heat in the Quail House for me. I'll eat soon, and then we'll go our separate ways to work. I still don't know what I'll work on. Or even if I will work. Yesterday I started reading The Old Mermaid Sanctuary, the second novel in the Church of the Old Mermaids ouevre. It was good to be back with the Old Mermaids, but I've got some work to do. I've never done two books with the same characters and I spent the first chapter summing things up. Yuck. But I can easily fix that.

Yesterday I took some photographs of the desert. I have decided they need to be shown big, because this is big sky country. I can't show big here, so I'm going to use Furious Spinner as my photograph album. Go here to look at the photos and at the bottom of that post you can come back here.

Weren't those beautiful? It does a body good to see the sunshine, doesn't it?

I had more to say but those photographs lulled me into bliss, so I think I'll go eat breakfast and then go outside and see if any wild things are visiting. Yesterday we asked the wild things to come to the Old Mermaid Sanctuary. We are missing the javelinas, owls, and bobcat. I don't have to actually see them, but I want to know they are here, and I haven't even seen any of the tiny cloven hoofprints of the javelinas.

May You Walk in Sunshine!

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A Fool's Progress

We are here at the Old Mermaid Sanctuary! Yay! The coyotes are howling. The moon is spilling milky light all across the sanctuary. Mmmmm.

We left LA county early this morning. We had frost on the car and snow dusted the tops of the nearby mountains. We drove and drove, away from the cities and into the desert. We listened to the radio. Satish Kumar was on NPR. It was an interesting interview, primarily because the interviewer just didn't seem to understand Kumar and he sounded frustrated. "What do you mean you're never stressed? What do you mean you never hurry? How is that possible?" And Kumar said he did everything slowly. "Don't you feel the burden of trying to change the world?" Kumar said he wasn't trying to change the world—and yes, indeed that would be a burden. "I serve the world," he said. "I don't try to change it."

Wow. And wow. And more wows! I felt one of those quantum shifts people are always talking about.

To be in service to the world rather than trying to change it. All at once I understood when people said they were in service to God. It didn't have to be a groveling on their knees kind of service. It's what I feel about the Earth, about the world. I do want to be in service to the Earth! Trying to change the world suddenly felt like incredible hubris; me saying I wanted to change the world was like someone else saying they wanted to change God, I supposed.

To serve the world. To serve the world.

Later a big ole truck roared past me, too close, too loud. For a moment, I wanted to scream at him, give him some appropriate sign language. But then I thought, "Does that serve the world?" And I knew it didn't. My annoyance disappeared and I continued on my journey.

We got to my dad's place around 3:30. I got to see two of my sisters, one of my bros-in-law, and my mother's psycho cat. (The psycho cat is another story.) It was good to be with everyone. Mario and I gave my dad one of the computers that had made me sick, the one from Craigslist. He was a happy camper. It felt nice to be of service to my poppy.

Now we're in Tucson, or just outside, on the foothills of the foothills of the Rincons. We brought in all of our stuff, and then we went out into the moonlight. We said hello to the horses, then hello to the Quail House, the place where I wrote Church of the Old Mermaids. Something ran in front of us in the moonlight. Desert faeries? A mountain lion? Coyote? Only fools walk in the desert at night.



Time for dreams. We're listening to KXCI, Tucson's community radio. I'm so tired I think I've fallen into a kind of trance. I know the dj is speaking English, but I can't understand a word he's saying.

Outside somewhere it is snowing. Somewhere else it is raining. And the mountains are dreaming. Shhh. If you listen too hard, you will never hear them. If you don't try to listen, you will never hear them.

Something is happening here. And there.

May You Dream in Beauty, Babies!

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Samhain, Part Two

What follows is a long description of our Hallows ceremony. If you're not interested in the Invisibles or ritual, you might want to skip this post. I put in a little more detail than I ordinarily do in case any of you want to try this at home.

"When we dream alone, it is only a dream, but when we dream together, it is the beginning of a new reality." —Unknown Author

About midday, I wondered once again what the hell I was doing as I prepared for the Hallows celebration at the Old Mermaids Sanctuary. I had had little sleep over the past couple of nights, and I was starting to get a little cranky. Still, when I finally dragged myself out of bed, I spent part of the morning dancing around the house skyclad. I really think everyone should begin at least some of their mornings dancing around the house nekked.

Then I cleaned the house, did laundry, made dal, made marinated rice salad, decorated, started the ancestors altar. Got a headache. Had company. The company was a nice break, actually. She told me an interesting dream she had had complete with a shapeshifting donkey with a blue vine and a hummingbird that was a kami. Kamis are Japanese god/goddesses/spirits. (Her mother is Japanese.) I'd never heard of a kami, so that piqued my interest. I pulled out a bunch of my mythology books, and we looked at pictures of goddesses, read about hummingbirds, and tried to find info about kamis. Talked. Mario stopped by during his break.

After she left, I went back to preparing for our ceremony. People here are notoriously bad about RSVPing even when you ask them to, so I didn't know how many people were coming. I was hoping it would be a small group. I put tea lights in tiny cauldrons and candle holders outside to illuminate the way for our guests. At 6:00 p.m. when the gathering officially started, it began pouring down pissing down rain. All the candles were immediately drowned, except for one. It flared and burned for quite a long time.

People began arriving between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. One woman was dressed as a fairy. She wore red crinoline and fairy wings. Someone else was dressed as a kind of Earth mother autumnal goddess with a blue moon crescent on her forehead and a crown of leaves on her head. Another woman wore a beautiful red mask with a long orange dress. (I know; I should have taken photos.) Mario wore a mask made from leaves that our friend Michelle made. Another woman was dressed in belly-dancing clothes with a faux leopard shirt, purple crinoline, faux leopard hat, purple wig, and these glorious strange sunglasses. I dressed as a relaxed witch shaman Kim person, with a purple witch hat, pouches, and a long summer dress. Another woman was dressed as as hippie, complete with peace signs painted on her face.

I loved it! After a bit we settled down to start the ceremony. First we called in the directions and elements. We started in the East. Normally I would call in the directions, but instead I asked the people sitting in the East to say something nice about the East and about Air. They did. Then we moved on to the South and Fire, West and Water, North and Earth, what is Above and Below.

Then we went to the heart of the ceremony. First they each picked an animal card from the Medicine Card deck. (Eventually they would travel with the power animal to an ancestor. They would thank the ancestor and then ask for a gift to bring back to someone in the circle. Then they would ask the ancestor if there was some kind of service request they could bring back for someone in the circle. So everyone would get a gift and everyone would be asked to do something for the community.)

Aside. Now here's one of those funny coincidences—or gifts of the Invisibles: I told Mario about my ceremony plans a few days ago. I said I wanted to let each person take their Medicine Card home with them, but I didn't really want to break up my deck. Well, Saturday morning, the morning of the ceremony, someone donated a used pack of Medicine Cards to the Friends of the Library. The woman even brought it up to the desk so that Mario saw it, rather than just putting it in the barrel! Mario called me from work, amazed, and asked if I wanted it. Of course! So he bought it from the Friends of the Library and brought it home.

So I took those cards out and everyone blindly picked one. Once we had our power animals we drummed and danced. The nine of us spread out so that we were dancing and drumming in the living room and my room. (Our little rented house has a strange setup. It's really one huge room with a staircase running through it. Not the best feng shui, I know.) In the past, drumming with people who are not accustomed to drumming has not really been that successful. For instance, the drumming at our Healers Circle has been a little lackluster. But tonight I encouraged them to dance their animal and to make noise. Perhaps being dressed as fairies, goddesses, hippies, and witches allowed people to relax and go for it. Which they did!

When we finished drumming, I turned out the lights. I instructed them to imagine their true self, the one who is full of herself, who knows and understands her true power. For me, I always imagine myself like in the photograph of me on my banner here on my blog. (I'm at Horsethief Lake State Park where the pictographs are, near to She Who Watches. I am open and powerful.) Then I asked the group to each merge with their true self.

Next I asked them to have their power animal give them some protection. The power animal might lick them or surround them with light mesh that kept away harm or do something else that was protective. My power animal taps the top of my head and a kind of egg of purple light envelops me.

I then had them imagine walking down five steps with their power animal. I told them at the bottom of the steps they would find a threshold and beyond that threshold was an ancestor who had volunteered to come and talk with them.

Another aside here. When I talk about ancestors, I don't mean an ancestor like the creepy Uncle Jack you never liked who died last year. I remember when I first started doing this work, I thought, “but my ancestors were all a bunch of depressed drunks; I don't want to honor them or talk to them.” And then two things happened. One, I realized that when we speak of "our ancestors" we're talking about everything on this planet that has lived and then died—everyone that has become dust at our feet: the flora, fauna, the stars. Jesus, Buddha, Emily Dickinson, and the Big Old Oak are all my ancestors. And I realized that for any faults my blood ancestors may have had, they did something very valuable: They survived and because of that, I live. Once I had that realization, all dread and judgment for them slipped away and I just felt profound gratitude for my life and compassion for them and their lives. So I explained to the group that anyone could show up as their ancestor. They might see someone they knew or they might not. They might not see anyone; they might just hear something.

Once they crossed the threshold and saw the ancestor, I instructed them to thank the ancestor. Then ask the ancestor for a gift to bring back to the group. After they understood what that gift was, I told them to ask the ancestor if there was anything we could do to help our communities.

Another aside. This is the thing about the Invisibles: They are not omnipotent or omniscient. Sandra Ingerman says that we are co-creators with them. I like that idea. Instead of walking around with our hands out all the time petitioning, we might instead say, "What can I do?" I think this is so true about so many aspects of our lives. We need to step up as much as we can and take responsibility for our lives and communities.

They then had time to talk with the ancestor. They could ask them if they were able to help make the election go smoothly and for the good of all. And then they said good-bye, walked over the threshold, came up the steps, and returned to our living room.

I turned on the light then and they each wrote on a white slip of paper what the gift was. On an orange slip of paper, they wrote the act of service. Then we dropped them into my mother's green bowl. Each person picked an orange piece of paper and a white one. Then we went around the room and told each other what our gifts for the year were.

There were some interesting “coincidences.” My gift was "clarity," which is what Mario got from his ancestor to bring back to the group. His gift was "love," which was what my ancestor gave me to bring back. One person's ancestor for the journey was Daniel Boone. This person was a bit reluctant to mention this. (And someone else had a character from a movie. What I said is that we never know what clothes the Invisibles will wear.) As soon as the one woman mentioned Daniel Boone, another woman said, "I’m related to Daniel Boone's wife." And then another woman said, "I'm related to Daniel Boone!" So whatever that means, we had some Daniel Boone energy goin’ on!

My gift of service was "love one another." That's an easy gift of service I can give—I think. We'll see how the year unfolds. Some of the gifts of service were specific: mow your lawn, send a card to someone in a nursing home, save the Gorge from development, and others were like mine.

Afterward we ate and talked. One of the women showed us how to "fluff our auras." I've never been quite sure what an aura is, but I was willing to fluff and be fluffed. And actually, I could feel something on my hands as I was fluffing, kind of like when you're doing Tai Chi or Kum Ye yoga and you feel pressure or energy on your hands. Mostly it was a kick looking around the room and seeing these beautifully and exotically dressed people fluffing and being fluffed.

Priceless.

Four of us sat around talking after most everyone had gone. Then we each pulled a card from the Healing Poetry Deck and read them out loud. (I can't remember if I told you all about that. Eight of us from the Celtic Shamanism group put together a deck of healing poetry that we wrote. It's really beautiful. We're going to get a website up soon. We've sold the first 100 decks, and now we're working on the next batch.)

Then Mario and I were alone. We dreaded going into the kitchen, but we finally did. Some little (or big) faery had done the dishes.

I emptied the food from the ancestor plate into a paper bowl someone had left, and I carried it out to the crossroads and left it for the spirits, the faeries, and/or the wild things.

And then I went to sleep and dreamed.

This morning I went out to get the cauldrons and candle holders. All are partially filled with water now, except for one. Remember I mentioned that one candle burned bright during the downpour? The flame had shivered and flared up in the rain, wobbling like a dextrous bellydancer. Apparently at some point, the heat shattered the thick glass and now it lay in three pieces on the grass. Earth, fire, and water all there on display. My teachers who work with the Dakinis might speculate that this was a blessing from the Dakinis. My Celtic teachers might murmur, "Ahhh, the power of three." Someone else might say, "It was just a clash of fire and water and the glass lost." I'm sure I could calculate how hot the flame would have had to have been to shatter the glass. But in the end, as my friend Will says, "It's all one thing."

May You Celebrate in Beauty!

Below is the ancestor altar built on my dad's quilts.

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Samhain, Enchantments, & Faeries

This is the time of the Wild Hunt. If I listen carefully I can hear it. There. Do you hear it too? You might have thought at first that it was the sound of a beat up car with a bad exhaust. It just rumbled by. Look beyond the glamour. And the children wearing fairy wings and death masks are looking for sweets for the new year. Beyond them, if you squint, you can see the Faery Queen. The children are part of her court, protected by her this night. I can hear the bells on the bridle of the Queen's horse. Or is that an elf whispering in my ear? Ahhh. It is Hallows Eve.

Most of our trick-or-treaters are gone. Soon we'll bring inside the candles that guided the little ones up our steps. I just took my candle snuffer and put out the black candle that lit up the Katrina doll we got in Mexico a couple of years ago. She still stands in our front window, waving her bone fingers.

I had a lovely Halloween thus far, thank you very much. I drove to Portland today to attend a class my friend and mentor is teaching at one of the colleges there. It's called Faery Shamanism! Can you imagine? I sat in this classroom today listening to a anthropologist talk about faeries, shamanism, gender roles, soul rescue and more. It was delightful! I'm teaching this class in a couple of weeks while my friend is gone. I'm looking forward to it very much.

I realized this week that I have been under a kind of enchantment. Some people might call it a curse or a thought form. I like the idea of an enchantment. It sounds less...curse-like. Enchantments can be good or bad, and if you can sing something into existence, it seems to me you can sing it out again. What I mean by enchantment is this: We all have these untrue things we say about ourselves or about things in our lives all the time. (In fact, we may have said them so many times that they actually have become true.) When we tell ourselves these stories again and again, we are casting a kind of enchantment over ourselves.

I hear people repeat these kinds of enchantments again and again. Things like, "I just always say the wrong thing;" "I never fit in;" "I'm stupid;" "nothing I do ever works out."

One of the enchantments I've been saying for years is that I am not a good teacher. I thought this was fact. And yet when my friend asked me to teach her class, I was very excited. I used to teach college composition, and I loved it. I didn't really love reading and grading all the papers, but I did enjoy interacting with the students.

This week, I began planning for the class, which is four hours long, and I didn't feel a twinge of anxiety, which one would expect if one was really incompetent at something. And suddenly I realized my idea that I couldn't teach was an enchantment I had put on myself. Where did it come from? When I was managing a branch library, I would train staff, and I realized that I knew how to explain how to do a particular task one way. If they didn't understand my explanation, I didn't know how else to explain it. Since I knew this about myself, I would tell my staff that if they didn't understand me, figure it was my fault not theirs and they should ask me again and I'd get someone else to train them on a particular task. Today I realized that just means I'm a poor instructor which is completely different from being a bad teacher.

Knowing that a community college in Portland offers a class called Faery Shamanism has gotten me thinking about all kinds of things. Maybe I could teach again. It's a thought.

So I shall begin the new year without that particular enchantment on myself. How about you? Are you ready to release some of your enchantments?

Tomorrow friends will gather here for more magic, and I'll let you know how it goes.

May Our Ancestors Rest in Beauty!

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October Gathering

(Evine in my living room during the Gathering. You can see one of the wooden Old Mermaids and Michelle Hoffman's gorgeous painting, Refugio.)

We didn't have the Gathering here last year because we were in D.C. So it was nice to have the gals back here. I made rice and two different dals. I used the berber spice we'd made at Spicy Saturday in one dal. In the yellow dal, I used some garam masala I made quite a while ago. I put turmeric, a whole clove, and seaweed in with the brown rice.

About fifteen women came. Linda's sister Ruth and her cousin Dee joined us, which was great. The best part of the evening was that Serena showed up! What a great surprise. All night I missed Linda. Missed her and felt angry that she was dead. I don't like death. It sucks. I don't care if it's "a part of life." It's the last part.

Anyway, it was potluck, so there was lots of food. We did ceremony. First I turned off the lights. I drummed slowly, and we called out the names of those who have died this year and others who have died and become our ancestors over the years. After that, we each held a piece of ice and said outloud (or to ourselves) what we wanted to let go of this year. (Remember, Hallows is New Year's Eve for pagans/witches.) After we said what we wanted to release, we dropped the melting ice into a bowl.

Next, we each held onto a seed. I passed around a plate with dirt on it. We each said what seed we'd like to plant for our new year. Then I poured the water from the melting ice over the seeds. The burdens we leave behind became compost for the new year. (Later I would take all of it out to our compost.)

Then we toned together. It wasn't very loud. They didn't seem very enthusiastic about it. One thing I've learned over the years of facilitating ceremony is that unless people are used to either singing or participating regularly in ceremony/ritual, they have a great deal of trouble making noise—they have trouble speaking up and speaking out. I don't understand it since I've always had a big mouth. But I do believe we all got to find our voices one way or another.

After the Gathering, several people stayed to watch our tape of the debate. Mario and I finished cleaning up, doing the laundry, and working on Church of the Old Mermaids while our guests watched TV.

I didn't get to sleep until 3:00 a.m. Not because the women stayed that late. I just couldn't chill out. The hamster on the wheel kept going on and on and on. Like a crazy woman.

Except for the crazy woman who showed up at the end of the night, it was a fine day.


(Some of the Gathering gals, including Linda's sister Ruth who is showing Thelma photos of her family.)

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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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The Old Sea

I'm in the strange little place on the Oregon coast. I can hear them doing dishes downstairs in the restaurant kitchen. Every once in a while I hear something from the writing group down the hall. That's where Mario is. I'm sitting cross-legged on this tiny little bed. It'll be interesting to see how Mario and I manage to sleep on it together.

Perhaps we'll "curl together like two rings on a dark hand."

I will be with the Old Sea and the Old Mermaids this weekend, so I may not be posting much. After I hugged my sweetheart, I went down to the beach. Ahhhhh. I took a few pics.

Breathe, breathe, breathe...


Foam on the beach—I'd never seen so many colors in it before.






Isn't she beautiful?

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Made Visible

Mmmm. It’s an almost perfect Columbia River Gorge day today. We had rain showers. And periods of sunshine. The air is clear and crisp, with mist rising above the dark green sides of the gorge, rising until it is indistinguishable from the clouds, becoming clouds, I suppose. Does mist have ambition to be a cloud? Rain? Snow? The snow dusts the higher elevations of the gorge like powdered sugar on top of a conifer cake. Still feels like winter. Yet the cottonwood trees are all leafing out. Their leaves are lime-colored and tender-looking. The osprey are sitting in their huge nests alongside the river, slow-cooking embryos into bird babies.

Yesterday we had to go to town. It was beautiful then, too. Storming one minute, sunny with rainbows the next. Kind of like life, babies. As I was coming out of the library in the Hollywood District, a man came in the same door I was leaving from. I stepped out of his way. He looked at me and yelled, “Fuck you, too, for letting them rape my neighborhood.” It was hailing and raining outside, and Mario had gone to get the car because I had forgotten my hat and scarf and it was cold. A few seconds before my encounter with the man, I had been standing by the window watching the downpour and talking with another woman. We talked about the winter that never seems to end. Wondering when the locusts were coming. Then I saw our car and I started outside. Met the man. “Fuck you, too, for letting them rape my neighborhood!”

I thought he was probably schizophrenic and wasn’t actually talking to me. I looked back at the woman I had been speaking with and I shrugged and said, “Okay.” And I laughed. The woman looked afraid. So did another woman, younger, who sat on a bench near her. I started outside again. I could feel the warmth from the library entranceway and the fresh coolness from the rocky rain blending for a moment. And I heard the man say, “Don’t laugh.” So he had been talking to me, he was noticing me. I had my back to him and it flashed through my brain that this was how people got killed. In a moment like this. By a crazy person. An angry person. I didn’t like having my back to him. I sensed he was coming after me. I knew he was going to try to hurt me.

I ran. I ran into the hail and rain and I got into the car. Safe. Safe. Safe. Locked the door. Then I looked to see if the man had followed me. He hadn’t. He hadn’t followed. Mario drove away.

I was all right. Nothing had happened.

It made me wonder though: What had I done to allow the "rape of my neighborhood." Or what hadn't I done. How had I acted or not acted? How responsible was I—were all of us—for the state of the world.

Mario and I drove through the storm toward home. Huge blue-black storm clouds hung over us like magnificent paintings in a sky gallery. Ahhhhh. We had the radio on. Someone recited Kahlil Gibran's quote "Work is love made visible.” I’d heard that quote before, but it hadn’t really resonated with me. This time, this day, it did.

I said to Mario, “Wow. I think maybe that’s what I do with my writing: try to make love visible.”

“I know it’s what you do,” he said. “That’s why I was so sad when you said you were quitting.”

We drove through a tunnel just then. Into a kind of golden darkness. A noisy silence. Rumble. Then into the stormy light again.

Love made visible. As I thought about it, I knew that was what I did with my writing. It was what I did when I was a community librarian. All the work I did was an expression of my love. I remembered when I first heard that quote years ago, I imagined people slaving over widgets, cotton fields, office computers. How was that love made visible? I had wondered. I associated the word “work” with drudgery, unhappiness, this thing we had to do to stay alive. I’ve always been aware of how lucky and privileged I am to have the choice to try to make a living doing something I love. We should all be so lucky. So when I heard that quote before, I thought Kahlil Gibran must not understand what work is.

Yet now I wondered if maybe I should adopt a more catholic definition of the word "work."

My writing is work. I love my work. I love the creation process.

Some of my writer friends think it’s silly that I consider my writing to be my art, that I think of it as something that is sacred to me. Writing is something that sustains me, it is one of the ways that I communicate with the world. For these friends, we put words on paper. That's what writers do. Period. That’s all right. They can do that. I think that’s wonderful for them! Me? I’ll be the story shaman. It is my work.

Love made visible.

I’d like my entire life to be love made visible.

When I got home yesterday, I read an interview in Alternatives with Gary Holthaus, a sustainable agriculture activist. It was Part 2 and I hadn’t read the first part, but the person conducting the interview summed up some of the things Holthaus had said previously.

“Are you saying that the best course may be to leave that which is unsustainable to its inevitable fate? In other words, not spend a lot of energy fighting the giant institutions and corporations because they are, by definition, unsustainable and will collapse anyway, of their own weight? I’m thinking of Cargill, Monsanto, ADM, and the others. They buy the politicians, and they’ll write the Farm Bill as they please. But never mind them, let’s get to our work, which is about sustainable local and organic food, building up the soils, and teaching people about urban agriculture that works. Is that what you’re getting at?”

Holthaus answers, “Absolutely. It’s about finding out how to feed ourselves healthy food, and to heck with those other guys. I’d say to heck with Congress, we can ignore them, too. We can ignore the Farm Bill, we can do fine without Monsanto—in fact we’re going to have to learn to do that.”

I thought, yes, yes, yes! I’ve been an activist almost all my life, starting back in elementary school when I tried to protect the killdeer from the insane boys who crushed the birds eggs with hysterical delight. Most of the time, I’ve been fighting corporations, big businesses, big governments. I end up defeated; these entities end up energized by my defeat; and nothing is accomplished. The problem remains unsolved.

Holthaus goes on to say, “We’ve got to change our world-view. The difference between a sustainable agriculture—or sustainable culture—and one that’s commodity-driven and short-term is a difference in world-view. Only when we change the story we’ve been telling ourselves about how the world works can we transform the culture. That’s what we have to do.”

Of course he’s right. So much of our efforts have been based on bringing down the big guy or becoming part of the big guy so we can transform him. That ain’t working. It ain’t gonna work. We have to go on without them, almost as if they didn’t exist. And we can’t feed them, of course: We can’t buy their chemicals; we can’t buy their crap. We can’t use it. We must change our world-view and change how we act.

The root of the word “work” means “to act.” If work is love made visible, then isn't any act, any action, love made visible, too? Is it love to spray chemicals into the air and on our lawns? Is it love to create warfare in our homes, communities, and nation? Is it love to support businesses that aren’t sustainable? Is it love not to act?

I’ve talked many times about how we each have a responsibility. We each have some ability to respond: responsibility. Only you know what that means for you. But we can’t sit around wringing our hands. Step up to the plate, man, and swing, batter, batter, swing! No excuses.

Holthaus says that information will not save us.

“For instance, we’ve known about global warming for the last three decades,” he says, “and it hasn’t changed our behavior a bit. We’ve had all the information about the end of oil for three or four decades: hasn’t changed our driving. We aren’t going to win this with arguments—arguments just create defensiveness or aggression.

“No, the most powerful tool we’ve got is to change the story we’ve been telling ourselves. That old story is as toxic as it comes—‘bigger is better’, and ‘if you can’t get big, you’d better get out’. That’s the story of agriculture in the last fifty years. ‘Chemicals can fix anything’—they obviously can’t....The story we’ve been telling ourselves is about speed, growth and chemicals. It’s destroying us.

“The new story is about compassion instead of condescension or indifference. We are in this together, and we are going to take care of each other—not competition, but cooperation. Somehow or another we’ve got to find ways to spread that story, and we’ve got to spread it fast.
“One of my optimisms is that, we’re gonna multiply smallnesses, instead of encouraging bigness. Think about how rural America would look now if over the past fifty years we’d been encouraging smallness instead of ending it. We’d have lots of small farms, which inevitably give us prosperous small communities. And those prosperous small communities would be feeding us, and we wouldn’t be dealing with the urban sprawl, and all the problems that brings. That’s the story we need to tell and get out there.”

Multiply-smallness. Ain’t that a grand idea?

Love made visible.

Holthaus says we’ve got to change our story. Do you understand what that means? We must all be story shamans. You, me, him, her, us. Us. It has to be about what we teach our children and what stories we continue to tell ourselves.

This is the long way of saying that I've decided I am not going to quit writing. I’m not going to quit telling my stories. I'll keep doing it, keep writing it my way.

With love.

Made visible.

May You Work in Beauty!

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