Sun

There is a pause now, amidst cupcakes and tinsel, in the quiet moments when the snow falls outside small, birdseed-laden windows. I dropped in an aircraft through layers of fire clouds and saw in the snow-mist dusk below me, stretched out across the flat Minnesotan plane, a sea of orange and red lights flickering in the movement of tree boughs. These colors danced upon a field of pure, white ice as the horizon above it split into copper and bronze. Now, I sit in Columbus in the same bed that I slept in with ex-lovers, feeling an odd ache, a yearning for arms and eyes that are home, for lips and laughter that embrace the soul of me.

They are the same feeling, those of wonder and loss, desire and peace. I feel each keenly, sometimes to the point where they threaten to knock out the knees from my bone masts with rubber hammers and a fine-tooth chisel. I’m traveling an emotional pathway, coming down from that warning of impending change the gypsy winds whispered about (and its manifestation a month later) and ramping up for the start of something that is now being revealed in great swards of unfolding moments.

This is a point of reflection. The sun is but an infant. I’ve just had my birthday as well. Both of us turn outward and march forward from the womb of winter. Soon the fires will be built on the hillsides and the full orb of spring will be beckoned forth to warm the frozen ground. A journey will start for both of us, a full season of growth and change.

I talk to people about my decision points, the logic or the career changes, the money or the opportunities, moving or staying put in the city of winds. But what truly drives me and influences me is found in the aspect of this toddler Helios, the pulse of the earth, and the fabric of present moments bending infinitely upon themselves. I am lucky to carry with me again something that is very deep and certain to me, not only a knowledge of myself, but a sense of the current, the wellspring, the interface to substance, unconsciousness, and memory.

Synchronicity - long strands between people, threads woven into the background, loomed collections of both obvious and subtle momentia. It can be revealed. Its heart can be followed and listened to. It requires silence, open-mind absorption, wholistic observation and above all, belief. But it is an imperfect science. Apart from its roots in divination, its tangible substance holds with more false leads than gold, a myriad of noise and shadow whose matter seems to shift shape rapidly and veil itself almost willingly amidst layers of effect.

At times, it is alchemical, the substance of something overarching that appears at the bottom of a beaker or crucible of perception, analysis and intuition. At times, it is atmospheric, shapes and colors that blend in from a fog or bright sunlight. At times, it is religious, sudden moments of intense knowledge, almost-words, almost-language that seem clairaudient or at best exist in spaces that did not exist before. It is both of the thing and about the thing, the overpowering present and an equation of trajectory.

This is my Way. Things like this make up my world. In a time of many changes for me now, rapid changes, there is no longer energy for charades or pretence, no matter how playful or seemingly humble they may have been in the past. The sun is cresting above the steel-grey cloud wall, peeking through crevices in the mortar. There is no weight-backing that sticks to my skin and holds me in place. I am in love with my friends. I am listening and following. I am fearful and breathless, but I am engaged.

This is real, the magick that exists, the us that exists. We swing forward, slingshot into the future, cup the warm tea in our hands, inhale, center, and ride out to meet it. Recognize it in the small moments that enfold you, embrace it as you, for there is now something coming that wants to be ridden.

Back and Forward

Even though I had known all this change was coming, though I had blogged it, dreamt it, felt it, divined the pieces to figure out what was going to happen, in the true moment of it I was stunned and surprised. It laid itself out in neat rows, marched itself exactly as I was told it would, up to my door. But it seems that a certain reality and an almost inescapable likelihood are very different things.

My reactions to becoming unemployed were mixed. But again, like a handful of moments previous, I found the overwhelming emotion to be one of relief. I felt as though a great weight had been lifted from me. And though the days I traveled through from there to here were full of fear and scrabbling for a course of action and understanding, I cannot pretend that the immense relief and joy hadn’t happened first.

Even a split second of that reaction, for I cannot remember how long it lasted, is telling. It shows me that somewhere deep in my heart, I know the path I have to take and the changes that have to happen along the way. I know where I’m stuck and what things I do not have the strength, power, or control to change myself, or the things I have to wait to come into being. And when those things shift, or when those things happen, I recognize them as necessary, not just necessary, but crucial to my long-term health, happiness and creativity. I see them, somewhere deep inside, as inevitable milestones of proof that I’m on the right path. They happen, and before my emotions can enter into the picture or my logical or natal self can begin to speak, there is a separate reaction that is simply “Yes”.

It’s that “Yes” that keeps me on this path. I have no idea where it comes from and aren’t interested in finding out. Sometimes the “Yes” is longer and includes some explanation. Sometimes it is a “No”. Sometimes the inflection indicates a grim certainty, and sometimes a very gentle amusement. Sometimes it feels female and others male, or human or animal or something beyond all of those things. It’s always there in some form and comes in the first seconds of certain wishes, changes, or thoughts. And I find that, with it, my only choices are to agree with it or fight it. Wisdom for me in my life, is simply learning the value of agreement.

My body, however, seems to have other feeling about these changes. After my separation, it caused a general shutdown of all systems, leaving behind a memory blackout. After other big changes, it cut off sleep, or digestion, or bodily functions. This time, it waited a few days to really come to terms with the layoff, and then, promptly began to freak the hell out.

So, I’m writing this from my old chair, and a heating pad is plugged into the wall behind me. Whatever subconscious ooze that needs to be worked through has settled in a very common place for me, in the small of my back on my left side, right up against my sciatic nerve.

What you notice when something like that happens is well, everything. During the worst of it, I had to plan every minute movement, figure out how to twist from chairs or bend to feed the cats, how to climb out of bed or shift my foot to the gas pedal. I had to contemplate situations to make sure I had a good exit strategy before I entered into them. And I had to evaluate social occasions to see if I could manage to flow my way through them while hiding the intense spasms of pain that would run up and down my body. Each step required thought and each minute of sitting or standing required a constant state of monitoring to ensure that nothing was happening along my muscular system that might lead to an attack.

It’s exhausting and saps all concentration. I’d write, but I have to adjust my posture every few minutes, bringing me crashing back to myself and my room. I’d meditate, but sitting in one place leads quickly to pain. I notice when I have to go to the bathroom and need to plan out how exactly I’m going to maneuver myself from wherever it is I am over to it. Taking baths requires a complicated blueprint. Walking to the car requires following invisible dance step feet on the sidewalk. And at any moment, I’m ready for the spasms, which lead to the nerve twinges, which lead to inexplicable movements of my arms and legs, intakes of breath and general grunts and wide-eyed smiles.

Luckily, in Seattle, people just think I’m on heroin.

It’s been five days now, and I can finally do something other than plan out military campaigns to the kitchen. My concentration can shift from watching each muscle contract and release to, oh, anything else at all. Just in the nick of time, too. Today, I found myself trying to put my car keys into the ATM slot… rather, I found myself thinking as I was trying to jam my keys into the ATM slot, “Damn. My keys don’t work. I’ll have to have new keys made…”

Maybe it’s my body’s way of making me slow down and process fully before I get up again and begin this very large and very new chapter of my life. I don’t know. What it has reminded me of is the value of small moments, the infinite minutia that make up gestures and postures and decisions. And hopefully, it’s a lesson I can bring into 2004, and the beginning of something that I know has to begin.

A new season of Walkabout is coming, started a month ago to accompany these changes before they happened, and waiting to be launched until they do. WindWalking Arts is now a legal business entity in Washington State. So, whatever the outcome of any of this, the beginnings of it are playing out without a second of pause.

Sure, I’m very scared and uncertain, nervous and apprehensive. That fear will come and be allowed to play out as well as countless other emotions, and I will rest on my experience and my commmunity to help me deal with that. But beyond all else, all body reactions and all emotional reactions, I know that the journey is again engaged. I’m excited about it, not because I think it will lead to something better, not because I think it will lead to something freer, but because I know it will lead to something that it is leading to. And the only thing that has to be done, an effort at times, is to unkink, unfetter, and follow it.

You’ve been a good friend, Motivo, and a stubborn partner. Thank you for all your lessons.

Real with No Name

Ril Gan Ainm. The reel with no name finishes playing and shifts into Gerrard’s “Shadow Magnet”, infusing the space with a deep, fathomless goddesshood. She is gaelic or she is sanskrit or she is arabic or she is yiddish, but she is language and she is sound and she is present. The incense and sage is thick, collecting in the shadows of the high ceiling, giving the room the feel of an opium den. I stare through this at candles beyond the rim of my focus.

I’m chasing the dragon now, lollygagged and tired from long nights awake. When it comes, it is sweet and open and vast. When it struggles, it is tough going, sandals over cragged rocks and a wash of self-doubt that I let slide away with a hush and a few chosen mantras.

But it is hard. Fiction is the curse of the microcosm, with each movement and change of light, with each thought and each subtle shading, endlessly repeating the first moment of creation. Poetry is ripping pieces of your flesh from your arms to fashion a reed raft. Journaling is expelling fluids from all orifices and divining them to see patterns and meaning. And then there is Music. And then there is the fire of Anima. And creation through any of them is a series of emptying and filling that you join in a continuum, knowing well that you are only the method.

It is hard, but Sher and Chodron are here. Goldberg and Cameron are here. Stein and Garroway are here. Mickie is here. The Blonde Swedes are here. And what’s more, there is something else here, something that I have roused from a far, far place, from a time long, long ago. And this thing, and all the other things have plunged into my dreams and my memories and my perception, opening.

When I talk to myself, one cat finds me and meows, thinking that whenever the silence is broken, it must be for his benefit. Whenever I laugh, the other cat leaves the room, for she cannot stand the sound of anything she didn’t originate. And I tell them things that I’ve forgotten, things like, “Hey, did you know that when you write a scene and you want a character to cross to the other side of the room, you actually have to write that? And when you want him to sneeze and rub his broken pinkie on his nose, you have to write that too??” And they meow or they leave the room and I smudge my fingers on the keyboard and drink more coffee.

The plane falls a few hundred feet through the cloud layer, and I can hear it’s cabin pressure adjust, the downshift rumble. I feel like I have ink smudges along my cheeks and sweat stains under my arms, and nothing is ever as close as it appears to be. The books lie, drained, on the coffee table along with fetishes and deities. A second round of them wait, their fruit seeds ripe and dripping.

The engine is engaged and the dervish swirling. And for all the fear to be soothed with lovingkindness, and all the self-therapy to be reinforced, and all the balance to be watched, and all the rock outcropping to let loose of and fall into the water honu-like… it’s good again, to be in the thick of it.