Juxtapositioning

Rhythm

There is a sweet spot somewhere and I mean to find it. Not that I haven’t been enjoying the exquisite contrast between hyper-aliveness and the seeming vacuum created when not in that state, but somewhere along that spectrum is a place of balance. I suspect a rhythm may emerge, an expression of the juxtaposition of longing, desire and logistics, but it hasn’t happened yet. It may never, not to my complete satisfaction. Instead I [try to, sometimes grudgingly maybe] content myself with looking for the patterns of rhythm that are already evident. Yes, I have a thing for patterns. And noticing. Yay me.

Here’s one:

input input input input input input input input input input magic input input input input input input input input input input input input input input input input magic input input input input input input input input input input magic process process process process process process process write write write write write write

Here’s another:

in in in in in out in in in in in in out out in in in in in in in in out in in out out out in in

The rhythm I seek lies deep within, a resonant ba dum ba dum ba dum ba dum, wild ancestral tones that echo within my cells. I am unwinding the near past, throwing off the shroud and drinking deep gulps of aliveness, becoming bigger and more fearsome with each wilding breath. This is where the rhythm lives, untouched by time constraints or propriety, peacefully co-existing with desire, community, and the inner workings of my cells. This rhythm bubbles up to the surface at times, escaping in joyful exuberance, then sinking down again as my fears and self-imposed structures take hold again.

One day I might release them. One day I might live within the drumbeat heart rhythm. One day I might simply BE, rather than impose my will on things. One day I might float with the rhythm.

Crossing

I’m on a bridge. It spans the Here and the There. The Where I have been and the Where I am going. The There, in my mind, soul and heart, has a look and feel that is palpable. Yet I am also open to manifestations of the entire laundry list of supplications-to-the-Universe that apparently I have been compiling — for years and maybe since even before that — that I can’t yet get a feel for. And that’s okay. The bridge is here and I am on it. Crossing over, slowly sometimes, perhaps even too slowly at times for my Impatient Self Who Feels the Future, but crossing. One breath, one heartbeat, one long lingering kiss at a time. Crossing into the What Comes Next.

They say that it is not the destination that is important in our experience but the journey in getting there. If that is the case, and I have no reason yet to believe it is not, then I am going to have a magical crossing indeed.

There was a time when I forced such things. Charged at them like a rhinoceros, squeezing them into being with my Vulcan Mind Meld Superpowers of Creation. Scaring the living daylights out of them, maybe. In my exuberance, my wild abandon, uncreating the very thing I thought I wanted. Ah, irony. This time, the crossing is slower, sweeter. More to savor. More opportunity to check in, reflect, and enjoy. More to expand into. Just … more.

Perfect magic

There is a boundary between the worlds. I know, because I have been there. Crossed it. Danced at its edge. Sang it songs. Breathed in the fire.

Approaching magic can be a little like approaching a wild animal. Breathe too quickly, too loudly, and it coyly disappears into the mists, trailing its song behind it. But if you’re too wary, too uncertain, too unlike yourself, it vanishes entirely. Approaching magic has to be done with, well, magic. Magic attracts magic.

1 + 1 = 3.

I know all this because I have been there. The wet wild woods of the Olympic Peninsula enveloped me in its embrace, leaving me gasping with shared delight. Mountain and forest gave way to wood-strewn pebbly beach and then ocean: a vast plain of undulating waters marked by towering tree-topped sea cliffs and rocks that jutted jaggedly into the enfolding, flowing wet of the waves.

For three days we breathed. In and in. We sipped red wine and talked about everything — all that mattered — in front of the fire while the endless surf pounded outside. We walked down the beach in the cold winter wind and stood watching a pair of sea lions playing in the cove at the far end. I imagined they were lovers. We ate and laughed and played. We discovered and delighted. We drank in the essence of our creation.

Shh, I have a secret: my lover is magic.

I am being courted by magic. I first knew this as a child when I immersed myself in worlds drawn with words, my rainy autumn Saturdays spent in the company of cats and paperbacks. I have felt magic in the closing of a door, a seemingly random event that exploded my reality, knowing at once that forever the world — my world — had changed in that one moment, and that everything to follow would be different as a result. I have felt magic in my breath, my disintegration, my transcendence. I have made magic for others, long years spent creating worlds that others could walk in. Fly in. I have loved magic since I learned what breathing was. I have chosen to live in a world where it exists, and magic loves me back, just as passionately, just as perfectly.

1 + 1 = 3.

Odyssey

It’s a cruel blow to find out that you’ve been hiding something from yourself, perhaps for years, and that you have — intentionally, mind you — set up minefields, mazes and mirrors in order to avoid getting to the bottom of the whatever-it-is that eludes you. Not that any of this is a surprise, but I am just good enough at what I do, just skilled enough at self-discovery, to trick myself into thinking I have Done Good Work and as a result, veer off course from going deeper into what lies beneath.

A lot of the anger I feel as a result — TRICKED! — is at myself.

Self, you suck. Self, you are too good at what you do. Self, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?

I know that this is all about self-preservation. I get that. There is a layer waiting there that scares the bejesus out of me. And dammit, no one — NO ONE — is allowed to see it. Least of all me. But I have to say, I am tired of the charade. Am tired of expending what probably amounts to 90% of my energy maintaining this facade. Am tired, just tired. Can see through the mists, a little, just enough to want more.

There is a light.

I keep using the cliff metaphor — standing on a precipice, waiting to jump or fly into the unknown-but-awesome — and it totally works here. Here I am, again, at the edge of the unknown. It scares me. It beckons me. There is a promise that OH MY GOD this will be better than anything else (so far) has ever been. I know all this without a doubt. I know it and my feet keep inching forward. My heart says yes, yes, a million times yes.

I speak in metaphors. You understand that, right? I code my words here because it amuses the hell out of me to do so. I love how words slide around in their juices, warmly, wetly. Words like kisses. Words like caresses. Words like forgotten rainbows behind rain-soaked skies.

This is a time of creation, of birth. I can feel that, and I feel the life that pulsates under the moist mossy trees, neolithic ferns and flowing volcanic rocks of my twilight world. There is life beneath my feet, life within my veins, life in the drumbeat of my heart. The ancient songs call to me, calling in a song of creation. What comes next sets the scene for much to come.

Waking from the dream, breathing into being.

Arboretum

Fingers intertwined. Scent of winter-flowering trees. Bare expectant branches, contrasted against a muted backdrop. Verdant aliveness, sap running within, hearts beating in warm repose. Cloudburst-sated, yet wanting more, more, until waterfalls crested over mossy hillsides and the emerald turf drank a thousand years of delight.

Things I love: perspective, the unexpected, golden afternoon light, lush wetness, the way colors pop on a muted overcast day.

Seattle Arboretum view brought to you by serendipity, a romantic sensibility, and Hipstamatic, the second coolest app on my iPhone.

Happenstance

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along. ~ Rumi

I can’t help but smile inwardly every time I consider how perfect the universe is. In my world, anyway. I think back over years of experiences — some horrifically painful, some seemingly meaningless, some amazingly wonderful, and some that I can’t recall at all — and see the inexorable progression that has marched me right up to this moment. This moment, as I am writing and you are reading. The whole thing makes me laugh. Why did I make the choices that I did? To lead me to Now. Why did I have the reactions in each moment that I had? To lead me to Now. Why did I love, cry, dream, write, and breathe the way I did? To lead me to Now.

And Now is pretty damn good. I can’t wait for the movie.

Raw

There are times when, despite sometimes thinking I know everything, I find myself floating in formless space, knowing nothing, not even the breath that fills the in-between spaces inside the yawning cavernous deep of my soul.

Today — yesterday for the purists — was one of those days. Balancing normalcy with utter terror. Feeling — no, KNOWING — that despite anything to the contrary in the moment, everything would again change in a heartbeat, a breath, a day, a fluid flow into the yet-unknown we collectively label “the future.” And doing nothing more than the next thing.

Is that all there is?

In times past, when feeling this way, I’ve counseled others to start with the smallest piece. Breathing. Feet reaching deeply into the warm Earth below us. Dancing to a primal beat. But tonight, tonight, I am too weary, too exposed, too uncertain to do anything but wish to be held.

Exponential

I am poised, yet again, at the edge of something magical. Unbearably exquisite. Scary as hell. It’s not as if I was hurtling uncontrollably towards a certainty, and yet … perhaps I am. Have the stars aligned to bring something to fruition now that was perhaps begun years ago while my attention was elsewhere? Is there a way to tell?

All I can tell you is that on a regular basis, I am slipping through the veil into a beautiful new world beyond. Over and over and over, reaching new levels, new heights, feeling deliciously grateful each time for the new shared space, moving into that space seamlessly, joyfully. Over and over, deeper, farther. Exponential, amazing new worlds.

Tonight I walked a long time in the falling snow, reveling in the stillness that surrounded me. Off in the distance, closer to the bay, a muffled joyful snowplay shout, but on my block there was total quiet. I felt soft flakes brush my face with tenderness. I felt the decadent softness of sheepskin on my warm, bare feet, crunching virgin steps on five fresh inches of white. I heard the snow falling on my head, my hair. I watched the shadows of falling snow in the pool of brightness under a street light.

Up ahead, letters trod in the fresh unbroken expanse in the street: I ♥ U KITTY FUZZ. A sign? When I got home I shook half an hour of snow off my jacket, revealing a single white feather under the accumulation. A sign.

I know the third sign is around here somewhere. I can feel it. My eyes and heart are wide open.

PS Happy new year

Once upon a time I rang in the new year in a bubble under the Space Needle, fireworks shooting overhead and onto my lips, warmed inside — despite the cold — by the promise of All That Could Be. It was absolutely lovely and absolutely perfect for the start of what I believe will be a wonderful year on so many levels. I am still in that magical place and hope to remain there a good long time. The end.

Naked tarot

I frequently work with a portion of the Tarot deck to seek clarity or perspective on situations. For years I rather pointedly ignored Tarot, thinking that using it was 1) weird and woo woo (yes I see the irony in that, thanks), and 2) too complicated for my wee brain to comprehend, because after all it would require Memorization and Effort, and maybe I was feeling a wee bit sorry for myself and also lazy. But whatever. A friend turned me onto the lazy-ass method of Tarot, which involves the Major Arcana, 22 cards instead of an entire deck. Oh, and also intuition. Which I can totally get behind. So.

Tonight I decided to draw a card and then blog about it. Whatever it turned out to be. Disaster? Who knows. I asked only to be shown something about the present-moment state of a situation that has emerged in my life. When I asked about it in the past I drew fun happy cards like The World, The Sun, and The Lovers, all cards that show promise and auspiciousness, at least in my reality. I hadn’t drawn a card on this in, oh, weeks, trusting instead in the richness of my internal indicators (and there are many). How are things looking now? (as if my internal experience was null and blank on this, which it most certainly is not and in fact is filled with exquisite wonderfulness.)

The Tower.

Oh god.

This is the card I dread drawing in any circumstance. Look at it! Mine depicts a bleak grey stone tower beset by lightning. The top of the tower is engulfed in flames and people are jumping to their deaths on the rocks and roiling waves below. It’s a medieval 9/11. Not a happy sight. Pit-of-my-stomach uh-oh’s.

But wait! The Tower can mean a lot of things. Let’s look at this.

Epiphanies, transcendental states of consciousness, and Kundalini experiences Sounds like my kind of stuff. Not bad. Go on…

The Tower further symbolizes that moment in trance in which the mind actually changes the direction of the force of attention from alpha condition (pointed mindward) to theta condition (pointed imaginal stageward). A Theta condition (especially in waking versions of theta states) is that moment when information coming into the ego-mind overwhelms external or sensory stimuli, resulting in what might otherwise be called a “vision” or “hallucination.” Well then. I have those all the time. No problem.

But what does it MEEAAAAN? I thought things were pretty awesome. Is there something coming up? Not that I base life decisions on cards or anything, but it’s nice to have a heads-up if there is one available.

I decided to draw three more cards that would give clarity on The Tower’s meaning in this instance.

Justice.

I also haven’t liked this card much. Bah, judging. Right? But let’s investigate.

Justice, in many Tarot representations, is Athena. I like Athena. Warrior Princess. Gets shit done. Sexy beeyotch. Maat was a goddess of justice in Egypt. Okay, cool. When Justice appears in a throw, it usually signals that some injustice needs righting, that something in the world is dangerously out of balance. It is important, however, to be aware that most things in the exterior world that you perceive are in fact an externalization of some interior process or conflict. Hmm, okay, the wheels are turning here. How does this apply to me, exactly?

Temperance.

Judging? Temperance is all ABOUT judging. Related also to Maat, like Justice. Hmm. Temperance represents the unconscious, which can guide us to a deeper understanding of ourselves. It represents the unification of the external and internal, conscious and unconscious, realms. Under these approaches, when Temperance appears, it is a warning or invitation to be prepared for a confrontation with the deepest questions of who we are, who we think we are, and who we will become. I’ve been saying for a few days that the energy of this week is all about determining who and how to be. Coincidence? I think not!  At any rate, after feeling into this card I had relaxed considerably. We’re showing movement here. Movement is good. It’s internal, yeah, but that’s okay. That’s how life works a good part of the time.

The Empress.

For awhile I related highly to this card, thinking of it as a representation of myself. Not as the Mother but as a creator. Lately, not as much, but it’s a powerful card nonetheless. She can represent the creation of life, of romance, of art or business. The Empress is often associated with Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love. The Empress may also represent the Object of Desire; most obviously, the love of the beloved. Nice. Okay.

I think I’m getting the picture here. The Tower is change, structures turning from false to real and tumbling down. Justice says this has to do with a perceived injustice, one that has arisen as a construct of an internal process. Temperance says the process will help create a deeper self understanding, and The Empress says it will all be okay, that it’s part of the creation process, and that yeah, it has to do with love. So yay.