Living Morganism

The other night I had a dream about tulips growing, a magic tree overlooking the sea and I dreamed that people were crowding these wild animals, trying to hold onto them and I was so angry I yelled at them to set them free and then a man came and starting placing flower pots throughout a field and in each flower pot there was a small, calm owl. I'm thinking that love is like that, it's wild, it can't be held. I so want to hold it, to hold you. I want to wrap it and you around me like a blanket to keep out the cold, the dark that is the unknown which lies ahead on this different path. But the truth is, that this unknown is better because it is life. Holding onto what is wild, holding love, is trying to make it stay one way, trying to make it stay still. That kind of stillness is not alive. I am breaking my own heart to walk a different way from you, but it is only this way that I can love you wildly, love you freely and in time and with patience and some peace and a lo

Every pilgrimage begins and ends at home. We go out in search of something, someone, some peace and with the grace of God return safely to home, to ourselves, to lovers, to love. This is what I believe home to be, what I want it to be, my prayer. The footsteps I make are prayers, my words written are prayers, the art I create is in prayer. I am full of prayer to find that home. The image becomes clearer as I go. Each day brings new definition, some days bring some desperation too, but always lessons to learn. New pages to turn in some dusty old tome in an ancient language. My soul is hungry for this, devouring well worn wisdoms and crisp poetry alike. Speaking of beauty and illumination. Bring me back to my self.

Today. Windchimes are the soundtrack of the life I'm longing for. I need a little more romance. It needn't be flowers from my beloved on the front stoop, or a candlelit dinner. It could be a moment of silence amidst the haste, or noticing one leaf shining golden in a forest of autumn trees, Romance could be a deep breath filling my lungs and the unexpected scent of rose water.

I am not now the nomad I once romanced. My days are more domestic, than wild I find peace in the subtle movement of a garden, and watching the small things about their work. I desire a hand to caress me, in time perhaps a child to hold. I yearn for love that holds me up now, more than a new corner to turn in the road. But the spirit that once wanted wind at by back, still delights to have it play with my hair. Wildness still pulls at my heart and sometimes moves my feet to wander. At the end of the day I find I am not the anything I once believed myself to be, so much more than words and definitions, so less than limitations. I am not a this or a that or a doing, to be a being I must simply be. Although some days I stumble to move myself from stillness, I am moving forward still. Moving toward... Being.

I am working on a story, the story of writing myself backwards to the experience of walking the Camino. In so doing I hope to examine how Pilgrimage continues to walk us long after the physical path is no longer under our feet. Below is a passage from my initial vision statement of sorts. Spirit is beautifully intangible, something like our conceptions of our selves. I feel the presence of a soul in myself and I have absolutely no solid ideas of what that means. Fortunately I am not possessed of the inclination to unearth unshakable proof of soul. Paradox does not trouble me, rather it lifts my heart up and what rises from within when I look into it is laughter. Perhaps that laughter is the Soul expressing its joy at being sought after? Inexplicably that thought rings with truth in this moment. I rather feel compelled to burst out laughing even now, but out of perhaps too high a regard for reservedness I settle for feeling the bubbling of that laughter within. It feels like the bu

4 cups of Calendula petals 3 cups of Apricot Kernal Oil 1.5 cups of Brandy 10 Sticky fingers Sunshine, a cool breeze and Bliss I am happily tired, sun-kissed, freshly showered and fed on fresh greens. I am sipping sun infused herbal tea on ice. I am recalling the day, the subtle sunshine and the slight breeze, the sound of the wind chimes gently. The hummingbirds, bees and butterflies visits. The soft textures and bright colours of full summer.  It is truly remarkable how entertaining it is to simply sit and watch a garden grow.  There is dirt under my fingernails, and a recently built and finally soil filled (because I finally fixed the wheelbarrow) flower boxes along the garden shed (AKA the "Possibility Pagoda"). Peppers and cucumbers transplanted, a makeshift trellis constructed, and a couple of Datura discovered in the compost heap moved into a more central and stately location... where I can more easily sit in the moonlight and watch them bloom. There is

I need a practice, something to ground me, something to communicate to my deeper self that she, that I matter, that truth is what I am ultimately in pursuit of. I am so often making these pacts and promises to myself to honour this life, this purpose and, falling short, I erode my own faith in my integrity, my resolve and my essential goodness. But these unkind criticisms do not serve to reform, I am only drawn further away from my source that in so doing. I am not sure of my really living  my life. I feel pain, there is such a deep sorrow which is present when I try to hear the longing in my heart to pursue a greater purpose, a deeper truth. Such a longing to feel at 'home' whether that home is a place, a community or a sense of comfort in my own being... I long for it through uncertainty. I yearn  and in yearning feel such a sorrow, such a great loss and lost-ness. There is a longing also to express this, to put words or feeling and image to my experience. Even just to p

Back there, I walked barefoot through broken down barns where moss grew in blankets across cracked cement floors. I was told to wear shoes should rusty nails sprout instead of muddy water between my toes, but all I ever got was dirty. I never cared much for shoes and my feet will never fit into slender glass slippers now, but any prince who hopes to win me will not care for such dimensions. I had to feel the earth under my feet to keep my head out of the clouds that my heart reached for. Back there, lucky horseshoes grew on toppled brick walls and cinder blocks held secret treasures to humble shipwrecks. Back there, the brightest colours I've ever seen were lights that danced in the sky on a cold night. I lay on the roof of a great hall and watched as my heaven turned to stained glass. Back there, what it took to be a hero was to battle demons in my dreams and rescue my mother from milk snakes, even if I was the one who brought them in. I built grand museu

What is it in a cool spring breeze that carries the sea with it across continents? There is something of adventure wrapped up in a contentment, Perhaps like a daydream in that. Clouds carry me away. I feel a called out into that newness, the paradoxical freshness of something so cyclical as Spring. My body seems as willing to bud as the fruit trees and there is almost a tingling underneath my skin that suggests maybe, one of these years, I will myself sprout with the daffodils. It always seems so sudden despite the consistency of time, And yet suddenly, there is more sunshine. More birdsong, more scents, more senses, And yes too, more sensuality. There is a little more swing in my hips, a little more life in my eyes, There is energy to stand up straight and let the wind in. My body speaks a little louder of its appetites; fresh greens, floral teas, the tender touch of lover. The very spirit of Creativity is awake and rowdy It reaches through me into my stiff finger

Sunk into an overstuffed couch in a room not quite cozy. Hot tea and Arabic poetry speaking politics and loneliness. Crescent moon outside, turned upward to refill not quite illuminating the snow, though doubled by the plastic winter window. The house plants and I and these yellow walls are hungry for sun and some warmth to paint all the little hairs golden against our skin. My heart feels tenderly here in this place, not quite yet home. 2.24.2015 - Folsom Farm

As sure as Spring softens the soil. Walking into a warmer night that the one before, with a cool breeze that I don’t raise my collar to. Let it kiss my pale winter skin, like moonlight does new leaves, and they glow. The scent of lilac. The sound of trees. My heart softens in tune to the season, and some tears, like the rain, bring blooms. Spring evenings whisper the promise of Summer nights. The promise of wistful sighs, and the sweet longing for a lovers embrace, a hand to hold, another pair of footsteps to walk beside. Warm skin to graze against, silently, like lightning in the distance,  similarly charged. 

When did I accept the identity of an object waiting to be claimed? or a victim, waiting to be saved? When did I learn to define my worth by what I do? or whether I am witnessed? I knew a rage once that used to claw upward toward my throat, desperate to meet whatever wizard or poet there that could give it a voice. Where did all that anger go? The anger of every woman preceding me recognizing the beginnings of shame taking root. The anger of a deeper, wilder, freer and truer force, that first held witness to these lies and struggled to lift my hands into fists. What would my Grandmother tell me? The one who claimed the only power she found left in her own ashes and flew from her body? How would one who chose death, suggest life? I do not speak lightly or with ill intent but with earnest gravity. I wish I knew my Grandmother. A woman who is now being defined by her youthful poetry over her last action. A woman who fought for her beliefs in a context which preferred she no

We don't know monuments like the river knows. A more enduring stillness and still... more fluid sense of time. A sometimes violent vein of life in the landscape we, with little imagination, call arid. And leave to the cows and coyotes. Possessing a patience and faith that shapes landscapes, water carves ever deeper into stone until canyon walls tower overhead, blood red and beautiful. Iconic, silent and fragile. Red canyons seduce something in my soul. I am drawn out of myself as I am drawn in. Something familiar in them if not familial. The rocks rebound with stories that still echo from an age past, but alive here. Those stories, both soft and sinister will tell you the histories since before history. They will tell you the secrets that only stones can keep. They will sing you songs if you can find their rhythm in your own heartbeat. And they will weave your own mythology into theirs until you know no other belonging. We don't know change like a mountain d

I went West, as humans often do, onward and upward as it were. I had a hankering for some solitude and the scent of pines and maybe, if I was lucky (and I was) a little mist to reconnect me to my mystical roots. It had been a number of years since I was up in the Estes Park area, not since before the flood and it was apparent to me as I wound up the road from Lyons to Estes… either my memory failed me or the geography was much changed. Perhaps a bit of both. Just me, the dog, my trusty rusty truck and the mostly open road. It was a rainy weekend (snowy up higher) and the usual weekend mountain crowd was scarce. I couldn’t tell you exactly where I was, other than on the East side of the Estes Park Valley, because I wasn’t paying attention to the road signs. I was in one of those “in-the-moment” moments and my decisions to turn here or there were made in a flash and guided more of less by observations of “This road looks less busy than that road”. The roads got less and less busy, mor

I want to hear the story of you, falling in love with me. I want to feel it alive in me even as it changes subtly into the myth of our beginnings. We have begun to reminisce from within. A couple winters of cold. And afterwards work to do at softening what had found reason to harden. To open, what wanted to close fearful of the dark and the light, fearful of tomorrows and all they entail. There is romance in remembering too. A time to highlight the seeds and the Springs: first notes exchanged, climbing a tree, forested nights, untethering, anxious hopes, a hand First kiss. I've encountered crossroads where love meets perspective and found the altars where offerings of peace are given. But those paths never seem to run parallel. Sometimes the road seems so undefined I wonder where I wandered off it? And I start staring at the sky again looking for a sense of direction. Our journey hasn't led us into summer quite yet or borne the fruits of fall, though we have

Poetry feels like daydreams writing stories out of me. Little glimpses, if Soul may be, captured in some frame more ephemeral than photography. Images that may not stay an hour, or a heartbeat but still can be recalled by the visitor and unfolding each time anew, like a bloom always full with potential and a light, kind of like the moon. 2.25.2015

There is a knowing that pours in with the light when walking in wild places and a peace that comes up from deep to greet it. In this meeting I’ve felt the Beloved. My soul finds its mate where it rises up from within to greet the sunlight and recognizes itself there.

I've found a little faith remains. Some trust, leftover like a small piece of dessert  yet uneaten by the hungry ghosts. A small voice once, now, raising. There is a deeper truth still, there is always a deeper truth. Still. In this moment, this faith alive there is rest. I will lay my head down in it tonight I will dream of a wildness that nothing can touch or taint. When those Guests come sweeping though violently, it always seems, apart from what else Rumi said, they leave also a faith in all that change is. 3.23.2015