Like a Queen Animal I felt nature’s electricity charge and ions get active. Like horny high schoolers in spring, I found the woods for what I, too, thought was privacy and what in actuality was fresh air.
The lightening started long before the rain. Queen Animal heard deep throated growls surpressed, but approaching quickly, still miles away. The thunder arrived with drops of wet dignity. Nothing more genuine than rain. Personality forward. Anabashed in clean despair.
I walked on spongey seasons of diciduous collect, the lightening exposed the entire forest as in midday. I sharply breathed in rain storm electricity, then seven women of all shapes and individuality and two wise men appeared. Around what seemed a sciencefiction boulder, slightly redder than sandstone brown, stabbing out of the wood’s gassy incline, in a clearing surely deer had laid flat. In the deer home; these people – already InIt. I saw them see me.
Freeze frame: ten figures illuminated by the lightening sky. Freeze frame: noctournal proceedings back to black just as quick. Next blink I am upon them, no time for hesitation, no time to think – just respond. My gut moved me and there I was, joined with them staring in a pool of rain which had assembled in an organic dent, like a boulder bowl.
Oh, this secret. Reverent in the rain for this secret. From speech fully refrain. No one told me the plan. But there I was – I know how to do it.
We worked. We went deeper in our work. I never saw a face but in my mind’s eye. No eye contact, no touch. Only silent, concentrated skrying of the rain reflecting pool. The surface black like hemetite and strangely still. To be receptive in this moment is total. And the thunder slammed the hill, rattled the earth nearby so it shoved our bodies too. But we did not startle. We did stare. We did melt and meld. Instead of a gardian, in the water, an archytpe appeared.
She was sad, but lovely. Her white slip, smudged from soil, hung off her body and she cried and then exhaled it deeper. She did not cry. She raised her head to the sky and arched her chest, threw back her arms. Con pura vida, her face to the sky (feet on ground), the rain hit her, flowed over her. With each drop that slid down, the slip grabbed the body, changed color, wet fabric clung crisply.
In forever or no time at all, she received everything. She became rich of soul and insight she had missed out on misbehaving in the city. Her beauty grew and … the surface broke. Not by wind, not by techtonics, not by human. It was over.
It’s not our job to explain or rationalize or reason. Only to receive the signs and resopnd to them.
Next thing, my soaked slippers stepped on my stair. That was the end of this me.
Now is my time.
It was the night of the Winter Solstice and it was my watch over the hatchery. Usually they erupt like a petite volcano, somewhere in the middle of a distant sea undiscovered by human consciousness. Safely silent and unnoticed, thirty, seventy – maybe more – decide by some ancient wisdom that their soft shell is suddenly too cramped for their consciousness, that the weight of 24 inches of packed dirt is too heavy for their freedom, that they long to open lungs, open eyes, open arms and know independent life. Silently, as one, they use each other to slowly push, wiggle, fight upward through packed sand, their birth canal. All together erupting with newborn blindness, exhaustion and awkwardness in one amoebic heap.
But not she. This miniature sea turtle made the journey alone. I will never know how she knew it was Her Time. Perhaps there is one Plankton Angel for each sea turtle egg whispering “stillness” “grow shell” “absorb placenta” and finally a gentle “go” in each embryonic ear. Perhaps there is some genetic consciousness that can read the oceans tide, the moon’s phase, the weather’s proclivity, the survival economics. Perhaps it’s a roll of the Chaotic dice at the evolutionary craps table by the God of Time drunk on water-turned-wine by the Prophet of Profit in his casino room’s jacuzzi bath the night prior. Somehow, she did it alone.
Grateful for the darkness we both, I lifted her from the hatchery nest and with soundless respect, tip toed just-her to the wild, uninhabited playa and set her newly opened, still crying eyes into the sand facing a barbaric ocean ready to work or drown any weakling effort to indulge it’s waters. Lazy baby; she laid still, gaining strength to move her limbs and then suddenly, the enormous orange moon emerged as her only mentor, warning lovingly: fight-or-die. She flopped. She flailed. She pushed her miniature aquatic body across a forever distance of 4m of sand to be hit and rolled time and time again by wicked waters. Still pressing forward: survival code.
The undertow took pity and finally carried her away into 10f waves of pounding black sea. She’d not eat for days or weeks as she continues her newborn struggle to avoid predator eyes – bite sized appetizer she appears, to avoid commercial fishery drift nets killing everything – endangered species like her included, and beat the odds by persisting at least 14 years before she returns to cumbersome land for only the second time in her life to lay 100 eggs of which likely none, but perhaps one – will survive.
May it be you tonight, Winter Solstice child. Now is your time.
Clothing is not allowed in the water.
Let’s hear it for mother nature. Let’s have a round of applause for the still spectacular events that one can and can not imagine, powered by earth, wind, fire and water – better than the movies and a thousand times more original.
I fly a lot. In my life, I’ve flown a whole lot. But today it feels like I’m flying. Two weeks ago to Vegas: nope. Three weeks ago to New Orleans: not so much. But today, we boarded in daylight, and from my window seat watched a flamboyant twilight cloak the shoulders of strong men loading the plane, signaling the traffic, rolling into the distance now just orange directional lights waving around in some secret code language. Now dusk. Now a dramatic jet-powered take off down a run way through Los Anglees. Buildings I recognize pulling away, a left turn passing families, volleyball nets and piers at the beach. Over the glorious ocean slapping against the rocky, natural Pacific coast and into an alchemical California sunset – purple, orange, red – mother nature really knows how to make magick out of human pollution. Let’s hear it for these sunsets.
I know some hippies. But I’m not one. We have deeply much in common, but my heart is macabre and wholly busy balancing the Light with the Dark (even the Light can become an empire when it tries to take over). I’m not a hippie, but I feel like one when I lift the arnica homeopathic pellets to my lips cause I got a tweak in the neck from goosing at this sunset so hard and so long. I’m a lot like a hippie, that’s for sure. A cultured, macabre, heavy metal, genius hippie – give me that. My carry on is packed with loose shilajit, MSM and chia seeds. Self-capped turmeric, wild enzymes and fermented B12. A script printed out on the back of a script I already read. My MacBook, iPhone, iShuffle and iBrain working wirelessly as external lobes. I mixed my own clove, cinnamon and vanilla essential oil vial today. And if you asked, I’d say I’m opalizing currently, by wearing lots of opals near my skin and next I’m moving towards labradorite, of which I am palming a sphere. I’m tonguing a Jupiter spagyric. Happy Winter Solstice. I’m not a hippie.
Like a radical roller coaster ride, only a thousand times more massive, this plane accelerates into a turn and my window points almost directly up in a sky lit by a sun saying a magnificent farewell. I feel like I’m flying this time. This loop around quickly takes me over Los Angeles and I love how strangely calm it looks as I send good byes to the palm trees. The city sprawls until it’s arrested definitively at the base of our first and sudden mountain. Snow covered peeks, glowing gold ilke the pot at the end of the – this is beauty. This is alchemy. Mother nature does it again.
Obsessive predator. The silence can feed. Feed on the sound of nothing through bare trees. Look for nothing when you fall through the top crust of icy snow. In my vision, I attack on the island. In reality, I don’t have a boat.
Meet me, then, in winter when we will walk on water. Meet me, then, when tears are frozen to your cheeks. Meet me on the island when the nights are dark and longest. The ice can, but I can’t: bear the wait.
And the ground gives way.
In one moment, you are on the path but not on the path.
And almost as suddenly the human machine – go, go Gadget Ankle – recovers and without injury
is in forward motion again.
I’m a little girl with no shoes on her feet. Hugging trees in the rain to hear their heart beat.
Five months in LA because I found something to love. Five months in LA because I found someone to love. Five months in LA is a grand commitment for me, proving my devotion to love, love …. love like a fire. Devouring brittle landscapes to fuel more me, to birth a new me. Insatiable and driven … my love like a fire.
Can leave a soul scorched without the rains.
Just one Michigan nite, washes five months beneath bare feet. Hugging trees in the rain to hear their heart beat.
This is your room, but I am in it. This is your bed, but I am in it. And somehow I expect this must be your moon, but through the telescope or through the window, I am in that, too.
The plants on the sill – I can name them. The colored glass on the shelf – I recognize it as once ours. The stories we relate, after six years of separation, are memories from a time we were children and in love.
Absinthe fireflies keep the mountain on the lucid side. Roadside phlox keeps the cave crickets paralyzed. The reason I loved you is why I will always love you. The moon dashes out of site, humid hillbilly paradise.
January is a break in the breath of the hibernating bear. A fleeting, but quantifiable measure of brain activity. The first realization that there is more than this comfortable dreaming homeostasis we’ve chosen to succumb to. There is something to hope for, be curious about, put your faith in.
But January falls right back to sleep.
I remember one winter I stumbled across January curled up in dirty coats and not smelling so good in the park. January slept like the dread locked transient man – with all her possessions under her head. January anchored to the frigid ground – so heavy, this ship wreck rusting under the sea. So I kicked her (a little bit by accident but not entirely) and catch stepped over an aroma of fermented grapes. The suggestion of Sonoma Cab Franc convinced me that if we were to invite January out this Thursday, she too, would have exceptional taste.
So I kicked her a good one. And after three or more minutes, I was about to search her pockets before sleeping beauty finally twitched and breathed and stretched out and rolled over. And …
That was about it. Fleeting, but quantifiable brain activity. Never to be heard from this season again.
I’ve seen January make an ass of herself and sleep walk. She tries to get up too quckly and loses vision momentarily – . falls like an inebrieted animal back to the frost carpet ground. Where she belongs. You can not rush January. And she’ll never remember her dreams.
I hear she dreams in all shades of grape.
The downstairs neighbor’s car windows were still open.
It was 7am on a Sunday morning and I don’t know, for the life of me, what I was doing awake that early, besides waiting for the Hollywood and Vine farmer’s market to open, but I’m glad I was awake or I might have missed it.
A strange noise, like a parade of tap dancing elves taking over the residential street. A disconcerting feeling of correctness overtaking my entire being. Something special and simple and easy to miss if you are sleeping like the rest of the neighborhood is at this hour.
Just me on the sidewalk. And that guy being walked by his dog. And the local recycling man with his shopping cart, personally going through every dumpster to collect any CA deposit beverage containers that might have been inadvertently thrown away. He had just jumped out of the dumpster behind my house and we made eye contact as we both headed to the street.
I always remember that I am the ultimate water proof container. It just slides off of my skin and I don’t even rust or short out or anything.
I walked around the block and felt like the banana tree, suddenly so much prouder, so optimistic and swollen – every pour opening up to absorb this goodness which brigns me out to the street. We have both been waiting over three months for this. We have both been covered in greasy film from the LA streets, we’ve both been feeling a bit dry.
I think of gardening in Hollywood like a package of instant oatmeal; “just add water.”
The sprinklers still sputtered two manicured lawns down the block. The downstairs neighbor’s car windows were still open. It didn’t matter much, though, because me and the banana tree didn’t get even enough rain to wash off or feel clean. The July rain was less like a shower and more like a … parade of tap dancing elves. On a very short holiday. With very little stamina. Over before it began.
But there was a rainbow. And now it is 8am. Farmer’s market ready for business.
