homecoming

Sun sets,

new day

old things

drift away.

Past faces behind time's door.

Washed from the shore

Wind heals old ways

Hope always stays.

I want to plant a thousand trees

and dance across the sand.

leaving lines where my body stands

leaving song in the breath of the land.

Sky's movement in my eyes

playing with time.

I've found strangers

to be kind.

Tying up my loose ends

in the breeze,

love and nature's

trust in ease.

I've been dreaming of many paths, greeting many faces, seeing many trees, falling in love under many moons, wrapping up in blankets, drawing, doing dishes, planning, sweating in the sun, working with plants, learning, creating, self-criticising, self loving, being very afraid, being strong, moving my body, noticing synchronicities, supporting friends, reaching out, reaching in, stroking a fawn, drinking water, having ideas, communicating, listening, understanding, trying to understand more, being confused, being impatient, longing, panicking, and searching.
 but most of all.. expanding.
♡

we are transported
to a phosphorescent dreamland
dipped in leaf blood, resin streaked on our faces
moving clockwise round some otherworldly flame drummed out of the stones by the ancient tapping of civilisations past
intoxication of the feet and bones
colourful storms in our heads
we slip into a place without Time
and there we rest our weary souls through ecstatic movement.
∞

life and the dying

today I went to send some love and healing to one of the largest trees in the local park, the one that I heard by word of mouth that the council have decided to cut down. the beautiful, powerful oak tree, hundreds of years old, is slowly decaying from the inside and is a safety risk, which is completely fair enough. but I wanted to send it some love to help it along. it has been partially severed and must be in a strange state of limbo, i thought.

the tree before any cutting.

So I went to this enormous tree and planned on connecting with its energy with my back to its trunk, spending some time in a sort of embrace, skin to skin. when I got there i felt that its energy was telling my instinct not to go that close to it. some sort of distressed feeling entered my gut. so instead I sat on the grass a few meters away and gazed intently.

i wondered if the tree knew it had been partially cut away - if that was the explanation for the sort of hostility i felt. i thought of how the trees have a sort of instinctual knowledge of when their time comes to shed the leaves of green in the autumn time. the sap begins to flow down and the tree has let go already. the same wise acceptance of a death that happens year after year. the graceful ease into this.

but this tree was coming to an end in a way more permanent. the final turning of the wheel. and i wondered if it knows that. if it can sense that this autumn's descent will be its last.
did he feel his arms being cut off one by one, a harsh knowledge forced into its bark?
did he know this earlier, when he started decaying?

work being done on the tree.


the weight of this was pulling me into the roots in the ground when i noticed a grey squirrel poke its head out from behind a branch to stare at me.
the squirrel scurried all around the tree, its tail moving like a feather duster out of control. it was so alive. it leapt from branch to branch, staring, running, jumping, frenzying all over the place. shards of acorn shell fluttered down from the tall branches and landed not ten inches away from me - scraps of its dinner.

how life and death can hold hands.
i thought of the squirrel and how it would lose its home. how it would find another in the same day. how the squirrel draws nutrients from this tree that is about to die, and one day the squirrel too would die and decay and perhaps nourish the ground the tree was rooted into. the yin and yang. inhale and exhale. give and receive. live and die.

as i was about to leave i sat in a brief metta meditation for the tree. "may you be happy. may you be healthy. may you be safe. may you live with ease." 
i reconsidered this. sent a new blessing. may you die with ease. 
yes. may all the dying, die with ease. x

lingering seas

let's sing and dance in the ocean of vibrations.

it's just outside the door and heating up the hearth. it's beating in our blood and swimming in our little mouths. bristling on our skin and playing in the sunlit strands of hair.

let's go and write a story about the humans who trekked for 40 days and 40 nights to find the boat that sailed them to the island of Belonging. we can find their bones in the rockpools at the beach and an eyelash or two in the lichen. 

let's paint a sunrise on the door and press our bodies up against the wood. it is the skin of our sisters after all.

i am just a human unsure of my place and trying to climb the ivy up the wall. with a war against the pockets of mind we have not conquered yet. the places we cannot see properly, but sit heavy behind our eyes.

but i know some places where stars are like dewdrops and the forest floor made us ballgowns. there are tiny wheels of cosmic delight and indigo stains paint themselves into the places the sunlight doesn't sit. butterflies and birds. and those without flight. weaving our roots to the earth while our heads play in miniature galaxies with the winged ones.

and we can feel ourselves held in the synergy and are blessed.

community

"Our community should involve long dead poets, sharks teeth, the heavy frost on a Scottish glen, the erotic trim of a Bedouin tent." - Martin Shaw

How does your personal community of sights, sounds, words, artists, thoughts, inspirations, designs, shape your life? How do they reach inside you and pull your favourite parts of yourself up to the surface to bloom? 

Magnificent, dream-provoking, breath-borrowing art by Amanda Clark. Paintings to make you reach for the part of yourself up there symphonizing with the moon.

(photo is not mine)

you know when something is so magnificent

that you see it, and your whole body and heart aches with its beauty

and you can't stop being lulled into its dream and can't take your eyes off it,

no matter how hard you try?

that was the moon tonight