Cookies are Round and So is the Moon

It’s a full moon tonight and I seem to have limitless energy. I sit here at 1:15 in the morning, baking cookies and making tea. What’s come over me? Late night baking is usually the last thing I want to do. Maybe there’s some romantic urge in me being extracted by the gravitational pull of that full moon which inspires me to undertake such domestic expressions. Perhaps it’s my need for silence, discipline, and simplicity. There’s something humbling about baking, especially when your baking requires the omission of many usual suspects. For me, it’s gluten grains, eggs, soy and often times, dairy. My sort of baking is a meditative adventure. Following a recipe systematically, being as exact as possible so as to allow the magical chemical reactions to take place and end in a tasty oral experience, is much like knitting or singing a well known song. Follow the steps, take your time, let it flow, don’t think too much, feel it. One of the best things about baking is that I’m not a baker, and I don’t aspire to be. It doesn’t matter if the world loves my cookies. I don’t spend my days assessing my strengths and weaknesses or trying to decided just what sort of baking I should specialize in. I can follow the rules, or tweak them a bit and experiment, i can eat the batter as I go or I can throw it all out the window if I want. There’s really nothing at stake for me. My identity is far from invested in my baking ability and experience, or lack there of. It’s a liberating endeavor, especially considering that so often, the things I aspire to accomplish are mired in a life time of illusions, expectations, hopes, fears and dreams. Staying up till the wee hours on a juicy full moon night and baking for the sheer experience of it is a way to remember the sunshine feeling of joy and to rediscover the centering silence of play.

Creation no Expectation

I have no direction, no discipline, no purpose beyond surrendering to moments of creative transference. I shed the need for an artistic identity. There is no singer, dancer, composer, or artist in me, those are only words. Words are boxes that I cannot fit inside of. I wish I could. I wish it were so simple. I wish words could solidify my identity and sense of purpose and give me direction. Words only mask the confusion. I have been long lost, and I will not find my way again to a place that one word can contain. I am here, in a cacophony of words which I often try on, one by one, just to see if they give me clues as to who I am and what I'm to do. So far the words briefly sooth my raw nerves, but soon enough bounce back into the whirl around me and again I grasp for answers. There will never be answers. I am here to simply dabble and stumble and perhaps if I can remember how, to play. I am nothing and everything. What you call me, what I call myself, is not really who I am. I am beyond the words, my identity means nothing.

Making a Point to Remember Goodness

All too often, it seems I fall into the habit of fixating on the negative events of my life. I brood over them or complain, trying to figure out how it all could have been better. This is, I think, a huge mistake. It's not that I want to bury the difficult moments in my life, but they certainly don't deserve the important place they usually find on my personal time-line, especially when the good times aren't placed there to represent the true balance of things. In honor of all the good, even great things I've experienced in my life, I have decided to make a small list of highlights. This way, perhaps when all I can see is the bleakness of life, I can look back and remember the goodness. I encourage you to do the same for yourself!

1. Digging up earthworms, catching butterflies and lizards and snakes on childhood adventures.

2. Eating parsley straight out of the garden, pretending to be like Peter Rabbit.

3. Dancing furiously to ballet music on records.

4. Playing for hours with barbie dolls, creating complex story-lines for them to play out and building barbie worlds with random objects from around the house.

5. Camping out in my backyard for about a week in a lean-to that I built.

6. Watching the Little Mermaid with my sister everyday for like two weeks during summer break.

7. Performing in musicals and plays at my high school.

8. Watching lambs being born.

9. Watching babies being born.

10. Listening to Tori Amos' Boys for Pele on vinyl.

11. Skinny dipping for the first time under a huge moon in Vermont with a bunch of women and one man.

12. Hiking barefoot and stopping to watch a slug for 20 minutes.

13. Going to the opera for the first time, I think it was Manon.

14. Winning the Oregon State solo vocal championship in the soprano category my senior year in high school.

15. Going dancing at Hive (a goth night) on Christmas Eve with my friends.

16. Writing "The Story" with my friend Jennifer over the course of many, many years (it's still not done).

17. Falling in love on a train.

18. Drinking Guinness and singing at pubs in Ireland.

19. Camping out with Keela the dog on Vancouver Island.

20. Soaking in hot springs that were really hard to get to in Washington.

21. Going on a backpacking trip to learn about alpine herbs with a bunch of really cool people.

22. Rolling around in the mud on a cold January night.

23. Picking cherries on my way home from middle school. Picking blueberries with my sister on Sauvie Island. Picking blackberries in the walking path on my way to an from work. Picking raspberries in people's backyards! (And eating them as I go!).

24. Being adopted by my cat Dyna, who's been my loyal companion for 11 years.

25. Trading tarot readings with Annie.

26. Contact improving with Jiro at Sacred Circle Dance.

27. Finding "new muscles" when learning to bellydance.

28. Dinners and rehearsals with Chelsea and Catherine.

29. Eating wild violets on a sunny February day (faerie medicine!).

30. Drawing cool pictures from random lines.

....I could go on and on!

Blog Asleep, Life Dreaming

Well... it's been a while. I suspect that has little meaning to most of the hairless apes cruising these interwebs, but to the few who enjoy my words, works and musings, I have missed you and my lovely blog. As strong shift in my life has occurred since I last set word to screen and now I sit in an entirely new town, on an entirely new porch of an entirely new house with a rather renewed sort of perspective on my life. Now that I'm a little better settled, I just wanted to get the ball rolling once more. For now, I'll leave it at this small and reaquainting "hello", so that soon I can return with a fresher gem or two of my nonsense. Be well freinds, and stay warm!

And the Train is Long Distance

This is a small poem for my lover who is far to far away.

My eyes are darker now
so I can fly along
with your loping grace
and that steam fueled heart

It wasn’t so long ago
all I could do was hop
from branch to branch
hoping to catch a glimpse

Then there on the rails
I caught you, my prey
you were willing to be
kissed by talons and beak

And the woman on my wall,
well, maybe she holds this all
in her small brittle mold
an idol of two yearning forms

Maybe she’s the white haired one
and we’re familiar friends
she feeds us in her cabin
so we’ll come back again

She offered me some hot tea
to put me on the fast tracks
yet still, I wait for bridges to lift
so I can fly even faster.

I wonder when I see you
and I’m laying in your bed
will the smells come back with me
so I can last a little longer?

I wonder, will I stay
and melt into your walls
to soak up your dreams
and quench our lonely love?

Every time the distance feeds
seems it should get easier
but I find my need grows stronger
for the big cat to warm my feathers

Adventures

First of all, Deep Blessings on this beautiful Mabon day! The Autumnal Equinox is certainly one of my favorite turns of the seasonal wheel. Autumn is like a big long dusky twilight and I love it! I hope your journey into the colder and darker phase of the year is a good one!

Secondly, I never would have thought a visit to my dad's would bring so much intrigue into my life! Here are some of the wonderful things I've managed to do during my visit up here. (BTW, here is Ferndale, WA, which is near Bellingham).

1. The first significant moment in my journey was meeting M on the train. We had seating assignments and he was put right next to me. Much to our mutual pleasure, we hit it off right away and have since ventured into quite the passionate romance. We live in different cities (which aren't too far away, really), so that's certainly a challenge. Anyway, it's too early to say what's to become of our little love affair, but I'd like to see it go somewhere good. Here's my take on things such as this (excerpt from earlier today):

"I like the idea of jumping, head on into love and letting it sort itself out. I'm not afraid of love and I'm not afraid of getting hurt. How can I hurt when I allow myself to fully experience the true fervor of my heart? How can I hurt when I walk straight into the fires of passion with no expectations for what lies on the other side? And if it ends in tears? Those tears only feed another part of myself. Like a good pruning, it helps me grow."

2. I realized yesterday, that I'm addicted to love. Yes, love is a drug and there is no cure. Here's the thing, there are a lot of people who've been burned by love and they burned because they forgot what love really is. But me? I say there's no better thing. I want to love people with as much wild abandon as I can muster. The trick is to leave your expectations at the door. What fun it can be to ride that tidal wave of emotions and come crashing back down to Earth. The more you do it, the more you learn to land on your feet. No, I'm not going to try and resist my penchant for roller coaster love, I'm going to embrace it and learn all it's little quirks. I'm going to become to best sort of love junkie, the kind who gives and receives openly, freely, and selflessly.

3. Speaking of love... I have been blessed with ample opportunities to reinforce my love-affair with Nature on this trip. Now, there's a lover who never holds back! When I open myself to the exchange, when I simply experience her force, her fragility, her fierceness, I lose myself to the infinite multiverse. I feel the deepest peace in her embrace. In this short week, I felt the flow of her waters, the hardness of her mountains, the coolness of her breath... I glimpsed her creatures, large and small, listened to her sighs and moans, laid naked against her breast. I love her, my Mother. I love her more than anything else, she is my salvation, my solitude, my inspiration. She is, what is. Yod Heh Vav Heh.

4. Speaking of nature... I've had the pleasure of gathering some of Mama's bountiful harvest during my visit. I picked juicy asian pears, gathered hawthorn berries, crafted plentiful horsetail and partook of fresh tomatoes. My dad and I did some dehydrating experimentation with cantaloupe and the pears. The pears were excellent, the cantaloupe, fairly good. I love picking fresh ripe foods and medicines from the garden and the wild. It's meditative, connecting, grounding, and essentially meaningful.

5. Different Folks: I got to sing karaoke and dance with a bunch of amazing folks who have various mental and physical challenges this week. My dad volunteers for the Max Higbee Center (http://www.maxhigbee.org/), an organization that puts on community-based recreation programs for developmentally disabled people. I can't even express how much fun I had! They were some of the most uninhibited and authentic people I've ever met. They're witty, sweet, and enthusiastic. I couldn't wipe the giant grin off of my face as I danced with Levin, Judy, Darrin, and Paul, amongst others. It's so refreshing to be around people who aren't so locked into the sort of daily grind that us "normal" folks get up to. I'm deeply grateful for having had this opportunity to share time with such beautiful new friends!

6. I worked on a small promo video for the Screamie Sagebush Burlesque Revival with my dad. It's not done yet, but it's pretty great, considering, I didn't put a whole lot of planning into it. Anyway, I plan on producing a variety show featuring my alter ego, Screamie. The intent of the show is multifaceted, however, I'd say the core intention is to encourage self-love and personal authenticity, through humor, beauty, celebration, ceremony, and social-commentary. I'm making the video in order to promote the idea to venues who might be willing to host the show. I'll probably put it on YouTube when it's done and link it on here.... so keep your eyes open!

Lazybones

lazybones
you lie about entwined by your dreams
and always
‘you will,
you want,
you may’

Your mind is an unsolvable maze
a thought,
a light,
an insight, leads to another
on and on and on and on
they remain firmly planted in the firmament

lazybones
you lie about entwined by your dreams
and always
‘you will,
you want,
you may’

once you were called a space cadet
with gun-boats for feet
were the feet too heavy to move
with dreams too high to reach?

lazybones
you lie about entwined by your dreams
and always
‘you will,
you want,
you may’

why can’t you move those bones of yours?
why can’t you leave your technicolor mind... behind?

It’s always ideas and aether
one large foot inside the outside
the other just peeking out

why can’t you move those bones of yours?
why can’t you leave your technicolor mind... behind?

lazybones
you lie about entwined by your dreams
and always
‘you will,
you want,
you may’