Living · Fire

Casting my mind back to when I first learned to "walk round". Letting my hips swirl around my spine, letting my body roll and move to my inner muse, and balancing that with my need to live and work in this society. This society that expects us to walk straight. Head up, destination known, never noticing the bugs beneath your feet. Never daring to feel.

Walking round is the walk of someone that enjoys the journey. It's also a walk of incredible strength, though that took me some years to find.

Some voices in the dawn chorus are old friends. The crows, the mockingbird, and the blue jay. Some are strange to me (is that a phoebe?) Some are seasonal, ducks drifting north and south in spring and fall.

But this morning, ah, this morning, I heard an old friend and one I never expected to visit in this space. It was a peacock. A peacock? How did it end up here? When I go on my walk, I will be looking for my old friend.

On my morning walk, there was actual ice laid out over the grass and trees. Glassy skeletons caught in the early morning light. I've missed seeing the bones of grass and trees this winter. Tomorrow feels like it will be spring, and I'm sure I heard a cricket this evening.

Of all the things I see on my walks, fern seed is the most magical. It is the necessary ingrediant for spells to see faeries. It doesn't exist because ferns don't have seeds, they have spores. Yet I will pause in my walks, and crouch down to view the tiny fiddleheads of a fern, as it pushes up through the ground. I will stroke the back of fern leaves, spotted and heavy with spores. Fern seed. Impossible and real.

Today is "Come as you aren't" day. Or "reveal the inner you" day. Depending.

There was a time when I planned for this day. I spent weeks finding just the right costume. It was the only time of the year that I'd wear make up or a dress. I tried "come as you aren't" day, but found much more satisfaction in dressing for "reveal the inner you" day.

A few years ago, I had a revelation. Every day could be "reveal the inner you" day for me. I started with baby steps. I weeded my wardrobe and replaced shirts, pants, and skirts with clothes that were more authentic to the real me. Now, when I dress, I don't dress for the weather or the day. I dress for who I am that day.

I've had a lot more fun.

But that leaves me with less to do for Costume day. Maybe I'll dress as a tree, with moss and butterflies in my hair.

Over the past two days, the wind has moved in.

It stirs up the domestic bushes, turning them into wild clawed monsters, scraping at the windows, trying to get in.

If you tilt your head just right while walking in the wind, you can hear the voices of lost souls. If you call out into that wind, at just the right moment, your voice will be carried with the others, through houses and dreams.

Today my afternoon walk was through caramel colored sunshine. The leaves haven't started their fire touched shades of gold and red, but already in the sky is the ragged lace of ducks flying south. And swooping and darting in the wind are the first of the migrating monarchs. If the leaves aren't glazed with autumn, they are at least sprinkled with the orange and yellow wings of butterflies, fluttering in time to an unseen breath.

When it comes to life, I'm trying to live by one simple rule. Stroke, don't rub. This simple phrase touches on many things that I want to remember. It means "don't be rough, when gentle will work". "Be gentle with yourself", "If you have to work that hard, maybe you're not doing it right", "semantics aren't just word games, they re-frame problems, ideas, and solutions, and help us deal with things with a new attitude, which leads to new understanding".

That last one may never catch on in our sound bite world, but it's the most important part of "Stroke, don't rub" to me.

Letting go of love is never easy. My skin is being flayed from heart, one piece at a time. Each shred goes with a little candle, floating down to the sea.

There's too much memory here. This bed, these curtains, this song, that book. Every day a new memory comes, and with it, comes another piece of skin.

Floating candles to the sea,
A lover's wish you gave to me
Haunted by your memory
A lover's wish you gave to me
Floating candles to the sea,

We had a lovely gift today. A lotus blossom day of spring, hidden the middle of what wants to be winter, but only succeeds in being a really cold fall. But today was warm and gentle. The grass was that gaze luring shade of green you see in Ireland.

Out walking by the pond with the geese and the pelicans and the cranes and herons, and all the other mid morning pond walkers, we were friendly, chatty and fairly bouncing with the beautiful day.

There are hints that tomorrow will be just as nice.

(Coughing from the clouds of dust that rise off the dusty journal.)

I'm still here, still alive, though obviously not reading or posting much. I need to revive some poetry in my soul, take a few walks and appreciate the sunsets and moonrises, watch the migration patterns of geese and dreams and just generally reconnect to my life.

When you're dressing for "an occasion" and you don't know what to wear, follow these three smiple rules.

1. Dress to make yourself happy
(You can't be happy with what you're wearing, no matter how great anyone else thinks it looks, if you're not happy.)
2. Dress for the occasion
(Dress thematically for the event.)
3. Dress for comfort
(Back to rule 1, really, because you can't be happy if you're uncomfortable.)

There is a golden wind this morning, full of memories of the desert of its birth. On my walk, it spins my hair of autumn leaf colored spider webs. Gossamer strands of russet and amber, twisted into Gordian knots that may require the Alexandrian solution.

Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to cut my hair again.

After the anguished fit of anger the storm displayed yesterday, she's finally settled into a quieter place. She weeps quietly now, with none of the passion of yesterday. Seagulls, come shoreward to avoid the storm, or maybe revel in it, are her sea born chorus, adding their voices to her pain. Why does she cry so? Maybe she's mourning the loss of Winter. His visits are short enough, as it is.

In the meantime, the dew of the sea growing in the front yard is flourishing in wild delight, with rain released pine scented goodness, and tiny blue flowers that capture the color of the sky (but exactly!) on a Spring morning.