recording

“Blood runs thick and when it rains it pours down
On the family tree on the fields of war
I spend my time being broken hearted and grieving bound

I've had enough temporary acquisition
Building fences for no gain
Taking dead trees down before the winter freeze
I said let 'em rot and fall where they may”
- the Indigo Girls, “Devotion”

for Amy: sister, but fellow traveller, more important


Found one of your songs today
recorded at the end of an old cassette
like some unexpected conversation tangent
untouched for a decade or more

Maybe it was that odd juxtaposing
my indigenous-fusion-rock and
your heart-edgewise songwriters
that brought this clear: we tried for years
to have some kind of meaningful conversation
when we barely even shared a language
both choosing as we did to give up native tongue
and reinvent soul-vocabulary while confronting
or not confronting mutually exclusive suffering
the product of that long division process
known to us as “family”

One lasting gift of the family legacy:
how to keep your struggle to yourself
don't show pain, never have needs, stay really busy
and whatever you do don't dare to overcome
because what would we be, if not workers
and that work ethic was the family's other gift
(please conjugate this verb: have worked, are working,
must always be worked up about something)

But those fields of war were the only home we had
and we did work them, summer, winter persevering
cause what would we do with a whole lifetime if not
tough it out
and what would we do with a home if not
make more work of it
and what would we do with strength if not
use it to keep fighting
and what would we consume if
those precious crops didn't come in
but they always did: more battle, duty, blame,
and anger in abundance
and some shallow bitter roots to give the taste of home

really we were weary migrants laboring long years
just to leave the collapsing motherland
whose language is not spoken in the world of the living
whose traditions do not give any substance to life
or any continuity worth claiming
whose economy was based on codependence
whose currency was lies, mind-power, and obligation
and whose lexicon does not contain a word for “heart”

Well here is one thing I can offer
broke and broken as I still may be
I've had enough of that separation pain
and I don't want to build any more fences
even if the boundaries are still unclear
we can work our claims out over time
and we can let some past claims fall
we can work our new ground without overworking us
and we can use whatever language
and whatever music moves us up and outward

No idea how that song got onto my cassette
I wouldn't even have found the thing except
by cleaning out a box I wanted to use
to mail some gifts, some small efforts at kindness
to you and to the (other) grandmother who taught us
how to add “kindness” to our language in the first place

unlearning, part 3

"Love begins where the mind stops."
- the guru again, in The Chasm of Fire

unlearning, part 2

"To expand, to flow without any destination, this is the Path. We must live within the very turmoil of life but not be influenced by it...We must return to the very core of our primitive being in order to become whole. This will naturally produce conflicts for we have to accept ourselves as we are and not as we think we are."
- the guru, quoted by Irina Tweedie, in The Chasm of Fire

re-cognition

strange unsatiating comfort to sleep
a dreamless night on your cold shoulder
stopped, at the side of the road
just one memory of fire still burns me
back to life with re-cognition
so many new moons past it was
that already afoot I first bared feet and soul
tuned you in and you swallowed me whole
turned you on and you turned me inside
out and returning liberated outside in
vanished me vanquished me into heart of everything
folded me misfit into the flaming inbetween
made one (and no one, and all-blessed none)
within the sacred singing Dreamtime

halfway to heaven half my life
and stranded, infinitely distant
waiting fine, unfound, infinitesimal
transparent in the desert's lucid atmosphere
insomniated particle on mountainslope
blissed on the blessed angles of light and all the
greengold curvature of Earthshine

what did I go seeking on the surface, out of depth
letting in the fear of others was my only fall from Grace
there was always ever breathing room enough
in this embracing liminal space
I didn't lose the path
I just stopped wondering
still I would wander even now
far and wide or near and further in
back to that no-place where I am wholly free
in ever-fractalling transformation
ground of deepest affirmation
sea of sweetest sublimation
quickening rush of all that BE
where now can I go
if not here and in and ever outward
where now can I love
if not embraced and joyed by Love transcendent
how can I intend at all
without traversing and immersing
in regenerating current of ever now
where is there but this whole
still-turning and still-burning earth
on which to walk and wake the dream again

unlearning, part 1

How Life does give. In a dark space between yesterday and today I encountered a challenge that I was far from ready for. It's a worthy challenge, to both mind and heart. Simply to take past hurt, past experience, past wish and expectation, and to rise in spite of it to new levels of understanding, of acceptance, of empowerment. It's an inner discussion. It concerns others, but it's mostly about my point of view and the healing it seeks. And I'm grateful for it, as it furthers the growth that I already desire. I'm just not really ready for it. I don't feel competent, empowered, capable. I feel exhausted, pain-full, misunderstanding and misunderstood. I can be with these feelings, for now. I can even try to move into them, with openness, curiosity, and acceptance, as I've read that some Buddhist teaching recommends. It's just still the time being, the meantime, the painful healing time, for the moment.

Ran into the same friend whose affirmations I recorded yesterday. Opened up _The Sufi Book of Life_ just before I saw her. The page it fell open to today was this name, out of the 99 Sacred Names of Love: Al-Mudhill, which Neil Douglas-Klotz translates as "Low 'Self' Esteem". (Do note the quotes around 'self'). Here is what he writes: "Real learning means unlearning everything we falsely believe we know about ourselves." There's the word for the day: unlearning. Think I could write about 99 more posts on just that subject.

And he also says this: "The root [of this sacred name] shows the starting point as diversity and division...which then becomes magnified without a connection to the divine life force of the One. In its extreme, the word symbolizes isolation. Yet by recognizing this feeling, we have already taken a step toward reconnecting our diversity with Unity."

Okay, I recognize it. I resemble that. I can dig it. Then in comes my friend. I tell her a little bit about my inner conversation today, and my struggles with the mind and the heart -- which gets to speak, and which needs to listen more. First she tells me this: "Don't forget that your mind is an army of love and compassion." More challenge, more affirmation, yes. Then she gives me this very unexpected blessing. Reminds me that our friendship started out of our love for plants, and in our tendency to find our beloved community perhaps more on the earth, and in the realm of green growing things, than in the world of people. So keep learning to understand and connect with people, she encourages. But remember also that "you're in really good standing with the Mother."

Wow man. I can dig that for sure. I could unlearn a lot, with that kind of relations...

limerance

What's to be done with an unexpected day off? Make the hike up to the student ghetto, to Winning Coffee, of course. Came here to get organized (writing, plans, email, phone calls). But also, as always, in hope of the gift of a serendipitous human connection. And today's already gifted me with one of my favorite serendipitous humans, indeed. We met at Trinity House 2 years ago, and recognized the kindred in each other right away -- despite our very different life paths, and the fact that she's about 4 decades older than me. But that's only a technicality: speaking in soul-terms, she's one of the youngest people I know.

She appears today on the patio out front, wearing a flowered shirt primly buttoned to her chin, and a wide sun hat whose brim, lined in black and turned up at an asymmetric angle above her face, makes her look just like a pirate. A pirate in a flowered shirt. She carries with her, unexplained, a green tin cup, a purple notebook, and a pair of garden gloves. She brings, as always, the sparking and crackling emotions of her long pain-and-wisdom-journey, worn right on her sleeve for anyone to see. Her clear blue eyes are cloudless, sunbright but looming with unseen storms, just like the desert's skies. Her smile is quick, shy, mischevious, conspiratorial. Her small voice, and her careful mannerisms, make me think of the word "birdlike". And although that word has a sort of negative connotation to me, I use it with her because she is so like a bird. Travelling so light through this world, seeming nearly free of possessions or attachments. Alighting on my mind's windowsill with an unimagined song and a flash of luminous beauty that cannot quite be grasped or understood. Only welcomed, in that moment.

And she speaks like a novel being read aloud. Her phrases come out not only complete, but poetically complete. I always have to fight the urge, when she's around, to get out a piece of paper and surreptitiously record everything she says. One time, instead of "see you later" she told me, "I feel certain that excellent things are in store for both of us!" Who else, in talking about an item as prosaic as the plastic/burlap she was using to re-pot her houseplants, would describe it as "the material that large quantities of root vegetables are shipped in". I had to get out a paper, in fact, just to write that phrase down for the joy of it: large quantities of root vegetables. Made me happy just to hear the words spoken together.

But I got out the paper with the pretext, at least, of asking her to write a new word she was offering: limerance. She says it was coined by Leo Buscaglia (who I've heard of but never read) in his books on love. That it describes a season or phase of relationship in which all the portals are open, all the senses receptive, and all is awash in light and hope. She offered the word after I told her, briefly, that some beautiful things were afoot in my life, including a new (ad)venture of relationship. The word, it seems, acknowledges the openness as well as the perhaps naivete in the beginning stages of coming to know another soul: when we say "Anything is possible now!" we are both flying away on our hopeful ideals and speaking a deep truth, at the same time. But I heard her usual grace and acceptance, as she pointed out that being wide-open and wonder-full and "bathed in light" is, if perhaps a necessarily incomplete and mutable condition, laying a foundation for subsequent soul-seasons, then also a season well worthy of celebrating. And I told her, too, that there were earth and water in this present adventure as well as air and fire - foundation as well as high flying. And she replied, delighted, "So, maybe you're not as limerant as I thought!" I take those words, and the company of this kind friend, as my blessing for the day. Catching me off-guard with her unpredictable presence, and re-affirming me even as she invites me to open more windows onto life...

camping out

A few thoughts on leave-no-trace car camping in the city...which is to say, if it's successful, nobody will know you were there. Or even that you're there now, as they walk right by your window. This is what seems to work for me anyway, in several cities now.

- Choose a street in the middle ground. A neighborhood too upscale, and people will feel that proprietary need to know what you're doing on "their" section of the public street space. Too much of a working neighborhood, and you might be crossing paths with ones coming in from the night shift, or leaving for the super-early shift. Or, they might just not have enough room to park their own cars, and you might prove to be unwanted competition for limited space. A mid-range street might have people living just comfortably enough to tune out what's going on past their front door. Although you have to watch out for early morning dog-walkers: those dogs will sniff you out, curious like they are (they can't help it), and let their owners know something's up. I don't know if their owners would have a problem with an un-placed person on their street or not. I've never had any direct encounters with people yet. The goal is simply to be as invisible, as unobtrusive as possible. The goal is simply to get a quiet night's sleep.

- Choose a point in liminal space. On property lines: a section of wall or fence bridging the open space between two yards. By an arroyo or drainage canal between houses. A vacant space not built up yet. That way nobody needs to question why you're in "their" yard. Or, find something even more un-claimable. One of my favorite spots around here was outside a school fence. Until I realized I was gonna have to get up at 7:30 every day, to be out before the kids and the buses started arriving.

- Think about what's going to happen in your space throughout the night. Once I thought I had an ideal spot - deserted street, middle neighborhood, by a fence backing up to a store that was closed for the night. Then, at 5 in the morning the semis started pulling up with the day's freight and that was it for sleep. Another of the goals is not to have to be migratory throughout the dark hours.

- Park under a tree if you can. Shelter from morning sun's heat if it's summer, or from unexpected rain or snowstorms if it's winter or spring. Good company, either way. Good to have an ally.

- Carry just enough extra blankets, boxes, bags, or random items in the camper to arrange as if deliberately. That way any curious passerby who looks in won't see a sleeping body, but just a big pile of stuff.

- Bungees are a must-have item. I use them for curtain rods, clotheslines, a lock (of sorts) for my camper door.

- Put as many of the morning's new clothes inside the sleeping bag with you, to absorb body heat. Anyone who's been a backpacker knows this already. Or, if you like, hang them out on your bungee-clothesline. A nice fresh set of 30-degree underwear can be as effective for waking up quick as a cuppa coffee, at that...

- Be ready for absolutely any view through the camper windows, when you sit up in the first light. It will quite possibly be a different world than the one you fell asleep to. I woke up to snow this morning. Just when I was thinking, about time it warmed up a little, after the deep-freeze chill of 4 a.m.

- Thank any spirits of the place where you slept for their hospitality, and maybe for their protection. Because hospitality and protection both are always to be found. Whether from people, or just from the moment and the place. This is the traveller's blessing. It has always, in every in-between place, been mine.

more Nirvana

More from _Motel Nirvana_:
"Some New Age types even imagine that vision quests, sweat lodges, drumming and dancing ceremonies are rituals specifically designed to be psychotherapeutic. I never once saw, heard, or read any indication [in her months travelling the Southwest] that New Agers have grasped the possibility that Native American spirituality, or any other set of ritual behaviors, including their own, furnishes a community in a particular environment with metaphors for shared communal meanings...The narratives of our prosperous, materialist society are no longer spiritual; they do not describe mythological archetypes but psychological truths, elements not of a greater transcendent reality, but of the human condition, the here and now."

Time for work already. More news and commentary at 11.

geography for the soul

The book _Motel Nirvana_ came up in a conversation recently, and I had to get it out again to look for the lines I was trying to quote from it. I think this was one of them. Melanie McGrath, the author, impressed me the first time with her grasp of the inner trips that the desert and its people can take each other on. At this reading, it also fits because I'm moving across my little stretch of the desert once again, finding home in a new old place - Albuquerque's South Valley. A place that certainly has its trip to work on me...

"I have heard it said that people who live in a series of different landscapes or in a series of different cultures are in search of their soul's home...a new environment is not so much a fresh and transcendent geography for the soul as an instrument with which to change the personality. I have proved this to myself by standing on the plain and turning to face the four compass points. At each turn, nature makes a new relationship to both itself and the viewer. Even if that newness seems only to be a different pattern of rock and sky, the scape is irrefutably altered and the brain forced to compensate. One is on the plain still, but at one's feet and eye-line are five quite separate worlds. Each transmutes the personality, however slightly..."

My question was going to be, if travellers to strange new lands are in search of their soul's home, then what are travellers who come back to old homegrounds doing? But this is all the same journey. We can visit strange new lands not for the first time. Like she points out, it's so much about the perspective, and the openness to being altered. But it's also the recognition of what the land is up to - what the earth itself is doing, and has been doing in a place since we were gone. For me, in each direction that I turn, the Valley is making a place for me, a place that might not have been there just six months ago. And I will face and give thanks to each facet of it. And be altered, as it offers...

healing fire dream

It's a long, weary journey back home. Nearly uncrossable, this vast empty in-between wildness. All day I battle unseen forces for my painfully slow northward progress. The road's never been so steep and so uphill as it is on this trip. At times it fades off into a narrow, barely visible track, and those of us who accumulate there need a guide to get across. Other times it fades away altogether, and we go jarring over the earth's bare bones, teeth gritted with apologies and impatience and dust.

At last I reach my destination, but there's still so much work to do. So many people are waiting for the sustenance only I can bring them. I drain myself to the dregs of strength and of determination. I can't slow this frantic motion: it's written into the internal program now. My body runs by itself on gasoline fumes and exhausted, essential momentum. Just when the muscles are making their last desperate, shaky demands - stop now or we'll stop you - it's over. The deep quiet sweeps in again like the ocean, covering all.

My companion sends me a message, from the other side of the chaos: I'm with friends...it's peaceful...you can join us here. Winding through the cold night I fight off nagging negativity: I'm too depleted for people, even friendly ones. I have nothing left to give. But he meets me at the pavement's edge with a brilliant and peaceful smile, and now there are stars glimmering overhead, lighting up the dark. "This way," he says, and suddenly we're at the entrance of not a noisy house but a giant teepee, which glows golden from a fire burning inside. I climb through a doorway that is really much smaller than I can fit through, into a room that is much larger inside than out. In this round space a single young man sits crosslegged. His long dreds are the same color as the fire, and he radiates the same peaceful, unobtrusive warmth. My companion introduces him: he has the same name as that last one who broke my heart. It was two years back but the syllables still shake me for half a moment. Then I see clearer, and realize that this person tending the fire is the essential opposite of that hurtful one. Expression as kind and open as his was searching, cutting, critical. Energy as engaging as his was about separation. We're not in that dimension anymore. Ever.

And then there is my companion, sitting next to me now, absorbing the fire's quiet luminescence into his own. Casting welcome, kindness, and affirmation around me like a fine blanket, hand-woven out of beams of light. His presence is the essential opposite of years of futile, unfocused journeys alone. We have been travelling together for a while, it seems. Weeks, months, more? And following many of the same roads, in parallel planes if not together. Already he knows me - from deep listening, from patient seeing, and quite possibly from reading my mind, if not my soul as well. I am only here, now. There is nothing to fear and nothing to be wearied by, in this place. The flames lap softly at little wood fragments, drinking the energies of trees that once stood in silent celebration, in shadowy forests which my path once wound its way through. They give back just a taste, just a sweet breath of what it is to be one with all that grows and breathes on the earth. Time stops - or, there is no more need for time - or, maybe there never was time. Only now, only the kindness of this stillmoving golden light.

And the most beautiful part of this dream: it all really happened...