waiting

for morning to come
for tide to turn
for strength to gather
for haze to clear
for work to make money
for money to (sigh) make trust
for trust to get free and just go
for a dream
for a sign
for a yes
for a no
for a hand reaching out
in accompaniment
for companions not like the last time
for autonomy and sweet interdependence
for new hearth skills to learn
old heart skills reinvited
and some center of fire rising up
out of lifetimes of earth air avoidance
ready to burn and converge with the Light

more silly phone metaphors

Took my ailing, 5-depleted cellphone in to the store yesterday. The friendly service guy is amazed that such an old phone is still working at all. He asks, "What do you use this phone for?" "Communication?" I want to reply. But, seeing my blank look, he clarifies: voice or texting? No, I don't do text, though I can see how that would be likely to do something weird like wear out the #5 button. I've just, once again, used the same old communication tool for too long, with no updates. He takes the back off of it, and several loose screws fall out. "Well, that could be the problem," he remarks. Yeah, that figures. Then he takes it in the back room and works on it for awhile. When he returns, everything's fine again, and he suggests that I just keep the pressure on the center of the 5 element rather than to the left. Well I am left-handed, after all, though not quite a leftist. It's just hard for us right-brained roaming types not to press for more adventure all the time. But I am, at least, able to retrieve my delayed messages from Life now. The first is from my sister: call me back, and we'll continue our envisioning conversations about how to get free of the system, and the labor, and learn to work together more. The second is from the traditional healers who I called two months ago for help with my back pain: no, we're not making appointments for paid treatments right now, but you can come to our free event in two weeks. Alright then. The last is from my fellow collaborator at Trinity House: just wanted to let you know, the back door will be open, if you come in late. Well, maybe that 5 Adventure energy's still functioning at some level after all. How not to stay connected, with such backing as this from all my channels of communication?

or, maybe not

So I wrapped up all my loose ends, finished my work, came down the mountain and back to the city, just in time to ask my friend if I could hit the road with her. And found that she had already left for Mexico last week. So. Back in Albuquerque once again. Now what? The closest words, perhaps, that I have to a prayer these days. When I can say them sincerely, that is, instead of with sarcasm and disbelief: "Now What?"

The week's most recent odd and maybe-meaningless occurrence: I cannot dial the number 5 on my phone. It seems to be some electronic malfunction (it is an old phone), where if I press any other number it works like it should, but the 5 key instead activates the volume control, louder-softer-louder all at once without a pause. This is not only a problem because my passcode for voicemail has a 5 in it (don't leave me any messages!), but so does the code that I use to pay the phone bill electronically. But 5 is also associated, in the numerology I remember, with travel and adventure. Ha ha. The number you have dialed is out of service, please try again at another time...

land(e)scaping

Landscaping: the process of moving every piece of organic material on a given site to a new and different spot on the site. What a perfect expression of "civilized" human nature...

This week's work: Added two new terraces in front of this house, with 20-foot-long rock walls to contain each one. Finished Erosion Control Sites #1-7 (the entire 2-acre property sits on a slope, with the house at its center). Replaced broken flagstones in front walks. Prepared beds for fall garden. Dismantled old wooden arbor, using only a socket wrench and a hammer. So satisfying, what the hands can do with only a few tools' help.

The Real work of this week: moving earth, in a more essential action. Engaging the Earth element, the sense of place or belonging - elusive but still present - in my rather un-grounded here and now. It's easier than I thought it would be, without a permanent job or a place to live. It's about reaching within, centering. But it's also about reaching out, to the welcome that each moment and each friend offers. Either way, it's an inside job.

A while ago, my Real Life Rob Brezny horoscope had some line about, instead of going to the mountain, bringing the mountains inside me. I thought he was being cute, as he's really good at doing. But no, it works. Those distracting place-essences that haunt me, out of all the nomad's journeys, are getting a little more cooperative all of a sudden. Consenting, even, to come and join my inner landscape once in a while, instead of looming as far-off memories of Oregon or Colorado or all points in between. Lending their mountain-strength, their valley-protection, their desert-vision to the needs of the view that looks out, from within. Letting me make my escape from the mundane moment into the greener world, while still keeping a sense of place, of center, where I am. I don't know if I can explain how suprising a development this is, or how welcome.

But Mexico is one journey that won't fit inside in this way. Not neatly, anyway. Not easily. Not without spiralling green vine-tails reaching out around the edges, refusing to be contained, still growing their dreams and visions. I tried not to think about travel this summer, really I did. Gave Albuquerque and the responsible steady life my best effort. But that current just doesn't stop flowing, and things that seemed lasting have proved impermanent once again. The job, the house, the learning opportunity have all said sorry, please keep looking. Everything I put so carefully in its place has uprooted itself, and moved to a new spot. So, I'm waiting for my friend to return my call - the one that's heading to Michoacan in just a few days. It's crazy, perhaps. But really, what viable offers is the "civilized" consensus reality making right now? And more important is how to answer what Life invites: Let go of your fear and your insecurity. And maybe your security as well, if it keeps you out of Love's reach. Start learning what your hands and your heart can do to give you a good living. Get grounded again, but get free while you're at it.

now quote/what now

"Your attention wants to go somewhere, so take it to the heart of experience. The heart of experience is the universe's breathing rhythm as it pours forth new situations, a rise and fall of energy...

"The present moment is naturally innocent. The now turns out to be the only experience that doesn't go anywhere."
-- Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets

YES, to the first of these. Life right now is nothing if not this, for me. A rise and fall of energy. A breathing rhythm. Depending on the moment, I am any part of it. One moment a strong lung cell, rejoicing to do its work in the breathing. Another, a speck of dust blown along on the winds of exhalation and release, and then inspiration and inviting in. One day there are no possibilities, the next anything is possible, but nothing is tangible. And on a day like today, five real, actual things might be about to show up all at once. Yesterday I looked at a fascinating live-work opportunity, which I won't get to choose but might choose me, in a week's time. Two or three very mutable work options hover around the verge, waiting to see if I will inquire into them. One living space nears the end of its time - I have to move this weekend - while another opens its friendly doors, but only for two weeks. After that it's living in the truck, or camping out with various friends who have offered their couch, their floor, or tent space in their back forty.

And here is what one of the never-predictable people in my circle told me this morning: "You're welcome to come along to Mexico with me, if you can be ready in a week..."

That second quote up there I could read in different ways, but I read it with hope. "The only experience that doesn't go anywhere" could be a dead end. It could be a blank wall, a cold shoulder. But it could also be a reality without attachments, without agendas. Free of hidden, ulterior motives: innocent. Life, present, with only itself to offer. Not that this isn't all going somewhere, too, because I think it is. Just that, maybe, Life is asking us to move at its pace, instead of our contrived and concerned rush, for a change? And to face a whole new wholeness along with it, a new range of choices.

Anybody else out there feel an entire new set of possibilities being offered, should we only be willing to be down with it, down on the surface of the moment?

movies at Chispas Farm

For the Locals del Valle de Atrisco:

"Fresh From The Farm: Film Nights at Chispas
229 Saavedra Road SW
Come at 8 pm, show begins at 8:30 pm
BYO outdoor movie watching setup (blankets, drinks, and snacks)

The Line Up:
Sat., Aug. 8: Asparagus! Stalking the American Life
Sat., Aug. 15: Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers
Sat., Aug. 22: King Corn
(Short films before each feature from Thenorthroom & Rotation films)

(Saavedra is a south turn off Bridge between Isleta and Sunset)

never fixed

Who are you this week? Come on, wanna get outside the box with me for a minute? If you're not already, that is. Science tells us the body regenerates all of its cells every 7 years, right? Psychology tells us we can change stuff as powerful as thought patterns, lifelong habits, choices. The dreamtime shows us, through vivid experience, how we are other selves, and are interwoven with others, much more than we give waking recognition to. Spiritual wisdom tells us, in so many varied voices, that we are beings of change, and growth, and also that it's All More than we think. Possibilities - for better and for worse - have us surrounded. We are constantly by all these things repaired, but yet we are never fixed.

So much talk lately of the tangible world changing. Many of the words, especially the fearful ones, seem to come from people living center-main-stream, who have been insulated somehow from the fact that the world is always in transition. By their jobs, by their money, by routine. By denial, surely, sometimes. By the mindnumbing nothingness of TV and the news. And then there's us who have never known much of anything but change. The main shift we hear these days, maybe, is the voice of others waking up to the fact that we all live in a dynamic reality. And, on the good days -- when we're not totally immersed in the current and the struggle -- we get just a little bit excited at the thought that, maybe one of these days soon, we'll find ourselves in a world where a few more of us are actually on the same page. Simplicity. Cooperation. Self-discipline. Hard work. Careful conserving. Creative resourcefulness. Celebrating the small things. But that, of course, is on the good days.

This week, I am a bricklayer. I make patios sloped to the land's angle, that won't trap the rain. I design lovely curving paths on sand, without mortar. When they are done I walk them in bare feet, to test whether they are level and smooth. I live in a simple room with one small table, two chairs, and a mattress on the floor. I get up early, work alone, and quit when I'm tired. I have no coworker banalities to distract me. I have only to cooperate with the weather. All the tools I need are available. Meals are provided in the evenings. There's not much else here to do but work, but toward sunset the most beautiful light washes over the rock faces across the river canyon, and I stop to pay attention, while hummingbirds and bats zoom overhead. Thunderheads build, plot takeovers of the valley, and then disperse behind the mountains, 50 miles away. After dark I read a quiet, inexplicable essay from Barry Lopez, and then go to bed very early. I'll wake again soon after sunrise.

It's a temporary gig, but in the moment, it's my life. And a pretty good one too. There's such satisfaction in working at your own pace, challenging your own strength, and seeing the results of your labor at day's end. In the last four days, I have laid 1,065 bricks. I just counted them because, as I said, there's not much else to do here. And I wanted to put a number on the weight that my shoulders tell me I have carried this week. With each brick weighing 3 pounds, this makes a total of 3,195 pounds: a little over a ton and a half. Not a bad week's workout. A little further progress in the Training. A little more preparation in the current Life Class, which is called, Anything Can Happen - And May, In Fact, Very Soon...

This week I am also a dancer. I don't dance all the time. I hadn't danced, with the circle, for almost a month. Body and heart were both too depleted. And I don't dance well, that's for sure. But this week I am a dancer, because I chose to show up. And, more important to me, because the circle welcomes me as one, whenever I choose to rejoin. On Sunday about 15 of us danced, under blazing sun on scalding sand (for a little while, in bare feet), for an hour or so. Without breaks, and without water. It was one of the most excruciating, exhausting things I've done in a long time. It was also one of the most beautiful, and empowering. It was an offering. A beginning of understanding what it means to offer oneself to an effort. There was nothing else, under the circumstances, that it could've been. And it wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't found a way to step outside of who the mind says I am, for a time. With the encouragement of a companion who inspires and incites me to get on my feet, out of the limitations of my "self", and to live. He doesn't just encourage me to celebrate life and change, but gives me many reasons to do so. And also with the help of a friendly and generous community who invite me to rejoin a world that was always changing, always alive, and is living still.