Pouring and poring

It’s raining outdoors, the incensed sky is coming in the cracked window, raining heat onto my floor. I just finished a shift at my new job and it feels like I just woke, really, even though I just finished an eight hour shift. I’m getting goosebumps hearing the raindrops misting the tree outside, slapping the road with intensity, every drop sounding different from any other drop that hits around it. I hear blue jays calling to one another over the thunder, concerned with nothing and everything at the same time.

I’ve felt the same way for a while, aimless, just working then coming home and sleeping to do it again the next day. And again. And again. An endless cycle that puts food on the table and clothes on my back, but goddamn it I’m not made for a 9-5 40-hour work week that means nothing and betters no one, not even myself. Thankfully this new job gives me more than stability. It’s a purpose too, even though I have to seek it out, but the options are varied and SO SO BIG that I’m excited for the days to come again, finally. That, along with my own writing projects and some collaborations that will be a few months or a year in the making, and I’m feeling lighter again.

It’s not that I can’t work a 9-5, it’s not that I’m not willing to. I actually love working, and flourish when busy. It’s that I need something that will ignite me inside, in a way the last job simply never could. It’s never been enough for me to just “be” and mull around a life that is unremarkable. One where I benefit no one else has absolutely no appeal. Even if I despise humanity as a whole there are many people I care about and love, and to make their lives better, to inspire them to smirks and smiles and new experiences, and THAT is something I can be proud of. Even if I insist on keeping everyone at arm’s length (or six feet away). Yes, I want to benefit those I care about…but on MY terms.

There finally is some hope in what I do. It just took some time to get there, and fucking hell it felt like I was drowning for far too long. Months of anti-motivation and disappointment in myself has eaten away at the edges of my mind until it overwhelmed and it was everything I could do to keep treading water, knowing that eventually I’d touch shore again. And now I’m tiptoeing feeling the silty sand swish around my feet and I can breathe at the same time and I know which way to swim so I can find a sandbar to cling to, instead of drowning in everything washing my way.

These times aren’t easy for anyone. More and more I encounter people who say they want to leave the USA, because the country is “lost”. But it’s more than that. Having little computers in our pockets have connected us in ways humans have never encountered in their millennia of existence. We can instantly know what’s happening to friends on the other side of the planet, while we forget to connect to those in our own homes. Family dinners aren’t daily, they’re special occasions. We talk on screens to one another and forget how to make eye contact in person. Touching one another is an accident we apologize for, in passing, instead of sharing energy and intention, and touches hurt so badly we shrink away.

Is it any wonder we feel alone? Unheard even though we scream on social media? And I’m not talking about the solitude that we choose. We’ve only had cellular phones and computers around for a blip in time, not even 50 years for most of us, and yet they have invaded every facet of our lives. We are connected, yet we stay apart. We’ve found community yet we don’t feel a part of it. And I’m not referring only to the social distancing that the pandemic foisted upon us. It’s just made the disconnect even more visible, and we can’t escape it. It taints every kiss, every interaction we have with someone, every human is a potential death sentence, and even when we are able to be physically close to our families our minds are elsewhere, and not in the moment we share.

I don’t claim to have the answer because there’s no way it will be the same for every one of us. I don’t even have the answer for myself. The weight of the world has settled upon our shoulders and it’s crushing us as we struggle, not knowing what the world will look like in a month, or three months, or thirty.

The only time anything feels real and tangible is when I’m outdoors under the skies, the trees holding me from across the fields, my bare skin touching bare earth. There’s comfort in the vastness of reality, and I’m no longer my own little island, I’m the very water that flows around it, filling the landscape. Feeling the landscape. The NOW is what saved me two years ago when I got sober and the now is what I’m finding I’ve struggled against the most.

Life looks nothing like I thought it would this time last year. I was moving to Idaho with my wifey to have grand adventures and be in love and embrace difficult moments together because that’s what I needed, wanted, planned for. And now moments I didn’t even consider are my reality and I’m having to rebuild and I can make it look however I like. The hardest thing has been trying to figure out exactly what I want it to look like, and knowing it will be alone. Being alone doesn’t scare me. I prefer it. I just didn’t think I’d be making a life of my own again, starting anew.

So as it pours outside I sit here poring over what it is now, this life. I have my 6,000 mile companion, sweet void kitty Yuki, I have my chilly toes, and I have the rain. I have books and writing projects and poetry. I have people who love me and I have my son who would do anything to make me smile, and I have my now.

It’s enough.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dreams
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after a night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

© 1995 by Oriah House, From “Dreams Of Desire”
Published by Mountain Dreaming, 300 Coxwell Avenue, Box 22546, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4L 2A0

Stepping in the footprints of giants

Yesterday I grabbed one of my favorite humans and took us to a sacred place. Not far from here is a very little known spot in a riverbed that has ancient footprints from two different kind of dinosaurs, one a large brontosaurus-like critter and the other a smaller velociraptor-like predator called an acrocathosaurus.

There are 11 footprints of this big boy interspersed with hollows from the herbivore, which are less impressive and appear to be mostly large divots in the riverbed about two feet across.

After grabbing some kolaches and water we began walking early, which is exactly what we needed, as the sun proceeded to crank up to 110 in my vehicle later that day.

We had good conversations about the past two or so years it had been since we last spent any significant time together. I felt like I went on and on about what a blessing this time alone has been, and how I don’t think dating is anything I’ll look for anytime soon. It’s just not fair of me to inflict that on anyone right now, I’m far too centered on healing. Having a person would distract me, and I know my codependent ways in the past have a habit of sneaking in and ruining things.

To be quite blunt, I need a good foundation inside me to build anything on and right now I feel like a rickety bamboo frame holding me in the air like a sky burial, stories above any of the normal life that mills around below. Definitely a frame suited for my mind at the moment but most definitely not sturdy enough for any other people to join.

Lately I’ve felt a bit like I’d added too much height and separation to that platform so high above the ground, but it was comfortable there so undisturbed by those who walked below me. Or perhaps one of the poles isn’t as sturdy as I thought, and my little secure nest so high was waving in the breezes, enough to make me nauseous from motion sickness.

This hike was exactly what I needed. We walked west along the mostly dry riverbed, talked to the trees as we passed them, smelling their leaves and giggling at the tiny perch in the river. They liked bits of our bread and so we threw crumbs into the water and watched the minnows grab crumbs bigger than they were and then speed away while their pals chased them. The river bubbled and chuckled along with us, murmuring under its breath about how happy it was that we’d come to wake up with the wild.

Most areas were flat and dry limestone riverbed, and a half mile upstream we finally found them. Every time I see them again it’s a surprise, as if I’ve been startled in the brush by a big carnivorous beast.

Barefoot I walked in the footprints, toeing my own little prints around them, imagining that now I stood in space millions of creatures had before, an overlapping echo of existence across all the parallel universes. I could feel the beasts and birds breathe across the millennia, almost smelling their hides, some warm and furry, or feathered, or cool and smelling like the moss that surrounded them. The same moss that surrounded us now.

We found a sweet little spot I’m fond of, under the watchful eyes of ancient oaks whose acorns were almost as big as my fist (I should have gotten a pic of them but was too happy to say hi to the trees).

The skies were brilliant to the point of painful, so even though I wanted to wander farther upstream we packed up and walked out, saying goodbye to the boulders that sheltered us and the caves that whispered beyond the trail. The river was glad we came and almost felt like it was trying to pull us back to love us more, cradled in wilderness without a sound or sight of humanity other than our selves.

Yes, limestone, yes river and yes, you buxom full trees, home to hundreds, always giving and always nurturing on your own terms.

I am you too.

The love of my life

She was. So much of me still believes she is, and will always be. As much as I’m sobbing now missing her I was sobbing when I was with her. She really tried. She did. So hard. She gave herself as much as she could. I don’t blame her for the things she bore before me. The things that tore at her until she started to break me down. Why she just couldn’t trust me. How that ended us.

I don’t blame her. I don’t hate her. I love her as deeply and passionately as I ever have. I just know now how unhealthy we became. How her lack of trust couldn’t be reconciled no matter what I did. No matter what she did. We were both victims of it and now we walk alone, forever altered.

And people tell me I’ll feel differently someday, that I’ll meet someone else who makes me feel again. But the thing is I know I won’t. I won’t. And I simply don’t want it. At all. Very opposed in fact.

As awful as it got, my Stardust was also exceptionally good at love bombing me and making me feel really special. She knew me. She loved me so goddamn passionately and deep in her soul she knew, as much as I did, that we were indeed made of the same stuff.

Some comet streaming across the universe for so many silent millennia, cold, unknowing, she broke into a million pieces, and that dust was us, forever knowing that to feel whole we needed each other. That’s what we know, what we whispered in each other’s ears as we fell asleep entwined around one another because we couldn’t stand to not touch, now that we found one another again.

I don’t want anyone because no one could possibly replace that. No one can. She was it. She was the love of my life. I believe it deeply so strongly I can’t believe it any other way.

Or I couldn’t. She wasn’t the love of my life.

I am.

And as much as I’m sobbing now missing her keening my heart out to the scorched Texas skies I know that she isn’t it. And I’ve been holding this despair deep inside me for half a year now and all of a sudden it’s releasing once more until I feel like I’m going to cry for her for the rest of my life. And fucking hell she will never even know.

I didn’t need her. I chose her. I chose love. GodDAMN it’s worth it, too.

And even if I don’t talk about her anymore or I’m quieter than I used to be I’m constantly constantly missing her.

So no.

No one could catch my eye, no one could replace her, no one will ever again have that hum under their skin calling me home.

She was it for me.

And so I cry.

I am the love of my life.

Distanced

This pandemic has changed so so much.

I don’t have much in common with anyone anymore it feels like. I’ve been distancing myself from close friends and not sure why.

Haven’t wanted to write.

I desperately need some outdoor time. But it’s too fucking hot and I can’t take it.

It’s death outside right now in Austin. 87 degrees when I get up at 4am to work. 107 when I head home, even hotter later when it’s after 5pm. The air hums and vibrates with the energy of the heat, it’s as if I can feel the sun penetrating my skin, the energy I carry with me, my very soul sears and bakes and it’s excruciating.

No one understands that seasonal affective disorder hits me hard this time of year because I’m separated from that which I love the most.

And so combine all of that with this pandemic and this half-in half-out existence everyone I pass each day seems to have…it’s a surreal feeling.

People know they should be isolating at home and wearing masks but they don’t do it. They act as if life is normal and yet they have these shadows of guilt following them everywhere they go.

It feels almost wrong to enjoy the new job and the people I meet, because everyone is awkward and distant behind the masks they wear. It’s as if not seeing a person’s entire face dehumanizes them somehow. Both of them. All of them.

Maybe it’s a grand conspiracy to make us all habitually avoid one another and eventually we will see each other as nothing more than a desk, a tree, a rock. Dehumanizing leads to atrocities, we’ve seen this. Or more likely, because I don’t believe any of what I just said, perhaps we are just experiencing fatigue from it all.

Six months and our world has flipped. Hell, four years and it has. Not pointing fingers, but speak to me in person and I’ll definitely give an earful. We aren’t the same.

We are exhausted from every person being a danger.

We are exhausted from being afraid to hug our family when they come home from work because they could have been exposed to the virus.

Exhausted from never making eye contact and never ever physical contact, we must stay six feet away at all times, nope don’t Ever. Touch. Each other.

And my natural inclination to avoid people is growing, or perhaps this year has allowed me to relax into it, instead of attending events every month or so. Now it’ll be three years before I return to the circles I used to know and well, do I really even know them anymore? They definitely don’t know me.

I’m tired of not being able to write. Tired of having my phone or iPad as the only way I talk to people. I’m tired of the news, social media, I’m tired of it all.

If I could, I’d move into my car and drive to the woods at least eight hours away to the nearest mountains and leave everything in my car that needed a battery or gadget that had circuits and I’d walk until I couldn’t walk any more.

I need a detox from this pandemic, and there’s no end in sight.

I needed that

Took kiddo for a picnic by the creek on my parent’s property. We don’t get to visit much, and things are awkward what with the shunning requirement of their faith, but it was lovely. Mom had found a sewing machine for me, made in probably the 50s or 60s, a neat old Singer that will last me as long as I need one. It was very sweet and generous of her and completely unexpected. She also had a few sewing supplies for me, which was super considerate. When I left my Stardust in Idaho I came back with what little I could fit in my tiny car. And sewing supplies weren’t part of it.

I’m thinking I’ll do some preparing basic garb for Sherwood Forest Faire next spring, and definitely get some capes started as soon as possible.

Anyway, back to it…we picnicked on the property my parents have owned for about 17 years and I’ve been in love with it from the first day I walked under the trees.

The place is covered in pecan trees and has a creek on one side. It’s my absolute heaven on earth and I wish it could be mine someday but I know it’s not likely now. Mom did tell be before that they’re leaving it to my sister. Who lives three states away and wouldn’t move back, I’m sure she’d sell it. Sigh. Not anything I can do about it.

So in the meantime I visit the trees when I can. And today took kiddo to sit with me out there for a little while.

The skies were tremendously odd and I loved them.

We spread a blanket out and sat and listened to the squirrels in the trees above us. These trees are so massive at the base, I’m sure many are 200-300 years old at the least. Which means they were loved by natives not very long ago.

This one is so massive I swear it’s a hundred feet tall, and probably easily 12 feet around the base. Some branches grew so full and long they sagged to the ground and back up again. It’s ancient and absolutely perfect and I love him.

And of course some obligatory shots taken while I still can, before something happens that keeps me away from the trees I call home.

It was a beautiful day and everything was perfect. Even the stickers I had to pull out of my bare feet.

A vessel or canvas?

Recently I saw this as a prompt for a post online:

“…some of the stonefemmes I have talked to recently have an interesting way of describing themselves in their relationship to stonebutches. One called herself a “vessel” and another a “canvas.”

In your ideal scenario:

Femmes, how would you describe yourself?

Butches, how would you describe your femme?”

My response is below:

Sigh. As poetic as it is, and as appealing it is to be a canvas or vessel…and I’m Aquarian, a water-bearer, a vessel, it does come more naturally for me to think that way. Especially having grown up in a doomsday cult that looks at women as inferior.

I can no longer romanticize being something waiting for the “right one” to fill me. I am whole and full on my own, and love it that way. I do love being the receiver, the soft place to fall, the oasis in this harsh world. But I am those things for me first. I don’t exist as such for someone else’s comfort or to save someone. If I end up being their safe place it’s because I’ve allowed them to join me there, because I was there doing it for myself first.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE LOVE LOVE being the pretty thing on someone’s arm, if they’ve earned it by being incredible on their own. I’m not an accessory, I’m not waiting to be filled, I am whole ❤️

That said, I have always been strongly fond of the comfort found in being a “helper” and “compliment” to someone I respect. And I’ve many times loved being able to help someone back to their feet, cheering them along the way.

I hope my strength inspires others to be better, for themselves. In that way I hope I can inspire and be a muse and help them to become all they can be, for THEM, not for me.

I’m still mulling over this, because years ago I’d love the image of being the canvas or vessel to facilitate incredible works of art. But who marvels at the canvas or vase on its own? Most people admire the paint and mastery of the artist, not even seeing the canvas. That’s not enough for me. I’m not something to be painted over and expected to hold the work of others while being an invisible supporter. No thank you.

My ideal is that I continue to be improving myself, for me. And someday maybe I’ll walk alongside someone doing it for themselves as well, and our paths will align. But I’m not waiting for a hiking partner before starting on that trail for myself. They’ll catch up, if they exist.

The Promise of the Shaman

Not my work, but made of the work that calls me the strongest.

Worth the time to read, if you just take the time for it. And I needed it so. I read it over and over, inside my head, then out loud, and the words felt delicious so I had to record them.

I’ve been in a horrible slump lately. Each day is okay and each holds its own loveliness, I even scored a new job that I’m excited about. I just can’t feel much right now. And I’m tired of it, I can’t write well or motivate myself much other than rearranging furniture and cleaning.

It’s the August in Texas slump and I’m over it. I need to go sleep under a tree somewhere cool and isolated. For a few years.

THE PROMISE OF THE SHAMAN:

If you come to me as a victim, I will not support you.
But I’ll have the courage to walk with you through your pain.
I’ll put you in the fire, undress you, and make you sit on the ground.
And I will wash you with herbs, and cleanse you, and vomit out the wrath and the darkness that is in you.

I will drink your body with good herbs, and lay you upon the grass, facing the sky.
Then I will smash your crown to shreds old memories that make you repeat the same behavior over and over again.
I will blow on your forehead to frighten the thoughts that obscure your vision.

I’ll open your throat to release the knot that doesn’t allow you to express yourself.
I will blow on your heart to frighten fear, so that it may go away and not be able to find you.
I will shatter your solar plexus to extinguish the fire of hell that you carry inside and that you finally know peace.

I’ll blow on your belly with fire to burn the attachments and the love that wasn’t there.
I will blow on the lovers who have left you, on the children who have never come.

I will blow on your heart to warm you up, rekindle your desire to feel, create and start over.

I will blow hard on your vagina or penis to clean the sexual door of your soul.

I will take away the waste you have amassed trying to love those who did not want to beloved.

I will use the broom, sponge and rag and I will safely clean up all the bitterness that is in you.
I will blow into your hands to destroy the bonds that keep you from creating.
I will disintegrate your feet into dust and erase the memories of your steps, so you can never go back to those bad places.

I’m gonna turn your body around so your face can kiss the earth.

I will blow on your spine, from root to neck, to increase your strength and help you walk straight.

And I’ll let you rest.

After this you shall weep, and then you shall sleep,

And you will have beautiful dreams full of meaning,

And when you wake up, I’ll be waiting for you.

I’ll smile at you and you’ll smile back at me

I will offer you food that you will eat with pleasure, savoring life, and I will thank you.
Because what I offer you today was offered to me before, when the darkness lived within me.

And after being healed, I felt the darkness disappear and I cried.

Then we will walk together and I will show you my garden and my plants, and I will bring you back to the fire.

And they shall speak together with one voice with the blessing of the Earth.

And we will cry out the desires of your heart to the forest.

And the fire will listen and whisper the echo, and we will create hope together.

And the mountains will listen and whisper the echo, and we will create hope together.

And the rivers will listen and whisper the echo, and we will create hope together.

And the wind will listen and whisper the echo, and we will create hope together.

And then we will bow down before the fire, and invoke all the visible and invisible guardians.

And you will thank them.

And you’ll thank yourself.

And you’ll thank yourself.

And you’ll thank yourself.

  • ISC.: Author unknown-

-Eduardo Muscara, international-

Writing them out of my life

Every word I write estranges my parents further. I’m literally writing them out of my life. Not sure how I feel about that. Do I stay silent and still be rejected and let my story die with me? I know they’re out of my life anyway, as long as I reject the religion that’s taken them from me. But was that all that did it?

I’m coming to terms with realizing they Just. Don’t. Like. Me. And never will. Although the fierce feminine side is all from my mother. The dreamer side is all my father. I’m a delightful product of their best traits and they’ll never see it.

Didn’t have a chance in hell

Crumbling cliff’s edge before me, yet another precipice hard fought for another fright that makes my feet tingle so strongly I feel I’m tiptoeing through clouds and all I’m doing is standing here

Alone

Wolf

Howling under my breath so as not to shake the boulders from the sides because if I do they’ll tumble and crash and I realize

This pain is like an echo

Sending my arms flailing grabbing trying to hold onto something that is no longer mine and I can’t

Let

Go

Because it feels disloyal and I’m awash in your pain, the same I caused you, the one that’s stabbing so deep I’m drowning and choking on the words you said and I can’t stop repeating them and my throat burns so even though I’m under water and all

I hear is my bubbled breath but it sounds like your voice

And you’re the echo of pain I felt when my parents turned their backs and now all I’m doing is sobbing for you again when I said I never would and I told you this is a love you don’t recover from and I know that theirs is too but I’m dead I’m gone and buried and they don’t even like me anymore, not me the adult but me the child and the me I’ve become proud of

At

Last

And they’ll never see it because their eyes can’t speak the language I write and they choose their blindness reading the words leaking out of me that were inspired by their own and when I talk I hear their voices and yours and now again I’m worthless spit upon yet wishing I was just close enough for you to do it again

And it’s echoing all around the sides of this cliff with sky all around it steeper than I can climb and deeper than I can swim and I have to face it alone this time knowing that they will never hear my true voice and

I might as well have been muted

But now I scream.