green through the pavement

2009.

2009-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

So I found myself suspended from work over the next few days because I forgot an important scheduling deviation. Oops. My mother died last October, and her funeral utterly destroyed my finances. Sigh. Shana and I are in our latest breakup, and while I think there's strong potential for us to remain close, this time it feels like the big one. Ouch. I learned recently that there's a warrant for my arrest out in New Jersey, with hefty fines, because of a very old driving snafu. Yipe. I got robbed on Monday when someone I thought I trusted took some cash from my wallet. Grr. I may have kidney stones, and there's this tooth that's really annoying me. Damn. There's some local Craft "community" stuff that leaves me shaking my head and clutching my heart. Jeez.

But you know what? I'm ok.

I'm ok because I've dealt with so much angst and grief and stuff in the last year or so, that now I'm just laughing about it, rolling with it, and adjusting my plans and strategies to simply accomodate all these turns of fate. Adapt and overcome, adapt and overcome, adapt and overcome.

So what am I doing?

Completely on impulse, I'm roasting a duck with apple-raisin stuffing. I'm going to pop a bottle of Henkell Trocken open, and Aphrodite and me are going to enjoy an intimate moment at the house shrine. I'm getting leathered up and going to dance my ass off at Savage Garden. I'll finish with a few pints with friends at the Done Right Inn. There's a party tomorrow. Then, I'll be starting this coming year with a focused, persevering, joyfully successful series of accomplishments on my roster of healthy and happy goals.

I may go on walkabout in February. I'll be riding horses in the spring. I'll be diving in the summer. I may be in Cuba in the autumn. By next winter, I will have Canadian dual-citizenship.

When the universe unfolds before you in a way you'd rather prefer it didn't, often all it takes is a shift in perspective to find the nuance that opens you to possibility. Find the stillness. Be in the moment.

My 2009 wish to you is this: may this coming year bring you shameless living, unselfconscious laughter, brazen success, incredible sex, loving kindred, crowded kitchens, good books, and the pleasure of having been heard, understood, and appreciated by those you love.

And whenever it doesn't, just adapt and overcome.

Aren't we glad, Pea?

2008-07-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

They tell me that they're finished with your body. They tell me what we already knew, that you didn't have any diseases, and that the man that you had bitten will be just fine.

Aren't we relieved?

The thought that you had to undergo this indignity makes me ill and numb. The thought that that part of you which I showed so muh affection to found itself on cold steel and subjected to instruments makes me angry. That, when I'm summoned to collect what will remain of you, the brittle-white bones crushed to powder, that part of your presence will be absent has me numb. I can only hope that when they were finished, you were shown some respect.

I was thinking about the spot near the makeshift inukshuk that Cai made, where you often lay down to rest, or at the base of the evergreen that still bears ribbons from past equinoxes. But I won't be in this place forever, and when it gets demolished, I wouldn't want you disturbed like the squirrel next door was.

So I'm thinking about a sapling near the other memorials in the park. But I'll keep you home for a time, beside where Beltane waits. I miss you.

Peanut Butter Gypsy Gillette-Chanoux.

2008-07-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

You are anxious to get outside, you ignore my demands to stop shouting at the door. I relent.

You try to cross the street, something you almost never do. You are struck by a car that continues down the street.

The old man sees this and hurries to you, unable to get the license plate. He lifts you up, but you've been savaged and your pelvis is in pieces, and you maul his arm while he sets you down on the pavement in front of his home. He frantically tries to find out who you are, and runs into one of the women who has lived above your new home. She gets me. I pick you up, and you don't even flinch when I feel your hip click under my arm. I race you to the doctor. They fill your mouth with tubes, your leg with tubes, and ease your pain.

For the next two days, all of my energy is devoted to saving you, seeing what can be done for you, being with you as your expressive and loving paw clutches my fingertip. You brighten when you see me. The trust you have had in me shows in your tired eyes. But your body is badly broken. I struggle to find a way to pay those who demand money before they begin to heal your broken bones.

I'm successful! I race you to another doctor, a specialist who can mend your limbs. But she looks at me with a solid heart and tells me that your injuries are worse than we all feared. You're anemic, you have older bone injuries, and you're flat. It amazes her that you're still alive. She asks me to make a decision.

Two years ago, you slowly started to trust me as I coaxed you toward me with food. You were starving, your fur in mats, and you needed a friend. My girlfriend then didn't approve, but I took you in, and you stayed with me long after she left and abandoned her own with us both.

You were cool when it came to snuggling, and then I told you that while Cleo is wonderful, I really needed a kitty who would do so the way Beltane Titania would. Starting the very next night, and continuing for every night after, you cuddled deeply and closely and contentedly until the break of morning. You were so expressive, and apart from wanting to be outside in good weather, never made a demand.

I waited in a room with a couch and wastebaskets filled with used tissues. My friend and his hound were with me. She brought you to me in a blue towel and rested you in my lap, just as you would be when we were at home. You immediately relaxed and rested your chin on my arm, like always. We spoke. I asked you to forgive me for breaking the promise to heal you, that I did everything possible for you, that I cherished the deep trust you had shown in me. But now it was time, and I was and am so sorry.

She filled the first syringe and connected it to the tube in your leg. You mewled and snuzzled your face into the crook of my elbow. Your fur was as soft and as warm as ever as I cradled you, held you, loved you. With your face against me in the way you loved, you passed.

I brought your limp body to my shoulder, and for a long while I believed I was still hearing your heartbeat. Days later, I still hear you talking to me from the front window or as I walk down the block.

I don't understand why this had to happen. I'm sorry. I did the utmost best that I could for you. I love you.

Just like riding a bike.

2008-06-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

"You've got to make your own fun."
- Kathy Bates, as Bettina

So I'm on vacation, two paid weeks from work, and what plans I had have changed. I won't be going to Chicago or New York. I won't be taking Shana to Cuba or Honduras. It's unlikely that I'll go camping.

In the past, I would devote time like this to working on my pad. Not now. I may get a second, throw-away, labourer job to make some extra cash and get a great workout, but I have a feeling that I'll be spending time in the next two weeks to milk Toronto for all she's worth. It's time to focus on goals and make some progress on the plans I keep procrastinating on.

So I bought an old Raleigh mountain bike and some necessary gear from Mountain Equipment Co-op, and just finished my first pleasure ride on my first bike since I was a kid. I'd borrowed a bike when I was living in New Brunswick (that's in New Jersey, you Canadians), but this old boy is mine, all mine. Acquiring it is a goal achieved, and that does my spirit good.

Now, off to Funhaus for my first fetish night in months.

The moon, the now, and a strawberry for the self.

2008-06-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

...Know your seeking and yearning shall avail you (nothing) unless you know... that if that which you seek you find not within yourself, you will never find it without..."
- from The Charge

The key to lasting happiness is to find celebration and joy within, to harness and caress any lucid moment that reminds oneself that there is always something broader, more enriching, more sustaining, more beautiful than any of the inward pressures that would otherwise drag one into a mire. To smile more, to see the shaft of sunlight beside the road accident, to find divinity in the lingering of the broken kiss; this is the path toward celebrating the senses and the present moment. A fraction of a recognized, beautiful moment can free oneself from a day's worth of distress.

Happiness can occur with someone else, or even because of someone else, but once it occurs through someone else, one abdicates part of one's own power and ability to create and transform. We may choose to voluntarily abdicate some of this power as we nurture a personal relationship with another, but a healthy awareness requires that we remember that, in the end, our own happiness is entirely our own responsibility, doing, and celebration.

Sometimes there isn't much green to find.

2008-06-18T17:37:00.000-07:00

My friend Alex hung himself. He's dead, and I recently found myself wanting to call him. I didn't. I wonder if, as in times before, I was feeling his need to talk. We seemed to share an energy awareness about when things in our lives were getting disrupted. He's dead, and it doesn't seem like anyone's looking to conduct a rite for him. Should I?

My mother's health is deteriorating, and I'm worried. I spent two days in New York, caring for her and making certain that all one of her home attendants had been stealing was only cash. It was, and to the tune of maybe a thousand dollars. My terror is that she will die, I will be in Ontario, my uncle will be in Florida, and it'll be Christmas morning for thieves in Brooklyn.

After nine months of constant daily contact and several trips to be together, things with Shana and I have ended. She broke it off because having a long-distance relationship was becoming too challenging, then begged to have me back, and tnot long after I fucked up in a spectacularly marvelous way. While I sensed some important differences between us, I also sensed more long-term potential with Shana than I have with any other woman since Cai. That in itself impresses me, but right now I'm a little distracted at what happened between my new best friend and I. I'm managing well (maybe 've learned something finally), but I love and miss her.

No, no greenery in all this. But I did lose ten pounds and bought a bike today.

More dukkha to do.

2008-06-14T05:55:00.000-07:00

Rob sez:

"1. Critique and question and agitate the parts of yourself that are complacent or addicted to convenience. 2. Give help, sympathy, and encouragement to the parts of yourself that are off-centre or out-of-focus. 3. Shake up the static, habit-entranced situations you see around you. 4. Be generous and creative with those who are suffering."

Bread, circuses, and a little dough.

2008-06-07T05:04:00.001-07:00

Of late, I've been reading in the newspaper how the CBC has been "excited" with the ditties its boardrooms have been tinkering with to replace the "Hockey Night In Canada" theme. In turn, I've been reading how Canadians across the country are heartbroken at the thought that this televised tune of 40+ years is going to be removed from hockey broadcasts. It seems that, in Canada, "the hockey song" is virtually a second national anthem, and some news reports have also cited how Canadians abroad would identify one another during spontaneous outbursts of singing it.

I think this demonstrates, once again, something tragic and important about the society we find ourselves in: that property-consciousness, corporate interests, ownership are more important than culture and what makes people happy. Further, despite clear displeasure, people are so constrained by the corporate hegemony that they (we) accept the change as a given, and so someone somwhere will likely be happy to accept the CBC's "bribe" of $100,000 to the person who submits the "best new hockey song." After all, if you're going to take something that someone loves away, once you give them money, everything is fine, right?

The socialists of old would say that this accepting public has succumbed to "commodity fetishism." I wonder if, on a cultural scale, we've just become too lazy, too bludgeoned, too punch-drunk, too tired of being hurt and seeing what we love packaged and sold as someone's else's property to really care about anything relevant to our happiness anymore. Perhaps this is why insulating entertainments like iPods and Wii become increasingly more popular, and fewer kids are playing hockey in the streets.

That is, if the municipalaties were permitting them to now. Insurance issues and safety, you know.

Today isn't yesterday.

2008-04-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

"(I) refuse to give in to this concept of being separate and disconnected and protecting (my) own little tiny island, and (I) look around and say, 'Yeah, I've been burned. I've done bad things. I've made stupid mistakes. I was naive. Now I know more. But I don't want to let go of the gentleness and the innocence of being naive. I'm not jaded. Fuck you. I still have love and I'm gonna fucking wield it.'"

Carla Bozulich

Scourge.

2008-04-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

Personal initiation can only happen after an experience in the underworld. It is only through crisis that transformation and change can occur. This is why initiations are not pretty, leave scars, are memorable throughout one's life, and why a guide or psychopomp is so incredibly vital to the experience.

Awareness and initiation is about the opening realizations and life-affecting alterations that come after the pain, after the observation of the pain, and after the scars caused by the pain are made into tattoos for use to scry into later in our lives.

Between the worlds of the sacred and the profane.

2008-04-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there are demons that refuse to leave me alone. Some of them are my personal succubi, tantalizing and teasing in what they might appear to offer, trying to appeal to vanities or dreams that governed me for so long and that I've since been trying to exorcise. Sometimes they appear as proud apparitions seeking to sway me with hopes and ideas again.

I'm torn between decisions. Standing again before the rift in my personal world, peering again into its echoing chasm and hearing my own hurtful words shouted back at me, I'm asking myself about what exactly should I, could I, would I want to handle. Is it better to suck it up and be the strong guy again, to try and demonstrate some bigger sense of leadership and belief, or do I finally give myself permission to be the avatar of my own longer-term happiness and let myself let go? Either way, I suspect my actions wil yet again fall under the smug scrutiny and judgment of others, and others who never seem fully satisfied or compassionate.

These are among the old headaches that I'm tired of, and thought I had finally found my way away from and approaching a peace with having done so.

Like loving the rain.

2008-04-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

"I'm as strong as a thousand armies. I'm as soft as a long-stemmed rose."

Social Distortion

It's one of my least favourite ironies that deep, heartfelt affection, agape, seems often mistaken for weakness, for pliability.

This kind of love is lacking around us, and often I wonder if many people would know what to "do" with it if they "had" it. Love can become a possession to some, and then something taken for granted. Once deemed as possessed, it then runs the risk of becoming trivial, and that underscores the potency of love.

In those moments, I sometimes find it's tempting to harden the heart, but how counterproductive that would be.

The well.

2008-04-07T07:53:00.000-07:00

"Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings. Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move. Walk to the well. Turn as the earth and the moon turn, circling what they love. Whatever circles comes from the center."

Rumi

Family values.

2008-04-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

I was reading Diane di Prima's Recollections Of My Life As A Woman recently. Writing of her grandparents, she cited how her grandmother would abandon saying the rosary when her grandfather entered the room, but how the two of them loved one another despite their differences.

At that moment, I was suddenly struck with the realization that never in my life had I seen my parents together as a loving partnership. Never had I seen them as two adults who shared the same bed in their shared home as they traversed a shared life together. Photographs of their togetherness existed, worn 3x3 black&whites with oversized borders taken in Karlsruhe and Berlin, all locked up in a grey plastic suitcase stored with the artificial Christmas tree and the stamp collection.

Instead, what I saw were two adults tolerating moments of strained silence when they were in the same room together. There was always a subtle tension that I could feel, though perhaps not fully understand. The awkward silences. The brief moments when my father tried in vain to profess his love for my mother, and the suddenness of her monster-eyed fury as she shushed him up and shamed him with a stage whisper. I would be in the kitchen during those moments, listening but trying to not overhear. I would be angry in my father's defense, though he rarely if ever spoke of it with me.

I'd never seen them laugh together, holds hands, kiss. In the one photograph I possess of them, taken during my Communion, I had to ask them to pose together. There was a lot of quiet during the exceptionally few dinners we shared, usually around a major holiday, provided he wasn't under observation at the time and couldn't come.

He tried to collect me from grade school once, and what I remember most was the panic among the principal, my teacher, my mother. I didn't see the big deal and talked with him. It was a treat for me, though I never intended to leave school with him, of course.

"Look," he said as he bent down to me, shadowing the sun as we stood on 75th and 3rd. "What do you see?" I peered into the distance, the busy street, uncomprehending, shrugging my shoulders. "Life," he said.

It was always my father who tried to share matters of depth with me.

My neighbours down the street.

2008-04-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

More than a hundred years ago, a newspaperman stood where I was and wrote about the condition of the graves. He wrote how the stones were in disrepair, some wooden crosses were broken, and with only one or two exceptions, the graves of the soldiers and families of men who fought the Americans here, another hundred years prior, appeared all but forgotten. I know this because the newspaper account he had written was preserved in stone on the small wall I stood beside, where surviving headstones, many broken and virtually blank, were preserved in the concrete. A dead squirrel, mummified and wet from the melting ice, lay as sentry atop the wall.

Behind this was the field where the bodies lay, Garrison Park, the subtle slopes of earth perhaps being the last reminder that graves were present where people threw sticks for their dogs. I spoke to the dead as I strolled through. I felt myself being heard. I felt myself being appreciated for having made some acknowledgements. Only now, as I peek through Wikipedia entries about the site as I type this, do I read that so-called paranormal occurences are common here.

I'm not surprised. I'd think most of these folks are pretty upset.

Was I far from the spot where some British infantryman came up with the idea of lighting the magazine to repel the American invaders? Was the industrial complex to my right built on land reclaimed from the lake, where American schooners blasted their 24-pounders on the earth I was strolling?

Not long after my newspaperman penned his disappointment about the grave conditions, a pork packing company began doing development further east. The account of their land excavation, preserved in the Fort York museum, told of how they casually exhumed other remains which were then carted off among with (and as) construction debris. "I kept some of the bones," wrote that writer.

When I'm driving the 511 streetcar along that stretch of track between Bathurst and Exhibition Loop, I'm cruising through land where the absolutely very first European-made buildings were erected here. They were the garrisons of the original British troops, even before Fort York had been built, when the British were in direct contact with the Ojibway, Mississauga, and Mohawk people here. The loss of these buldings was lamented by the public when Toronto Civic Railways, a precursor to the TTC, destroyed them.

The erection of the Gardner Expressway during the 1950s almost spelled the doom for the fort that remains. As it is, this lonely and isolated place of history is entirely flanked by industrial complexes, roads, refuse. It makes me wonder how the land was, what the soldiers who fought here saw around them, and how they would feel if they knew then what where they fought and bled would eventually become like.

At the base of the Fort York flagpole, where the Union Jack hung limp in the evening chill, and behind the protection of a black privacy fence, fat woodchucks languished happily in their large network of warrens. In this spot they share with forgotten graves, forgotten historic places, and industrial space, they've found some peace. They found their niche for undisturbed happiness.

Truth or consequences.

2008-04-04T23:12:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I'm dealing with consequences from some of my recent choices. Consequences I can handle.

In nature, I once said to a friend, there are no punishments; there are only consequences. I heard that somewhere when I was a kid, and it's always stuck with me. It bespeaks of how everything we experience, whether we appreciate it or not, are all the results of our own choices and actions. Part of taking personal responsibility for oneself, for recognizing one's own agency in a matter, means being willing to accept what happenstances come as a result and then dealing with them.

I do think, however, that some of what I'm facing this weekend is a little punitive. There, perhaps, lies the role of punishments, which, perhaps, serves me as a reminder that human culture is not this idealized image of nature per se. People enjoy being punitive.

It's work-related nonsense that I'm dealing with. I made a poor choice and my wrist is getting slapped. My union steward tells me everything will be hunkydory, but meanwhile I get to enjoy a weekend off. Taking advantage of the sudden free time, I took myself out to see Margaret Cho perform, and she reminded me again that there is much to life that we often prevent ourselves from passionately embracing.

Hurry up and wait.

2008-04-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

The planets are telling me that I can expect a lot of delayed gratification for a little while, and so far that seems to be true. I had expected to be making preparations to be in Chicago next week, and so far it doesn't look like I will be. This distresses me. I miss the Pixie terribly and these delays aren't producing the results I desire. Also, I'm itching to create, and the stained glass workshops have to wait also.

But this has also afforded me a day of delightful procrastination, which can't be all bad. In exploring other travel options, I'm alerted to nuances in my financial situation that deserve some adjustment. I got some writing done. I drank beer and glutted on some Jude Law films. I even indulged in a nap.

Normally, I'd be kicking myself for not having achieved more during the day. But I also remind myself that there are times and places when simply stopping, being, centering is action enough, especially if the planets themselves seem to be the ones telling you to sit down and shut up for a while. It's a still life kind of day.

Trust.

2008-04-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

"Whenever you entrust your heart to a thought,
something will be taken from you inwardly.
Whatever you think and acquire, the thief will
enter from that side where you feel safe.
So busy yourself with that which is better, so
that something less may be taken from you."

Rumi

Love.

2008-04-01T20:31:00.000-07:00

"Like sheaves of corn, he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant. Then he assigns you to his sacred fire that you may become sacred bread for the Gods' sacred feast. All these things shall Love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart."

Kahlil Gibran

The glass.

2008-03-31T21:09:00.000-07:00

My day began with a hateful skinhead shouting at me, telling me that I was a nigger. My day ended with two arrogant black women shouting at me, telling me that I was a racist. There was stress, near-accidents, selfish drivers, surly people, and screaming children in between. My evening included the garage mechanic telling me that my lovely car was beyond repair, and my girlfriend being unhappy because it's been too long since we've been able to see each other. I ruined a pair of pants. Some rain ruined a floormat. My tax refund is mostly gone with me having virtually nothing to show for it yet.

But I found a great stained glass studio that's offering classes very soon. Carbs be damned, but I treated myself to pancakes this morning. I also found a new pub with really good food. Some people congratulated me for how I handled some extreme situations under extreme duress. My girlfriend reminded me that she loves me. My cats are snuggly. The house is clean.

So I suppose my glass is still half-full, at least.

Being now.

2008-03-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

There is always an available moment, or a place, or a face, or a happily walked dog with a swinging tail, to remind one that beauty remains everywhere. In taking a breath and collecting oneself back into the moment, often a subtle gift is right before our eyes that helps us stave off the downward spiral.

The past lurks in the dark.

2008-03-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

For me, Earth Hour wasn't especially eventful. I cheated a little too. I didn't attend the party I was invited to, which I'm sure I'll regret.

Maybe that's because I'm a cynic. Having participated in a massive public ritual in Boston Common for the Harmonic Convergence, the Hands Across America demonstration, an orgy to wield power against AIDS, and Gods know how many other Workings, maybe I'm just a tired old fool who's lost a lot of faith in the human condition. Or maybe it's because I have to be awake by 3:30am.

Or maybe it's because I became distracted by my past... again. I miss the Dragonfly. I miss the rituals and the celebrations and the gathering in Maryland. I miss a house full of loving, laughing, eating, chanting people.

I called the Pixiegrrl, whom I miss deeply too, before she headed out for the night. I love her guffaws, and I hope to see her soon.

I predict that an aftermath of Earth Hour 2008 will be a rush of new births by December.

One's own agency.

2008-03-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I need to remind myself that it's ok for me to have fun too. That is, to think about my own fun as being equally important when I'm attempting to have fun with others.

Maybe it's part of my astrology. Maybe it's just some weird slice of codependent bullshit that's grown in my breast over the past few years, some echo of some abandonment issue that still being exorcised. But there are times when I have to tell myself to remember that it isn't all about me playing the entertainer for others, that I'm important to... and that, sometimes, I'll be with someone else and not enjoying it and that's ok. Doesn't mean that I'm fucked up. Doesn't mean that I'm not capable of having fun with others.

To deny this in myself is to give away my own power, to deny myself my own agency unto my own happiness. That would mean making my fun dependent on whether or not the person I was with was having fun... which also means if they stopped having fun, then I'd be "required" to stop too.

Eeuw.

This is probably obvious to many people. But like most simple things that appear to be obvious, I see something profound in remembering this, and in remembering this during the current slice of my life. I like it because it reminds me that being whole unto myself means simply embracing enjoyment for its own sake, like laughter, like art.

I scream.

2008-03-27T16:32:00.000-07:00

Adaptation is often about forward-thinking. Often, it requires one to step outside of oneself, to pause in the middle of an unenviable moment and try to envision what is possible. Remembering that attachment often yields to suffering helps in this process. Doing that, when one has managed to step beyond the need for the attachment, the imagination can observe a wider, objective point of view. This can, in turn, allow one to accept options that might not have seemed available when one was fighting for one's way. What may have seemed the most undesirable thing in the world might then show itself as the path toward something wonderful and previously unperceived.

Overcoming is often about present-thinking. Often, it's the place within the self that gets reached when one's patience, tested by all that openness and adaptation, reaches its subjective limit and the time becomes right for resistance and struggle. Many schools of spirituality demand the ascetic, yielding way that results in pure adaptation, but what of the power of the self that bursts forward in times of outrage and distress? Can this not also be a path toward empowerment and positive change? Can we not also be the actors, the escorts of change, as well as its passive recipients? In the maxim Do as thou wilt, the verb is about action and effort and struggle.

Perhaps balance in living lies in determining, within the self, where each approach suits best. Reed or oak? Light or fire?

And then there are those moments when the way to proceed becomes clouded, and one's disappointment and annoyance might stand in the way of healthy movement. Those are the moments for ice cream.

Clean slate, clean plate.

2008-03-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

She wept as she told me, two years ago, that I would have enjoyed the restaurant she and our friend had had lunch in. She was still preparing to leave the city, and the emotions were still raw. I remember feeling glad that she wept. I was neither being mean nor gloating, but it did show me that she was in pain too.

I found myself dining there for the first time today. I wondered where she and our friend had been sitting. With the whiteness, the bare plate before me, I meditated on the cleaner slate my world is in.

Rearranging, redecorating, relocating, remembering, reawakening all day today. A new, healthy, more personal purpose has found itself in the temple room, where my rituals may hae more to do with keyboards and dreaming than wands and chanting for a while. It's still ritual to me, for me. Rituals for new creation, new expression, new goals to be achieved. The spirits are not offended. They, like I, embrace the change.

Papers to purge, place, put aside. Memories and testimonials. Letters from lovers. Lovers pledging their devotion. Devotions that are absent now. The power of this now brings me closer to the fruition of my own Self.

I dined by my Self, so I did not dine alone. I feast on the green shoots of spring.

The last of ice.

2008-03-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

Like a seed clinging to the frozen, dense earth, my spirit was full of promise. My unfurled stem remained coiled about me rather than extend into the sun. Fear can grip the heart in that way after so much distress.

My own will, coupled with the shaking of my foundations (thanks to a thief), brings me back into consciousness. Necessary tasks found themselves achieved, intimidating and stalled goals surmounted, matters resolved. I am thawing. I'm reminded of spring rites past, the circling dancers chanting the workings to eschew the ice and embrace renewal. The last of ice as I become renewed.

I accept an invitation that distresses me, recognizing what I've believed to be my role and responsibility to people and things that otherwise cause me pain, but I somehow still refuse to disavow. I'm trying to stand up without standing arrogant.

I begin seeing my ex-wife again. She's moved to my neighbourhood, and the feelings are mixed. I realize that nurturing kindness and friendship is a healthy act in itself, and that if I make designs about possible outcomes, I've already set myself up for disappointment. What's important is that I show the better person that I am, and for me, not for her. I can't change the past, but I can undermine the past from undermining me, with and for myself.

It's all growth and greenery from there, no matter who or what enters the new garden.

In the green wick.

2008-03-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

There is a place within the self that can emerge through the shadow. It comes after many quiet nights, when the memory of family and friends, now absent, is a silence following the tumult. It's the movement of perseverance, the drawing of happenstances unsought but embraced, the acceptance and the desire to take another step forward.

When everything valuable and loved and desired and dreamt-for is lost, when the laughter of kith and kin echoes in the pained yearnings for yesterday, what remains? The click of boots on pavement beside the melting snow, the pounding of the heart superceding inner voices that summon the self into despair and pathetic, unrequited redemption.

The Green shoots through the cracks. It bespeaks of the promise unspoken, the hint of possibility and creation, the living wick remaining within the tired self. The Green is present in spite of winter's folly and anguish. Brighid is alive and pumping the billows. Demeter holds the seed. From within the core of being, feral life and resonant wonder can yet be nurtured into presence. From within the core of being, the chance for redemption of the self, neither pathetic nor unrequited, can be embraced into a fullness. There can yet be renewal.

It's a journey. It's a path. It's a step into and beyond personal initiation. Its scars are runes of melodious wisdom, and the answers from its oracle are woven in the Green. Hope remains after blemishes are seen as the blemishes that they have been. Life is.