Just pulled into Wales Community Park. I'd been circling around Wales looking for a forest or tree to crawl in, feeling kind of crummy and avoiding being mad at my client who had just called to tell me he was going to be a half-hour late.

There are a number of "old" subdivisions in wales. Nice big houses on big lots with old growth trees and that sort of thing. Nice houses tucked way back from the road behind a ridge of trees. Very nice.

Found a house for sale there: $425,000. I suspect I could negotiate down the $25,000. I wonder briefly where the other $400,000 will come from.

I look up and see the disk golfers-- fucking hippies-- following their frizbies around a largely un-treed savannah grassland. This isn't a park, its a wasteland.
Maybe one day it will be beautiful. Not today.

The downs I'm paying for the up I sustained last week-- and will sustain in the coming week of road travel-- are massive. And, what's frustrating about them is not that they're so painful or desperate. That the're just so goddamn apathetic. Big picture stuff wraps itself around my legs making me anxious, but little picture stuff-- the here and now-- is too easy to let go of. Too easy to not care about.

One step at a time. One more step forward. Towards the top of the mountain. Towards hope. And all that.

The clover at the park is deep green and pocked by the white flowwerheads, which bobble in the feeble breeze raking the Wales Community Park. This is not living. This is hiding. I close my laptop and head over to my client meeting. I will try very hard to be engaged and energetic with him. He will not be able to tell how morose I feel.

Tomorrow is another day.

It happens in the gutter.

May 27, 2010: 48 hours to go

Fire Friends and Fire Brothers,
Fire Sisters and Fire Lovers:

Dance!
Dance until sunrise
for it will be over
far
to
soon.

June 1, 2010

Come the next morning as you're standing in the sun
look to the west and see that the shadow is not gone. It is still there.
And ask yourself this:
Who is casting that shadow?

------
The night before:
When you were surrounded by shadows, who cast the light?
------

Walk. Dance. Sing. Serve.

*Shine*

June 1, 2010 \ Photo attribution

Drink Deep

1.

Drink deep
this amazement,
this wonder;

fill your empty places
with these drops
of love and whimsy.

Keep your heart
light by sipping
this curious amazement,
this earth.
this life.

Dance and sing.
Call and response.
Paint and play.

This wonder is yours to enjoy.

2.

When you are done, Drink again!

A wonderous delight,
such as our time together,
is meant to be enjoyed.

There are but 13 moons each year.
It may seem a lot,
but I assure you,
they go by too quick.

Let us pause between each frothing cup of joy
to apreciate how this moment came to be.
Let us will linger there--
but only for a second.

The next cup is coming fast
and you wouldn't want to miss it.

March 2010 \ Photo attribution

Eleven years again

When I walk with you again,
I hope my fresh-born heart remembers
our happy Mays and warm Septembers
spent ‘round the fire’s glowing embers.

I will walk with you again,
where the peat meets forrest’s floor.
Your heart’s the key and mine’s the door,
that we may fall in love once more.

I will walk with you, my friend.
I will walk through thick and thin.
I will find you in that place where
our re-born hearts are home again.

May 15, 2010 \ Photo by Robert Paxton

Earth: This time around

This life. This time around.
This blue-green gate of experience
is the place from where
our ancestors came and went.
It is our cradle and our casket.

This is the earth we stand upon:
We walk as creatures born of mud and dust.
We walk as creatures born as equals.
We walk in a miasma of existance, unaware of the life in which we tread. Look around!

Earth is.
Earth was.
Earth as will ever be.

We will break our mother's heart again and again
but she will take us back when we come to her.
We love her for it.

Wisdom of the earth is knoweldge incarnate, built of beauty, bone, peat and power.
On Earth, my friend, your virtue is reborn.

Jan. 25, 2010 \ Read it on Scribd \ Photo attribution

Lady Crow visits and shivers

Smelling of oil and spilled road salt, Lady Crow takes a short rest on the barren tree that grows along the shoreline. She shakes and preens. She puffs and combs her feathers. She looks to the white sky and sighs; it is a cold day and the promise of spring flickers only slightly on the horizon. It will be colder before it is warm again.

With a stretch of her wings she floats away from the winter wind by becoming part of it.

  Pearls of snow flutter down from her perch, their journey a short-lived legacy of her visit. They sparkle as they fall.

Jan. 10, 2010 \ Read it on Scribd \ Photo attribution

Celebration of a certain group of friends, many of whom I am yet to meet.

Labor Day:

A group of strangers, focused and with intentions clear, sets fire to themselves.
Through pain and celebration, they are unified and reborn.
Reset by divine experience, they wobble across the peat and set to returning to the world.

And it is not the same.

As they tear down their village, they are not yet aware that the world around them has changed as well.
A snap. A crack. A puff. And a smolder.
They are strangers no more.

I am searching for another chance at that experience.
Can you bring the fire home? Are you even supposed to?
Or, is there a larger, less personal, purpose to it all.
The answer, my newest friend, may be yes.

Walk with me, and we’ll find out.

Jan. 5, 2010 \ Read it on Scribd \ Photo attribution