Inspiration

If I had known, Oh sweetest heart of stalwart years, That you would see so well Calm forlorn seas within Teach my drowning self to float– Later learn to swim. If I had known Then my parched self would unfold Skin melting into skin And snake-like shed All I had been, rising and Risking its re-birth. If I had known When you said “enough” each night “Well done, ‘twill keep” To lost days When Sorrow held my hand That you would offer yours, Palm wide, fingers spatulate and firm. Then I’d have known To bow and blow kisses For every golden breath, Every hour your quiet gifts Of Grace and song. Beckoned as the ‘Bower Bird’ Building his Lady’s twiggy castle. Am I worthy of this altar Dazzling and flowered? Where I sit with my Best-Self, Proclaim this life out loud And wait to hear you say, “When you crack, the light comes spilling in Yes, the light comes spilling in.”

Sometimes we see our life not by how close we are to it, in it…as it were, but by moving away from the center, as in taking a vacation, or being sick, perhaps even entering the oh so foreign territory of being on our dying journey. Sometimes just the change in language reveals us to ourselves differently via uncomfortable syntax, weird rhythms and verbal structures, or the vegetation, food, and them ‘ferreign ones’ reveal our facets through unconscious, mysterious light. If we are not ‘this’ –are we ‘that’? In the absence of titles, homes, and friendly connections, what persona emerges? What happens to our sentimental, deeply personal ‘me’ when leaving the large land mass of the US of A, or are thrust into the misbegotten jungle of a hospital? The rich, imperialist voice that is an echo of every American passport, like it or not, has some bearing on how we view the world, and it sees us. When en vacance, or leaving our known body in some way, we are offered a different light, and if only because we are further away from blind observations of idiosyncratic, quotidian patterns our eyes open wider. Light seems to illuminate the small more easily than the large. Or perhaps the inconsequential becomes more notable, our cocooned lives more vibrant, simply through any change in light….we shine and shadow differently. Some of the difficulty in seeing our big, sassy, American lives is to not become judgmental, for then all chance of really observing via a new moral moonlight disappears. Seeing only our loud faults of greed and assumptive imperialism do not let us change from being only that. If we are not ‘that’ then what do we offer? Are we ‘this?’ How do we take more than smothered ashes of our grandiosity to……

I’ve tried to take down the tree on three separate occasions. I couldn’t/can’t do it. We always take the tree down the week after Christmas, as in “You’re out’a here!” This year, this tree is different. It feels like a felony to de-nude her. She continues to hold a magic that touches me/us personally, and inhabits the house, filling it with glowing warmth. We are more at her mercy than she ours. She was the first tree we ever went out and cut down. The day itself was magical, marking her birth with joy and sweet pleasure. We loved her at once, for she did-does not round out perfectly. Au contraire, she is built narrowly, like a great queen in a panniered, whalebone skirt. Despite her tiny waist of baby cones, her full hips and bosom insist she turn sideways to enter a room. She soon billowed with pearl and sapphire, diamond, and every manner of shinny crow-bait her branches could hold; ‘more is more’ perfection. There she sat holding court, through a vast chaotic flurry of friends and family coming and going. Though she held the masses magnificently, she is most beautiful in the silence of late night, or very early mornings, with just her small lights revealing her grandeur. But what now? As with any queen, when her time is up, do we finally cut off her head? Is she dismantled gently, working down to her undergarments, allowed to say her prayers, and then dismembered? Perhaps the greater honor is to burn her, sending her spirit up in smoke to tell her story to the earth. Is she then set free? Will she remember? Will it be a good death? For as she lived so must her death resonate. No careless trash pickup here. Asana: Sphinx. Lie on……

Is there anything more inviting than the first blank page of a new journal on a New Year’s morning? Such possibility spreads out before us! No messy squiggles, no regrets crossed out to mar a lovely landscape. The page, pure and hopeful lies empty, ready and wanting to soak up thought and prod creativity. I liken it to the empty mat waiting, longing for us to step onto it and begin, not knowing where it will take us. A Practice is a Practice is a Practice, be ye writer, Yogini, financier, painter, chef, gardener. We all show up to our ‘blank canvasses,’ awaiting eye, hand, tongue, and heart. When we are lucky, what calls us is an irresistible longing, an anticipation of revelation and manifestation that is hard to come by in the quotidian. Yet it requires that quotidian necessity of ‘showing up every day no matter what.’ Part of what makes a Practice inviting and …terrifying is we must be willing not only to begin fresh each time, but to plumb inner, secret spaces in new ways in order to make the invisible– visible. Yes, even a Yoga Practice. If we do it by rote, by the book, especially someone else’s book, we not only lose our edge, we eventually lose our Practice. A Practice, like the first blank page of a journal, the first day of a new cycle, an empty plot of ground, a just stretched canvas, all require not the talents of a Master, rather the magic made in the workshop of daily ‘worship’. When that magical worship combines with the courage to reveal what lies within then we have life-elixir, the true ability to change dross into gold. Asana: What is the pose that draws you onto your mat? Is there one, or two you……

‘Intimate’ from the Latin, intimare/intimus, meaning ‘inmost,’ to make known, is a word we usually associate to mean closely acquainted with someone. All well and good, but we can also be intimate, or not, to our life, our breath, our time, our death. This requires a good deal of work. Turning inward to sit still and be intimate with any aspect, any person, requires not only conscious attention, but still-listening to exactly ‘what is.’ Intimacy is becoming harder to come by. Instead of having an intimate relationship with time, we feel we are abused by it, cowed and overwhelmed by our lack of it. Would that feeling change if we were to sit in intimate conversation, face to face with time? Try it. Ask what it means to you to become intimate with your time. Do you have intimate friends? Why not? What are you unwilling to give to make that possible? Do you have an intimate relationship with Self? Do you sit in stillness, honoring your relationships, willing to hold every contrary piece of your nature in close proximity, and allow exposure? Being intimate doesn’t mean having to like all of what is exposed, connected with, or related to. Being intimate simply means we are willing to turn inward with that person, that issue, or idea. We are willing to be known to them so that we can open to one another without barriers, or subterfuge. I suspect that this new year is going to ask more intimacy of us, ask us to be more present to a life that is flying by, more aware to what is dying, more compassionate to those not willing to be intimate with their lives. Asana: Ardha Matsydrasana/Fish Pose: Lie on your back, in stillness, willing to open the heart to self, to……

Under the staggering gaze of the full moon, Her face the face I love Reveals cold weight of winter Illuminating purple snow And hills where geese wait. Her round largess at the horizon Sets off shrill squawking Silhouettes rise across her redolence. Do angels fly on such nights? Lovely as swans— white on white, Unseen, except as reflection. After the hill, the geese, the angels, We stare face to face She turns not from my scarring, The beauty-less form I shadow. Her white breath softens my face Her frozen light caresses my hair Daring me to reveal more.