Cut the Net With Your Fire

Browsing an old journal I came across something my daughter, when she was little, in the deep night and deeply asleep, said, emphatically, "Mommy, cut the net with your fire."

Cut the Net With Your Fire

I know about being entangled in nets, who doesn't
those impossibly knotted ropy traps
we tie our hearts and minds with

and the nets we get caught in
places we oughtn't be, and swoosh
captured tight and tighter
until it hurts
the loss
of freely moving, living, having our being

perhaps our years of living are learning
how to be free

of any expectations but our own
and trusting our own fierce love to see us through

I tip my crystal glass with its ruby red wine
salutations, darling, and may you always

cut the net with your fire



Sketch, Celestial Dancer III, 2003

(post originally written on June 27, 2004)

The 'new' profile pic...

The new profile pic. Okay, so you've seen it before: but not 'collected.' Ahem. This is the large version of 'how much can you fit into a postage-sized profile pic'?

Dancing of the Selves...

"As my father lay dying": remembering a time of uncertainty.

This was originally a comment at 100 Days, but the system was down. The topic in the comment thread (look at Day 34 & 35) was uncertainty. MB, Lorianne, and Stray have written eloquently on uncertainty. I thought this reminiscence, this understanding of uncertainty might be interesting, perhaps inspirational.


I've had two major periods of uncertainty in my life. The most recent is the near loss of everything I've accumulated, all my books, paintings, furniture, objects, the other one was when my father lay dying. He had emphysema and caught pneumonia in hospital and had stopped breathing and was manually resusitated and the interns and nurses ran, wheeling him through the corridors to Intensive Care. When we were allowed into ICU, he had multiple tubes in, multiple tubes out, was unable to talk with the tracheotomy. For six months the doctors refused to say that he had another day to live. 'Any moment', 'We can't say beyond today', this psychic and emotional torture. Each day I went to the hospital not knowing, I held his hand and lip read not knowing, I left not knowing if I was to see him alive again. I couldn't sleep, left my TA at university, didn't work on my thesis, lived in a state I don't want to remember. It was like that Eastern European or Russian author who's name escapes me at the moment who was blindfolded and taken to be shot each day and each day wasn't shot. Excruciating. Existential angst. Everything out of your control.

Perhaps he might still be alive if he had wantd a cybernetic existence, living in tandem with machines for breathing, eating, excreting, even these 22 years later, he was such a fighter, but after six months of this tethered, Gulliver-like existence my Dad had all the tubes taken out, the machines unplugged, and he faced death directly.

Those few days when he lay gasping for breath, dying as his body filled with carbon dioxide that his lungs were unable to expel were unbearable... true uncertainty is not an enviable or desirable state.

Neither was the year I just went through. But for the last decade or so I have become a meditator. With daily meditation, I began to understand how strong we are underneath. There is a deep rhythm to life that we can trust.

I wouldn't call it bedrock but perhaps the song of the bedrock.

Meditating is not just listening to, but participating in, at our deepest level, shorn of everything, the song of life and death.

And finding the rhythm okay, ecstatic even.

____
The upper right image was of my father and I in 1976, eight years before his death. The one below is of me, three weeks after his death, in 1984. I've always liked the gentle, accepting, peaceful but knowing look in the eyes of this photograph. Did I ever feel like that? I don't know.

Flame of Love

For Sparky's Illustrated Poem Marathon.


Flame of love,

I gave myself

to Love Divine.

_____
click here for larger size


Art influences I would say are Bernini of course, Dali, postmodern digital art (especially in the clumbsy photoshop cut-out making it not commercial art), and something obscure, a Tarot deck called the Secret Dakini Oracle Deck, by Slinger & Douglas. I have long loved mystics, of any religion, creed or belief system. Sainte Thérèse d'Avila was a wild, beautiful and divine woman mystic.

The model? I don't have to pay her.

A day in the life of

Sleeping and waking whenever I felt like it was a bust. I'm regulating, night-time sleeping, daily meditation/nap (which is entirely different to sleeping: the former for physical rest; the latter for spiritual sanity).

Up this morning at 6am, coffee, emails, bath the dog, brush her, shower, dress, jeans, shirt, jean jacket, off to Kensington to meet Theo, an old friend and sculptor - we met in 1982, he was eating dinner at the Queen Mum's on Queen Street and was a good friend of my ex, who introduced us. It took a long time to get to know Theo, years in fact; it wasn't till after my marriage ended in 1997 that he and I became good friends. He's one of my most loyal friends, too. It is through Theo that I have understood that loyalty is one of the most important qualities to me. That's another topic though.

We chatted for a couple of hours, then he went off his way on his bike and I my way. Dropped into Gwartzman's discount art store to get a rip-off Moleskin look-alike for $3.97, but passed on it (my first one's not finished yet) and bought a 9"x12" printmaking board and a canvas remnant. After I dropped my dog off at home, where she barked nonstop I believe, I went to Honest Ed's and bought a T50 stapler that is so stiff I can barely squeeze it, then to a Chinese produce store for BC blueberries, and home to be greeted by now hoarse barks. I've eaten two bowls of fresh blueberries with cream and sugar, stapled a cloth over the under-the-stairs cupboard, and stretched canvas over the board and gessoed it.

Exciting day, huh.

This is blogland!

We get to create these posts, to reveal our lives publicly.

Theo's never owned a computer. I marvel at that.

Looking back aways...

Not a trip down memory lane, but sort of. I discovered my daughter had taken these photos out of the albums we recently excavated to show her friends, and I was touched. In the process of scanning...

In 1977, at 25 years of age. Ah, the world ahead! My first relationship of 5 years that had become a marriage was ending. A late bloomer, I didn't go to university till 21; I was working on my second B.A. and getting straight A's. When I look at these photos, I think I knew more then than now.

Did we all start from a position of surity that has gradually crumbled away? Leaving an essential glimmer in the unknowingness?

light like colourless smoke

Freshly edited for Sparky's Illustrated Poem Marathon.



larger version here

Marigold Moon

For Sparky's Illustrated Poem Marathon.

Muse Calling

One of those days, where I've meditated almost without choice, pulled easily in, and where I keep trying to enter the external day. I am tired. Is it because I've only eaten fruit, cheese, antipasto, and toasted multi-grain walnut bread for the past few days, and my body needs meat even if I don't get around to cooking it more than once or twice a week; or is it financial, I expected to be working more this month than I have; or is it emotional, with some strange responses from women to my output that leaves a discomfort that requires rest to heal; or, as I reach down deeper, is it creative? Is my muse pulling me into somnambulance, the place from where I write, even though today is not a 'writing day.' As I wander about, intermittently laugh or argue about writing with my daughter, I have an odd sense of writing emerging. Why can't my life go on when this happens? I have so many things to do...

An image of a great frozen polar cap shifting, the voluminous depth of the mind working things out in its billions of neural connections, and when it's ready, a piece of writing breaking off like an ice flow, and floating into the ocean where it melts eventually into all the other words.

Is this a Zen of writing?

Do all of our words flow together when we've shut off our computers and closed our books? Into a great linguistic ocean sweeping the globe?

Ecdysis Recording (1:41min)

A recording of my poem, Ecdysis, which may be found at qarrtsiluni.

Take a listen; comment over there.

Does it work? This little poem was difficult to record, not sure why. The short length? How many times did I try, each time finding a different intonation, which led to a different set of referential meanings in the cadence of voice.

In the cacophony of recordings on my screen, I just chose one. For better or worse.

This one: DSL/Cable, or Dial-up.
_

African Angel

A re-posting to join Sparky's Illustrated Poem Marathon.


tags: angels, crafts, African angel, memories, photopoem, Illustrated Poetry Marathon.

Miss Muffet

It clung to the inside of the jar not understanding liberation. It was content above my bed, awaiting flies. I banged the Mason jar again on the door frame under the moth-flicked light, not out of kindness, I just didn't want squished spider in a tissue. Holding an empty jar, I called my dog back in, and shut the door.



I could say, not after Woody Allen's Scoop, after all that laughter and the 71 year old icon that he is despite the magic tricks, or the Life Salad at Fresh with organic carrots, beets, sprouts, spinach, lettuce, basil and a tahini dressing, or the mango, coconut milk and banana shake, or the fine Summer evening spent with a friend. I could say that the last time I tried to squish a spider it dropped fast onto my daughter's bed and disappeared. I could say it's because, well, that's just the chance a spider takes, and it lucked out tonight. But then it might have suffered a concussion being rudely knocked out of the Mason jar on the way down to the ground; I'll never know.

A Day for Bastille

A recording of "A Day for Bastille"... high speed; dial-up.

A Day for Bastille

Hard couple of sweaty hours. Time, incorrigible, leaden. Like a rusted French crown.

Beer holes, bag moulds
thumbs
stuck on tacks.

Empty boxes
of styrofoam
caskets.

Leaned over the small cupboard, over a hot plate. Pushed back the tacked table cloth. Pulled hundreds of bags left by the previous tenant out that my dog would never use; let's face it, the cornstarch will evaporate the plastic first. Collapsed boxes saved for a move that hasn't happened. Hauled out a picnic blanket, a folded umbrella lawn chair, a large backpack on wheels with one wheel broken.

A collection of cardboard tubes line the back like fallen soldiers.

Then shoving
the full cardboard wardrobe
with its dried blood smell
in.

Thinking about ontologies,
multiple trajectories,
about events that disrupt,
about Alain Braidou's
Being & Event.

About how French postmodernism bursts critical space as I seque from area to area of impossible overflowing clutter, from splintered to post-Cartesian thought.

The musty back room of spider shadows repels: during the day bleary hung-over light from its tiny funerary window; at night an unexpected red bulb.

A half wall enclosure built in the corner, inexplicably, and an iron lock;
a bastille perhaps.

Where I store suitcases,
collapsed boxes.

Queen Margot,
sweeping through this cloistered closet,
oh, its been a long bloody revolution.



tags: closets, Bastille Day, Alain Baidou, Queen Margot, poetry.

The Editor

She was a good editor. She delved so deeply into manuscripts that she could write revisions seamlessly: linguistically, no-one would be able to tell the author's original words and her extra phrase, or sometimes whole sentences or paragraphs. It was a talent for mimicry perhaps. When she was finished editing a book, it was an indissoluble whole, with her words etched in like tape, like patches, like embroidery over the holes in the arguments, the lack of logical connectives sewn over, conclusions woven clearly from the evidence of the material, the indisputable truth of the argument, she sewed and sewed, using invisible thread, using thread that exactly matched the original, so that nothing appeared amiss, it didn't sound like two voices had written the book, the author and the editor, but only one, improved on, and the other, hidden, and whose invisible mending is ultimately forgotten.

Writing in someone else's voice depleted her. She worked on non fiction books, and many of them were tedious and dull. It was up to her to spruce them up. To make the language shine in its simplicity without letting her movement through the text become visible. And working on other people's writing blocked her own. She couldn't leave "so and so's" style in his or her manuscript when she closed it for the night and turn to her own writing. It was as if her entire vocabulary was being used in the service of someone else's writing, being used to make someone else's writing better than it really was, and there was nothing left over for her. They wrung every ounce out of her, those manuscripts, those managing editors demanding a good job be done with what was often a mess. You'd be surprised at how many educated people can't write. She was one of those editors, among millions of helpers, who come, and comb through your book, rewriting it, so that it becomes the gleaming tome you are proud of, but who are forgotten, while perhaps mentioned on the copyright page, remain largely unacknowledged.


©Brenda Clews 2006
___
This is from my first NaNoWriMo novel, and it's directly from my own experiences as an editor for the decade that I did it in College and University texts for large publishers (though I have done private editing assignments nearly every year since). 'Minor classics,' that's what I aimed for. If a book remained on reading lists, considered the best in its field 'still,' then I thought my editing successful. Became burnt out, though...


technorati tags: editors, editing books, publishers, burn out.

Cream Silk Pajamas

Unable to find my navy blue cotton pajamas in the chaos of boxes and piles of clothes, the loose ones, with the top of stars, I washed the silk ones I've had for seven years and never worn. Cream-coloured silk. Found wrinkled in the bottom of a large cardboard wardrobe box. The "Marilyn Monroe" set on sale at Simpsons in the Eaton Centre after working in a nearby office. The top is more like a shirt, and had a large red heart for its single button, which I removed and replaced with a pearl-coloured one. And then never wore. Silk seems too fragile and precious for constant wear. But this is thick, durable, and sleek and soft against my skin. I sit in the lake-blue Director's Chair with plant-green designs that I unholstered once, in front of the computer, typing, sipping coffee, wondering, should I go out and buy dancing clothes at Dancing Days?

Another sarong in golds and browns and oranges and a sheer top with small tangerine moons and shimmering lines like longtitudinal threads of stars to navigate by?

And when will I dance, and where, and with whom?

I pick a purple plum from the fruit basket; it has a slight tang in which its sweetness and succulence is contained.

tags: silk pajamas, dancing, fruit, creativity, writing.

Then Post

Cut it, and cut it, until the meaning's almost lost.

Dreams remain,
hovering.

Pain runs up my left shoulder blade
through my neck into the left throbbing side of my head
and curves over my forehead like an iron claw
until I am nearly blinded.

Take away what you don't want.
Begin.

___
Textual note: I spliced a headache (which is now gone, thanks to Ibuprofen) with remarks on editing. Some of this was taken from a BBC interview with Italian director and screenwriter Emanuele Crialese on his "ethereal masterpiece," Respiro: “When we were editing the film we started from knowing what we didn’t want,” says Crialese. “Then we took away things until we were afraid that we’d almost lose the character. It’s like a piece of rock. You cut it and cut it and cut it...”

I saw the film last night, and loved it. A school of fish forms a central imagery, though none of the online reviews I read mentioned it...

She was stunning in the part of Grazia, too.


tags: editing, Respiro.

The Wind

The wind
is a dancer;
her flowing silk shawls
rustling the trees.

~

The wind
is a dancer;
her silk veils and petticoats
rustling the trees.

~

The wind
is a dancer;
lyrically streaming
sweeping with dervish whirls
and fine silk sarongs
rustling the trees.

~

The wind
is a dancer;
bangles and bells
drumming racing gale force
from nowhere, to nowhere
singing in the trees.

~

The wind
is a dancer;
softer than kisses, a
Genie sprinkling rainbows
over the sky after the storms,
whispering in the trees.


technorati tags: wind, dancer, poetry.

Salvia Sclarea, a most interesting perfume

It's a small raised red mound on my forearm. Because I've scratched it with my nails, nails that no longer break now that I drink fluoridated tap water, it hasn't healed. It's a tiny hot spot, like someone's running a faint electrical charge through it. I hold a bottle of essential oil over it and watch a drop of thick amber liquid seep over the redness. Clary Sage Oil, I swear it takes the itch of insect bites away and they heal. How often have I been good about not scratching only to give in in the morning in bed and vigorously rub one ankle with the other toe? And find I've drawn blood?

I read the bottle. Salvia sclarea eases mental fatigue, isn't that also good?

technorati tags: insect bites, sage oil, itchings & scratchings, mental fatigue, humor.

An Outing

Eventually we leave. It takes a long time to dress ourselves. I iron a nectarine red rayon skirt with bouquets of yellow and orange flowers with green stems, then change to an Indian silk wrap around skirt. I worry that the heat of the steaming iron will melt the delicate fabric. The patchwork squares are an array of colours and designs; each one singular, from floral to geometric, vivid colours of flowers to earth tones. A cantaloupe orange camisole surprisingly matches. She spends an hour changing behind her closed door. When we leave, she is wearing black pedal pushers and a crunched cotton empire sun-top the colour of the tangerine moon. Afterwards, she said men looked at her on the streets.



technorati tags: women, outing, Indian silk skirt, mother and daughter.

Heliotropic Coda

encrypted first draft of a poem

Unfinished Fragments

In the zeal to post a "sentence" a day sometimes I put things up before they're ready.... still working on this. I think what I mean to say is there's always stuff going on under the surface, so reading beneath the lines...

encrypted first draft of a poem

Evoked from the last scene in Kurosawa's, Rhapsody in August

Go backward along the path
to go forward.

technorati tags: memory, healing the past, Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August.

The Wind

The wind
is a dancer;
her flowing silk shawls
rustling the trees.


technorati tags: wind, dancer, silk shawls, poetry.

Lottery lore; Anniversary of the atomic bomb; Shamanic vs group-based religious rites; Unstructured time; Samsara...

As far as I understand, profits from Ontario lotteries goes to fund programs in sports, recreation, culture, the arts, education, health care, the environment, charities, as well as gambling addiction programs. If I discover this not to be the case I would, of course, stop buying tickets when I occasionally do. When I've succumbed and bought a ticket, I've never felt that it was money wasted: half of it goes to winners, a tiny bit to administration, and almost half to the wide variety of programs I've mentioned, many of which would cease to exist without this funding.

Nah, I wasn't 'bargaining,' just usually I never buy a ticket when the prize is that big because I wouldn't want the responsibility of all that money, nor the publicity. Still, buying a $2. ticket, even with no odds at all, one needs to be prepared, just in case... Zimbabwe is my mother country, and the country is in tragic condition, that's why a foundation to Feed the Children of Zimbabwe rather than something in Canada, which is in much better shape.
_____

Noone understands the atomic bomb like the Japanese do. I bow in sorrow and remembrance.

_____

"In plant-based groups the focus is on the group; whereas, in hunting-based ones the focus is on the individual. Of the former, we find group-based religious rites; in the latter, there is a focus on unique vision. The shaman, usually an odd and feared person in a farming-based society, is central to hunting and gathering tribes."

I wrote that 21 years ago. I wonder if it's at all 'provable.' Interesting concepts...

_____

With my daughter mostly away, and not working outside the home at present, and crazy menopausal sleep cycles, and a ton of sorting to do, I've decided to "unstructure" myself. I hereby release myself from having to conform to any schedule at all. I'll sleep when I feel like it, get up when I feel like it, write when I want, meditate when I want, paint if I want, eat whenever I feel like it, take the dog out whenever, and try to sort out the mess in this over-crowded space as whim moves me. So far, it's working - I did all the dishes and cleaned without feeling guilty or forced. None of it is hard to do, I don't know why I tend to make it so.

_____

I saw Nalin Pan's film, Samsara, last night... and it continues to play in my consciousness. The landscapes and extraordinary architecture, the ritual objects, the clothing, the beauty of the people, the innocence of such simple decisions. I may try to write more later on this film...


tecnorati tags: lottery, anniversary of atomic bomb, shamans, unstructured time, samsara.

All because of last night's lottery...

Woke too early and sat, my futon couch propped at one end, chaise lounge style, bolstered with pillows, staring out the window. For hours. At noon I meditated, clearing my mind, and lay flat and came to around 2pm, forced myself up and into a shower. I just accidentally broke a 4-cup Pyrex measurer, hundreds of pieces of thick glass on the tile floor, it seems to be almost a safety glass, which was when I realized I was having a bad day.

It's all because of last night's lottery. It was a 22 million jackpot. I was out shopping on one of my 3 hour walks, my grocery cart heavy, when I gave in and stopped at a small convenience store and bought a ticket. I scratched the numbers without reading glasses so I couldn't see what I was doing. On the radio in the store was a play about a woman being informed by the police that her husband died of a heart attack, and I heard the actress gasp, and start talking about how he always took his pills.

From the moment of the purchase of the ticket, my mind went on one of its jaunts. That's a lot of money. What would I do with it? It's well beyond my need for a house or some stable income. Okay, I'd buy a house, set up some funds for myself and my kids, give some to family and a couple of hard up artists, and then what. What charity would I give to? Or would I set up my own charity? Knowing me, it'd be the latter. And what?

The children of Zimbabwe. I'd set up a charity to feed the children of Zimbabwe.

That decided, I began planning it. Picking up the cheque at Lottery Canada, dealing with the publicity, which would be most difficult. We'd have to move that day. Hide. Go undercover. I might have to close all my websites. We'd be looking for a house; we'd take a vacation (I haven't had one of those since 1989, not an official one with no cooking or cleaning, meaning I'm not counting my cottage when I still had one). Then the work would begin, interviewing investment firms, seeking out the best, most honest lawyer and accountant, researching the setting up of a charitable foundation, talking to many people, including government, and then picking an investment route, incorporating a name, setting up an office perhaps in my new house. Meanwhile, contacts with any organizations who attempt to bring aid to Zimbabwe would be ongoing as I learnt all I could about going below the radar of sanctions to deliver aid to those who most need it.

Since the country is bankrupt, corruption would be high on my list of problems to deal with. Corruption, and distribution - it's become a police state. Feeding the children means feeding their families. Feeding the children means making lifesaving drugs available with trained medical personnel. Feeding the children means bringing in teachers to teach school, and farming methods, and other sustenance-producing ventures. Instead of tobacco farming, which was Zimbabwe's mainstay before Mugabe kicked out the largely white farmers, I'd encourage perhaps cotton and hemp farming and the production of textiles - the traditional patterns of the fabrics amazing enough surely to sustain an economy, but they could be major producers of fabric for the fashions of the Western world; why not? A much healthier alternative to tobacco, which will cause an estimated billion deaths worldwide by 2050.

But I'd have to deal with a paranoid, arrogant and utterly corrupt man, probably at his multimillion dollar retirement hotel outside of Harare, a man who was originally Marxist, who was probably brilliant, and who has sent his country into ruin: Mugabe. I've been imagining myself talking to him, how the relationship would be. How I'd tell him I didn't give a damn about the politics of the situation, or sanctions, or the European Union, or the United Nations, that there's a crisis and the children are going hungry. That he must let me in to feed the children, and their families, and bring in teachers, and create a new African economy that is self-sustaining. And then I start designing the bulletproof vest that I'd have to wear at all times; even as I ask for assurances of safety, I know that every time I leave for a trip 'back home' - I was born in Zimbabwe, even if my family left when I was two, it doesn't matter, some things run very deep - my own children might not see me again. And of course, I was thinking about publicity, projections on how I'd deal with that. And how I'd have to find someone to run this charity who was not only a good person with their heart in the right place, lots of experience in international charity organizations, but who would have extraordinary mediation skills, something I lack.

Perhaps I should rip up the lottery ticket for its senseless and false dreams of hope without checking the numbers. Every time I buy a ticket, I feel like the matchstick girl in the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. For the day or so before the draw, I get to see a world a little better, in a different light, but then the flame goes out.


tags: Zimbabwe, charitable organizations, Feed the Children, lottery, having a bad day, Hans Christian Anderson's Matchstick Girl.

Flush of Air

Flush of air reflushing itself. The concrete that girders strains under its own pressure and sings in a flatulent tone. A ceaseless rush like a hum. It is everywhere in the building, the offices, the hallways, the bathrooms, even the elevators with their pneumatic brakes. One day these towers will fill other planets, the moon, Mars, over on Alpha Centauri, and they won't smell or sound any different. When the world got translated into numbers it became money. It's the future of mankind, man.

tags: office worker, financial district, climate-controlled buildings, populating other planets.

The Nectarine

Are the day's edges golden
curving in to red
at the centre?

On this pressingly hot day I amble
down the long city block trailing my cart for
oranges, bananas, strawberries, apples,
green beans, cauliflower, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, carrots;
without a penknife, I pass the mangos, squeezing
the nectarines, red
almost brownish, brushed with bruised
colour like a Cezanne painted
from the inside out, the pulp held
intact with a peel
of sunset hues, outlined with dark scent.
Oh, promises, but I expect a flavourless,
crunchy thing like an apple, like all the other
nectarines the past few years.

Starting back, dragging the cart, I stop under
the shade of a maple, slip my hand
into the cart and pull out
the nectarine,
never mind if it isn't washed,
rubbing it on my blue-hued sarong,
I bite.

Honeyed.
Drippingly honeyed. Juicy and rich,
the colour of a ripened sun sinking on the horizon,
massaging my tongue with ecstasies, covering
my nose, cheeks, chin with a delicate
layer of nectarine syrup
that I wipe on my hands and both arms
until I am a sticky, scented fruit flower for
bees. Eating
such a ripe
and succulent nectarine
in public is practically pornographic, so
flagrantly sensuous and delicious.

When you thought you were
going to satisfy your craving
with an unripe pretense
of soft flesh,
a rich medley
of juices
burst
into
your
hot
mouth.

And then you just wanted to drop
your cart and run back
to the little Chinese grocer's
and buy the whole bushel.

Instead you went
to the supermarket
and bought milk and yogurt and bottled water.

But you had your moment.

------
Note: This is an edit of an earlier posting.

tecnorati tags: poetry, nectarines, Cezanne, fruit.

Her eyes are smoky, dark...

Her eyes are smoky, dark. It is as if clouds swirl over the moon. I see flashes of an unusually high intelligence, even across the train where I stand holding a pole swaying to the motions of gliding and stopping. She reaches down and slips a sheaf of papers into a large lawyer's briefcase that has wheels. Her ring finger is studded with diamonds that shimmer in the underground light. When she stands in her ruffled short black skirt and pressed white suit jacket, of a nylon and satin blend, she looks diminutive, her blonde hair tied back, perhaps sprayed into place, preparations of a night's intense research filling her mind. The sense of an obscuring moontide about her that originally drew my attention disappears. I see her pull herself straight; breathing confidence into her gait, she steps off the train on her way to a fierce day at court.


(Note: these little pieces started with qarrtsiluni's current short shorts, and then I read somewhere of an author who writes books sentence by sentence, spending sometimes an hour on each, but never revises afterwards, and I thought, one sentence a day, I can do that. They grow a little - it's fun.)

Sultry Dark Air

These little lyrical pieces in the first person continue (one sentence a day, I can do it, I can do it, and it expands too)... with apologies to those of you who find the heat unbearable :) I have enough of these small prose poems for a suite now and I'll try to do a reading over the weekend and post it for you.


Heat presses like a great Turkish steam bath. I lie on my back contemplating hotness; on sand yellow cotton sheets, the soft aquamarine silky nightdress a wave that partially covers me. Soaking in warmth without resistance, so unlike the rigid response to the cold Winter air when I am retracted, conserving heat. This is the season that I await, these are the nights that I await; the air thick with the steam of a sweat lodge, I sprawl open, the incalescence that pervades the air an insistent masseuse. Breathing the torridity, the loves of my life flicker like heat lightning in a slideshow of memories that reach into the past, and in the deep and fragile night, smiling, my glowing heart, my sighs join the sultry air.

technorati Profile: technorati tags: heatwave, massage, deep relaxation, healing, loves of one’s life, heat lightning, gratitude

Without a Guide

I dive. Into a moat of possibilities, primal soup of beginnings, where things are disjointed, undefined. A flux of moments not yet become time, flotsam on the edge of becoming, half-formed bits of genetic material seeking connections, a way to complete what is only dimmly begun. It is dark, watery, and things fly at me, scraps of detritus that perhaps I could make sense of if I knew the design. Do flowing magnetic waves draw disparate things into new configurations? In this place without rationality that I have so dangerously found myself in, how are things connected, and through connection, created?

technorati Profile: technorati tags: origins , shamanic journey , primal beginnings, manifesting, creativity, creation of life , becoming.