Sparkling Lotus Ink

yellow flower allies .1

This month the Dive is working with the SL golden crocus essence.  I just realized (I make them up for the group and one of the captains gets them about a week ahead of distribution time) I never got around to making a bottle for myself.  This will be changed within a 24 hour window!  This is a wonderfully illuminating and protective psychic and neuro-processing incubator of inner/cosmic Source energy.  Just writing and thinking about the flower's healing signature allows me to breathe more deeply and fully. 

The remedy was selected because everyone involved had a strong arc of spiritual expectation.  Crocus essence supports new growth/first birth/re-birth/re-generation of our soul's individual connection to Spirit.  This is the context in which I'm most familiar with the essence but I'm told there seems to be a gentle emboldening agent present as well.  Think this makes sense.  Solar energy may be fine tuning its frequency to a new level of Highest Good.  Maybe the pragmatic choices we're making and our 'ordinary' creative/gardening activities are holding us at a comparably higher frequency.  This is what innumerable prophecies (especially known to me by way of the Mayan flower based prophecies...) and channeled Ascendants have long suggested. 

sidenote:  the colony above grew in the original Sparkling Lotus garden - so self-named when I committed to co-creating in my modest array of garden beds in a high traffic suburban neighborhood. 

the golden crocus essence was co-created from the colony featured above, two spring seasons into the future - '07.  It's one of my favorites of all time as well as the crown jewel of that first extra special season of co-creative learning and deepening fascination/commitment.  Sometimes I have to put the essence away for a few years because I really do lean all the way into it.  Sequestration is my ingrained comfort zone ...

Since I forgot about the golden crocus connection I've spent the past week working with a Giant Hypercium I co-created last summer.  This was an auspicious essence prepared for someone who really resonated with the idea as soon as I offered.  We are close enough intuitively that I felt the flower's ultra-protective healing energy curling filaments of relief and illumination as soon as the offer was accepted.  The plant itself grows by the base of the porch.  It tends to bloom during the hot droughty portion of the summer.  I go out early in the morning to water the plant directly at the base.  It's not what's recommended but it keeps the flowers from frying.  I ... have trouble bearing witness to that as long as water's plentiful enough to supply.

I find it interesting that a flower with a healing signature that's an across-the-board master healer-illuminator-protective agent is so delicate and swift to die so dramatically if the sun's too strong and hot.  I like working with this Giant version because I feel it at the earthstar level as well.  Think I will recommend as an Awakener for people who aren't sure if they're getting the EarthStar hook-in point.

Classic field/indigenous St. Johnswort is a staple in most established commercial and well-stocked DIY flower essence repertory.  I love that it grows wild in our field and that others have come to gather the flowers for drying/magical purposes as well as with therapeutic or energetic intentions.  Not so many this year - three.  At first I was sad.  On top of so much permanent loss - to feel distinctly deprived of casual and usually taken for granted social exchanges in the field or studio.    But then I was grateful.   Rarely did we interact directly.   I kept track of extremely care-full and light footed human traffic by monitoring the way the St Johnswort flower clusters changed from a dusk inspection to early morning to later afternoon. 

A certain truck I knew by ear and then would scamper to see what small unobtrusive carefully built rock formation I might find.   Some I didn't find until absolutely everything appeared to have died back.    Nearly everyone I know locally gathers the flowers to make therapeutic oil and most are quite upfront that they dry the flowers for ritual use as well.  I like gaining understanding of how this aspect of herbalism weaves itself rather casually person to person.  One friend confessed she didn't know why she did it.  She simply liked keeping them in a brandy snifter with other dried yellow flowers she kept there throughout the season. 

I said to her:  that's why you do it!  It's your dark months' eternal sunshine!  Now I do it too.  I also  like include yellow topaz and small unravelling scraps of yellow silk and/or coarse linen.

The most popular blend in the SL repertory is called Mellow Yellow.  This is the co-creation bowl set at the edge of my dedicated essence garden at the top of a hillside orchard.  Summer of '05.  I have written out  the first few bars of the story here.  Some seeds were sown with the explicit understanding that they'd give their flowers to an essence bowl rather than setting seed.  This was the case with the Moon and Stars melon flowers in this bowl.  For creative illumination and prolific growth.  There's also a pumpkin flower for deepening and illuminating a more intentional energetic footprint.  Lots of yellow marigolds for smoothing and adjusting electrical energy flow.  Marigolds of any kind serve as a kind of psychic and electrical recalibration tool.  Times when we don't feel like ourselves, can't get comfortable in our own skin.  understand we need to experience what we're experiencing BUT.  All of that can be eased via French Marigold's energetic signature.

There are yellow nasturtiums for revitalizing depleted/overtaxed neural passageways.  Lots of tiny yellow wood sorrel blooms for sharing quiet and prolific radiance among kindred souls and spirits.  Promotes awareness and appreciation of the small and innumerable private treasures our days can hold once we gear ourselves to noticing them.  Tomato flowers offer deep cleansing to our entire energetic system.  Like all nightshade healing signatures - the Tomato spirit confers great levels of personal agency in terms of what we consciously 'allow'.  My experiences of personal and observation natures suggest it will then take things just a couple of degrees past that point.  Enough to be noticed but not enough to automatically shut it down especially when blended and mellowed with so many other healing and illumination signatures.

Yellow snapdragons to both loosen bite-back TMJ issues and concurrently re-calibrate ingrained certainty a sharp tongue is the quickest way to getting an answer/establishing pecking order/etc.  There are also a few volunteered Evening Primrose flowers in the bottom of the bowl.  This healing signature is established as a go-to for Mother Issues in a number of repertories.  I've found it invaluable for myself and others in helping to breaking up and dissolving deeply impacted layers of unclaimed or unexamined shame. It's really good for seemingly unresolved disconnect from Mother which I tend to interpret on broader terms of the absence of direct Gaia-Mama contact in many woman's lives.

I kept meeting such women in an online context during the summer I was co-creating this essence blend

I grew these zucchinis explicitly for the flowers although, being zucchinis, I also harvested food.  Zucchini is the energetic equivalent of a self-care afternoon - whatever that might mean at an individual level.  For me it usually means time off the clock - and enough of it to authentically drift.  What the teenage version of my son used to call a non-day.  Molly Sheehan used to say the essence was the equivalent of a day home in your pajamas.  So it's really nice for people who give care or other forms of healing/leading/teaching as an ongoing part of life.  Also wonderful for parents of young children or spousal caregivers who need to get the verve for the extra miles they must travel in unusual and creative ways.

there are a lot of yellow flowers set aside for this chakra as I spent the upper part of two hours this morning going through photo archives pulling out everything I could find along the way.  So amazing  - the ongoing flower strewn path through my life ...

 

Happy Birthday, Calendar Year!

[Most images are from a yellow/orange/gold color collection journal.  The yellow stenciled flower lives in my informal botanical moly.  Flower bowl is from last spring.]

Here we are - at long last beyond 2020 if only in the most literal of senses.   For me it will always be known as the year my face echoed profound grief as well as the usual aging laws of gravity.  This year will stay on and in my face forever I'm alive.  It will also stay in my heart.  I've had so many personally wonderful and deeply loving experiences this year with humans and many other species.  I've felt connected to All That Is as never before.  I've cried enough to make up for all the years I did no such thing.  I've also laughed so hard my abs ached for days afterwards.  In fact I've spent entire days laughing and in the long run that's a very Yellow thing.

On new year's day - as well as my birthday - I love the ceremony of spending time doing things I love and want to incorporate throughout the year.  It's really nice to weave this into all the other doings (or vegetating) of the day.  I thought I'd share my plans for this particular New Years:

J and I skipped drawing night this week because I fell asleep for a long unplanned nap and didn't wake up until he was coming to bed.  Sometime today we'll draw together because it's adding a lot of value and authentic bonding to our lives.

Ditto to all of the above concerning the stir fry that didn't happen last night due to another nap.  We want to continue preparing more meals together as well as separately while sharing the prep space and conversating about all manner of things.

More personally:

Create posts on the first day of the month as the colors change. 

Sort my seeds properly.  Am inspired by Deb Gorr and her doing hers a long time ago but I only noticed the comment yesterday. It will signify ongoing gardening activities.  The actual sorting may take me a few days to complete so I also need a space of time to stitch something.  Even if I only manage a single modest row of kantha stitches a day.  I need to get this activity back into my life on the regular.

Communicate with various kindred souls in some way.  Send an email or three to friends who've been in touch over the last week or so.  Tend to the present tense, in other words, as it relates to my life in 3-d reality.  As opposed to my life sitting where I'm sitting right now typing on a laptop. 

Closely connected:  I already put in two plus hours tending to my fictionland goal posts.  Now we're officially in the On The Clock period when I said I'd be done with a solid draft to send a particular somebody.  I said that would happen at the end of the calendar year 2021.  Now here I am on day one.  Am aware I'm inclined to automatically put myself on some kind of success-failure continuum conveyor belt that's, at best, an unnecessary distraction from immersing in the goal itself. 

Time spent staring into space doing absolutely nothing.

Loving on the houseplants.

Painting if only for 15 minutes.  Done.

Also need and want to go outside.  Have been dealing with a lot of neuro disarray of late and then got into this thing where i didn't want to "hold J back" when he was planning to be outside doing stuff or vigorously completing his repetitive trails rounds for exercise purposes.  Am aware all I'd have to do is ask.  Didn't feel like asking because I didn't want to feel any more vulnerable than I already did due to a few forms of neuro-disruption.

solar issues, yeah?

So today I'll speak up and ask.  Putting it into the mainframe as more of a thing I will do.  Think my mantra for the month is going to be:

vulnerability rebuilds strength.

Orange Summation

    
This is a post of reflection woven with my final week's sacral themes: Synchronicity & Co-creation.

On a personal level that synchs-in well with the end-of-water-cycle song I've always intended to post as a listen only '20 remaster of Uncle John's Band.  What else could I possibly pick?  A song that gives me shivers of happiness and knew-so-many-people--from-before glad tidings each and every time I hear it.

***

We're currently abiding in the energy of a Cancerian full moon with its peak expression most likely happening today or early tomorrow depending where you live and how vibe-sensitive you are.  My feelings about water-sign full moons are mixed.   For one thing they bring up so much intensity of feeling, memory, and intuition that my various fire aspects more or less leave the building in order to the preserve their essence.  I never enjoy those times.  Without my fire/solar energy I'm never quite sure who I am.

example:  I once went into a local apothecary on a nothing-but-water day.  It was near the end of the third (solar) month of my first self-guided chakra intensive experience.  One of my biggest illuminations from that experience occurred when I realized I had no idea who I was on the inside.  I knew what I did.  I knew what I was good (and for that matter bad) at.  I knew where I'd been and where I wanted to go but I didn't know who I was at the most pivotal and entirely solar center of my own self-awareness.  I didn't have any sense of that energetic wheel at all.

[blue is the sacral center's cool-down color.  This can be hard for people who don't really "do" deep water energy work very comfortably or at all IF they happen to associate blue with Water rather than Sky.  I had that problem for a while with a strong glowing red sense of connection to my root chakra.  Red to me was fire and hence I could never seem to get 'grounded' vibes from it so much as rapaciousness.

Three different people have asked me about this blue/water /how-can-that-possibly-help-me-dry-out conundrum.  And much as I've chafed over hearing this answer myself it's the truest truth.  Just in case there are others:  You have to concentrate.  You have to be willing to accept that in the beginning your concentration might not seem to be produce anything you can recognize - or anything at all.  You have to be okay with that and remain open to nothing happening.  This "failure" is quite likely to re-assert itself as an out of the blue insight or inspiration that seems to present itself in an immediate and wholecloth way.   Be open to the appearance of  BLUE color ray energy appearing of its own accord to cool excess orangeness and/or to emphasize something that seems to emerge spontaneously at the speech and/or vision energy centers.  This may happen in synch with the Dive or at a future point - most likely when you least expect it.]

***

Montana Blue Centaurea, pictured above, makes a wonderful flower essence most usually associated with the head chakras.  But look at the feathery petals.  Imagine gently dropping the womb-center's energy into a bed of such magnificence.  I find it's really invaluable for stabilizing and clarifying the sacral energetics of intuition.  The more powerful it feels the more I seek to counterbalance that with some ongoing degree of head-based Vision clarity.  Montana Blue and Italian Alkanet are equally amazing for this kind of crystalline back-up. 

***

 At the time of my first (self and book guided) chakra intensive experience back in my late 30's I 'thought I'd done something wrong' or otherwise misguided.  So I went into the store seeking advice on how to gain a sense of who I was.  This upset the store owner who refused to accept the reality of me on a no-fire day.  (she was an aries and we related to each other in a distinctly aries kinda way...)  Just would not accept it and so there were tears profound enough to convince her - okay, this person I in no way perceive as having this type of problem is having it nonetheless.  

She went to her healer's strengths as well as her pendulum while I told her I needed something to help me know how I to get all the links in my energy chain lit and linked up as an ongoing thing.  We settled on a specific tarot deck and Sweetgrass flower essence.  Taking it led me to "suddenly" think or imagine four different ways I already was connected to my entire column as well as my full self but had simply/not-so-simply forgotten how to utilize the power/personal responsibility of turning the lights from bright to dim.  The problem had been my hyper-specific notions of how I was "supposed" to be doing and feeling things. 

[California Poppy holds so much healing for our species.  The entire plant containing all its phases of seed pods, flowers and buds, and roots can be tinctured for a very effective pain relieving agent.  I like adding three parts California Poppy to one part dried lavender buds previously whizzed through a blender.  Although I usually chop and grind to maximize surface area - the first time I work with a plant for tincturing purposes, I always ask the plant's primary/largest plant colony ahead of gathering - which would you prefer in order to help me and together help others? CaliPop always wants to remain intact for me.  At least so far.

I work with California Poppy flower essence a lot and for many reasons.  Primarily I take it in combination Green Bells of Ireland.  Year before (almost) last I was guided by both flower medicine spirits in a series of dreams and meditations.  They wanted - as in REALLY wanted - a small plot in the field garden where they could grow and commune together specifically to combine in an essence.  I promptly ordered the necessary seeds and buzzed with anticipation.  will tell the whole story - picking up at this point when we're deeper into the Solar region of Everything.

P.S.  the two flowers pictured above were part of the essence bowl's contents.]

***

A few days ago we had prodigious rainfall.  This caused several types of shifted consciousness.  For one thing the precipitation and 8 inches of snow melt runoff caused a true watershed's worth of water to barrel through the edge of our property more or less within the stream bed.  In some places it broached the bed and spring run-off grooves long established.  I stood at the glass doors in J's office and quite suddenly understood why this specific perspective leaves him at times preoccupied with flooding potential.  Always thought it was a dimensional skew based on what I see from the much higher back window in the studio.  And it is, but on my end. 

As I stood watching from the studio stairs I opened the window so I could also hear the water running while the rain pounded in the stream and everywhere else. It sounded without exaggeration as loud as the spontaneous waterfalls that formed following flash-flooding just above the tree-line in Yosemite on an afternoon in late August when my son and I were there.  Also, as I stood listening from the safety of Inside, I felt in my body the way I've felt on a trail ride when the horses go all horse-like one right after the other with a ripple of Horse Expression that could mean nothing or everything.  It was exhilarating and I took it in as a fitting end to this month of sacral challenge, deliverance, and ongoing illumination. 

J took a short film from the center of the bridge just past noon when everything was at its peak level of water-based mayhem and chaos.  I waited two more days and didn't go out to the same spot until yesterday morning.  By then the water had receded and slowed itself a good bit.  Took some pictures of the ice and water.  Walked in the woods just a little to see portions of what J describes based on his daily repetitive loop.  The path out to the field is deep muck.  I need to coordinate mental incentive with physical willingness to leave the sacral womb-feeling of my studio space because the field will be even deeper muck. 

as we get ready to move towards the yellow/solar center I'm thinking alot about cauldrons.  Fire forging a cauldron of some kind from earth-metals or very thick clay.   the cauldron holding whatever water/sacral energy we may need for continuing.

Namaste

...and there was light...

                         
Sunlight emerged so as to stay shortly after J and I spent the lunch hour roaming through the house rattling-out pockets of static energy, congealed emotional residue, and stray trails of darkness wherever we felt it to be.

J had his deer horn rattle and I brought these two cherished sisters to work independently and sometimes both together.  The calabash/cowrie shell rattle is incredibly loud.  Energy was dispersed.  Particles stuck together every which way likewise dispersed.  At times I sensed them changing form and kept thinking of Pam Gregory's ongoing reminder:  Less Particle, More Wave.

Being the child of Summer that I am this is one of my happiest days of the year.

more light.

every single day.

are you ready

???

Red Flower Essences

I wrote a post about co-creating this essence last spring.  All things considered it felt like a no-brainer for working through the Dive during November/first chakra month.  I've grown to love this particular essence a lot since its co-creation.   The maple tree waited until the full conclusion of our first decade in residence before reaching out to me in the undeniable and very warm-spirited way that it did.

Maple's flower healing signature relates to balance.  Last month's decibel and cage-rattling level was greatly soothed for me by the physical Maple tree itself as well as essence work on a daily basis.  I find working with the essence paired with meditation seems to open the door for more space in my days and evenings to simply reflect.  Not necessarily thoughts/reflection but perhaps just reflect the energy I've gathered and dispersed - reflect its overall form and purpose rather than my sole part of it.  

I really like the way that feels and how I'm able to notice my body responding with a loosening of tension.  It makes me think of the Buddha and the lesson of the bow that must be tightened neither too loose nor too tight.

the Crocosmia healing signature is crystalline and unmistakably direct to root and illuminate the energetic spine.  This often translates as a sudden uptick in energy level - a bustling spring in the step that was merely getting from one place to another prior to essence work. 

I love working with this flower in combination bowls or individual synergies prepared from separate mother stocks.  This past summer I felt a nudge to replace the SL Crocosmia mother essence. The resulting bowl was splendiforous.

Cardinal Flower essence has been chosen to root and sanctify the ongoing exploratory Dive process.  Am finding it's nice to 'finish' maple balancing endeavors with a flower so expressive of other realms of influence/reality.  The cardinal flower's healing signature relates to restoring sacred forms of dignity, illumination, and intent. 

In the mid-to-late fall I discovered small blooming cardinal flowers at the edges of the front yard's side pocket gardens.  The blossoms were exuberant in my noticing of them.  I promptly set up some bamboo stakes that I hope will survive the winter.  Otherwise I won't be sure where the plants are within the larger patch of lawn where I found them.

but maybe if i simply focus and listen ...

Flowering Quince is often associated with the crown chakra and sometimes the heart-sacral bridge.  For me the bright red blooms in my garden speak of a richly flourishing root chakra. When I work with the essence I always have the sense of individual stems rising from the petal bed at each juncture where two petals overlap.  I visualize the stems growing throughout my energetic spinal column - watching the buds form, fatten and release into blooming.  The flowers' healing and illumination range centers on timeless vibrancy and gentle resilience.

the Yarrow Flower medicine spirit is deeply protective.  In established essence work of the past 70 years or so yellow yarrow is well tested as a master shield for both gross and subtle human bodies.  This past summer I received some quiet counsel from the white yarrow plantlets that began appearing along a certain part of our enlarged field garden's new fencing.

 Have kind of mushed my initial impressions of the medicine spirit's entreaty to work, think, and cocreate with local varieties whenever possible in with Pam Gregory talking about the dissolution of the magnetic shield.  And then further mushed with common sense, survivalist thinking, and more generalized pragmatism.  It seems likely that whatever yarrow grows in a fully wild state - or very close to it - is going to be any given alchemist's best choice of a master shield. 

Welcoming a Yarrow ally as electrical and psychic back-up is a wonderful gift during times of prolonged duress.  It can also be just as lovely and well-applied for those who work in a capacity of guidance or healing - counseling, etc.  I like it for times when it seems that staying true to myself needs its own time alone in a bubble of sorts - while concurrently carrying on with life (and its attendant emotions) as close to normally as possible.  Also love spending time among flowering yarrow plants.  My sister in law has virtual groves of the deep golden yellow variety growing throughout her NoCali version of a wild garden.

the Echinacea flower healing vibration is always related to deep/bedrock level restoration of soul and spirit as well as mind and body.  This specific flower may have been included in the essence bowl.  I was really happy to see how vibrantly and fully the plant flowered in mid-summer.  Earlier in the season it developed a very obvious co-creative relationship with an enormous volunteer foxglove in the Evolving Sanctuary garden.

Have been working with a few folk who are profoundly shook by all we've been through and continue to experience throughout the globe.  I have a strong preference for offering Echinacea remedies (along with Elderberry and perhaps Lime) for the special needs of complex PTSD as well as those in occupations with a strong ongoing trauma component flagging ongoing need for self-care and ongoing restorative life choices.

i hope to write in more depth on this topic and then figure out how to get the words distributed most efficiently.  stay tuned.

Red Bee Balm is a very versatile essence.  It clears the head chakras beautifully and also shows an affinity for brain-level neuro-circutry.  This is obvious from the shape and form of the flower.  What's also obvious is the long square shaped stem that places this species in the mint family.  The sturdy stem always reminds me of the spinal column when perfectly straight.  I like to image the flower in a visualization that places the flower against the spinal column as if the blossom could move up and down - not unlike a clear class elevator on the outside of a building.  In that visual image, the flower describes the essence's capacity to travel up and down throughout the chakra system - at speed that may compromise detailed examination but not illuminated awareness.

[grace actually spoke to this but i can't remember where.  a comment and maybe it's here and I can find it to place right here.]

I find red bee balm flower essence to be a special friend to those who have chronic illness and/or pain.  The certain zap that chronic anything applies to every layer of be-ing is not to be underestimated.  Our subtle energy bodies need nourishment and the energetic equivalent of electrolyte rebalancing. 

Since this is a very solar plant I thought to work with it when I felt I was good and thoroughly caught up with crying after so many years of refusing to do as much.  A dream guided me to put a single drop of mother stock in the center of my crown.  I waited while it was absorbed and then visualized its passageway through my energy system.  Am setting aside a few scant dropper bottles with the mother stocks so there's no need to the original storage bottle more than once.  Just to be prepared in this way.  It feels important and possibly a partial refinement of rescue remedy as it's best applied in our variety of destabilizing circumstance?

a little more red and some orange up next...

Water Music for Turning a Shadow's Tide

If the sheer magnitude of the second chakra's already wiping you out (raises hand) here are ten songs to move to before all the water freezes solid.  Originally there were 11 but I sensed a particular song might not cut it for most or potentially all of my usual readers if I drew attention to that song in addition to Bad Romance. I like to post music only links but for a few of these I had to accept settling for video links. 

Under The Bridge -  The cool thing about making a mix tape is the way I like to start with something that almost makes the expectations of others presume I don't know what I'm doing. I was asked to start with this one 'for personal reasons' directly after I was asked if I'd mind spending part of my Sunday afternoon compiling this post.  Hopefully I'll make it up to those who expected things to lead off with Prince just cuz it's me.  Instead he's where he belongs on the momentum's trajectory curve instead.

I Wanna Be Sedated Remember when I copped to being a former wicked accomplished drinkah?  This was my absolute favorite song back then.  I still can't sit down for it.  "oh no oh oh oh - oh ho!"

Bad Romance   As soon as I heard this song for the first time I embraced it as retroactive 'celebration' of something that happened with a deeply scorpionic individual who inspired me, at 22, to write an entire group of poems entitled The Ides of Lust.   There's nobody like Stephanie for breaking this stuff down.  I love her.  This is a great dance-able reload.

Premonition - one of my favorite songs of its day.  I used to walk around singing to my various work friends "I must be crazy/I must seein' thangs"

The Chain -  'i can still hear you sayin'  elevated(?) break-up music vibe.  And that album cover!  total sacral shadow.  Dance it out of yourself.

[the one I took out but I'll tell you what it is - Side to Side.  Feel free to add it back if you like. Especially since Ariana was my Cancerian artist to complete the water trilogy.]

When Doves Cry - I mean when you want to get serious about either this chakra or dancing your way through it you go to the master, right?

Blood Sugar Sex Majik -   shadow-Scorpio's theme song. Also that's Anthony's sun sign.  Even I who categorically sucks at guessing such things correctly found this one impossible to get wrong.  This was the only RHCP I'd planned to include because how can I not. And still could not even once the person I'm supporting in all of this specifically asked for "the addiction song" to top the list. I like the way it mixes with the song on either end so I've broken my rule about only one song from one artist per mix.

I'll Be Missing You  I'm sure we all have somebody unique and special to think about while this one grooves its way along.

 I've Got My Mind Set On You.  Because Pisces always closes out the wheel.  Definitely a bit of yellow/third chakra bleed to the vibe but I didn't want to give this spot to any old Pisces  so ...

soft asylum/fire's light

today things seem to look as they should for this post.  Discovered as much after seeing grace's 'who i am' post.  This sparked the realization that my shared chakra exploration with J was beginning to yield some 'who we are' insights.  This post is definitely a placeholder for one of them. 

Here we are:  a congregation of All in the season of Sagittarius. 

brought to you by both sides of one of my favorite-ever Preachers of Fire aligned with this particular astro-sect.

I used to drink -far too easily and to outrageous excess.  This "worked" for me in a scarily easy to rationalize kind of way from my twenty fourth birthday until I was twenty six, newly married, and J wasn't having it the afternoon he came home from work to find me passed out on the bed for the third time in the work week.  Once I was up and cognizant he said to me "we aren't living this way." And I noticed he slid the we in there.  Not making it an "I" thing or a "you" thing. I saw the organism of alchohol's wholecloth and understood something very important that didn't distill into words for another few days.  In which I didn't drink.  And then just continued not drinking month after year.  And still do not.   It's one of the few accomplishments I can truly claim that I perceive worth mentioning as 'a thing I'm doing with-in my life'.  

Two different Jims told me loud and clear to knock that shit off in two completely different ways and moments of my younger life experience.  I just realized that about a month ago.  It was a major piece of life-review settled effortlessly into place within the over-arching context of a collaborative writing project I was invited to join.

I wonder what might have happened if the original Jim had been gifted with a partner or spouse as on point as my own Jim was and remains for me?   

next year's garden/this year's growth

The ground is finally cold enough to keep the garlic from bolting.  With temps near or above 70 all last week (and multiple windows open to sleep at night) I was really getting worried it would be a repeat of past warm autumn heartbreaks.  Have been planting small colonies of cloves throughout the garden over the past month.  Somebody with a professional food farm suggested I do as much to determine microclimates within a garden space.  'garlic will find standing water and pockets of clay  faster than your brain will figure it out.'  All but 2 of these pockets have bolted.  These were clove heads of different varieties sent by friends.  Yesterday afternoon J and I planted our purchased gloves.  Pretty standard choices that work well for us:  spicy Rojo hardneck and early Italian purple. 

Today I'll plant French shallots.  The bag of sets was ginormous again.  Have been planted them three at a time and every single one bolted within days.  Picture me standing over these experiments like a dog twisting her head from one side to its polar opposite arc.  Or as my son likes to put it: insert puppy whine here.  It's reached a point where the bulbs are bolting in the mesh netting. 

Today I'll sort through the sets.  Take out what's sprouted.  Make a boullion of sorts from the chopped bulbs.  Freeze in ice cube trays.  Think I'll do the same with the Rojo garlic heads that bolted as well.

Frozen boullion cubes are really versatile.  I usually thaw with warm water and briskly whisk the boullion into other dish-relevant liuid.  J likes rubbing it into meat before baking or roasting.

***

Long before any other threads of a chakra-driven nature showed up to be woven into my daily life - J and I decided we needed a bonding project that took us out of the ongoing sausage making factory and into our relationship's more congruently refined aspects.  We agreed we'd take month long looks at what the human energy system looks like when it's deconstructed into discussions, actions, and spur of the moment happenstances.  It's been very collaborative.  For instance we agreed at the beginning of the month to embrace foundation as our root chakra keyword.  A few days later we were arguing.  It got circular.  J looked at me and said 'how do we build a better foundation?'  I looked at him and didn't hesitate.  'Plant garlic.' 

Above:  our unconstructed Say Their Name cairn.  It started out as a shallow pit (for way too many 'shallow graves' ...) so there are several layers of stones. 

The second (!!) of two 2020 related Crosses & Losses cairns.  Other hum  The bigger the stone the bigger the sense of personal loss.  rick finally showed up (far left) via J's shovel as well a Nic  (to the right of rick and obviously freshly unearthed)  and between them are two equal sized rocks John Lewis and RBG.  The really large sun-whitened rock in the back - Elvira - is finally comforting rather than soul shattering to see ...

sun in moon in sun

 

I keep beginning this post in frivolous ways.  In other words I keep 'writing'. Working through ideas that aren't what I intended to write about.  And yet I know if I segue to writing rather than blogging I will be distracted about making this blog post when I don't seem to know what it's meant to contain in detail.  This time I'm going with what I know involves whatever it's about.

A short while back I posted on my creativity blog about a particular quilt I made years ago.  It was a life changing experience to make it and it brought me into my full skin as a cardinal sign.  Before that I liked to consider myself an Idea Person.  I'd throw stuff out.  People would say to me, you should do that.  I'd say, I'm already doing stuff.  You should do it. 

To this day nothing bothers me more than people telling me what I should be doing when I'm already clearly doing something very different instead.  That's cardinality.  We need a lot of that because we need a lot of very dedicated and effective self-leadership.  We have to be ready to build reliable gps systems within ourselves. 

nothing is real otherwise.  And it's all very much something to get hung about.

What this has to do with the quilt I made for a very special person is pretty direct:  I went out into my garden yesterday afternoon and after a time I felt her spirit there with me.  It seemed I was just on the edge of smelling her perfume and hearing her melodic arpeggios of laughter. Just right on the edge.  And then I realized that was my own capability of conjouring.  Her spirit watches over me and many others.  And perhaps for all of us when we need it most she seems to be right there or almost so.

I crouched to pull leeks.  As I did so I thought about JP.  I also thought about how my life's been something of a largely enjoyable tiltawhirl ride since a coyote pup sang to me during the wee hours of sleeplessness some weeks back.  Enjoyable daily reality or not, I definitely live in the moment we collectively share.  Yesterday and the day before I wasn't grounded at all.  I couldn't sort the things left on my desk let alone the overflowing stack of assorted Acey-centric supplies beside it.  I could not sort out of my thoughts let alone stuff I've chosen to collect. 

In the afternoon I went out to the field.  It was warm and sunny and my cranky jointed body felt relief rather than recoil.  I kept telling myself I couldn't do anything about the everything.  I could only choose my feelings and how I focused them.  As soon as I allowed myself agency over the jumbled and highly unattractive collection of emotions richocheting all over my inner stratosphere I started to feel calm enough to decide I wasn't obligated to rush through my emotions.  It was okay to let them sit quietly - to perhaps let them figure themselves out.

Then I performed an impromptu ceremony at the fire pit.  I went into the garden and pulled all the leeks.  They filled three quarters of a large paper grocery bag.  Today I'll make potato leek soup with a friends' carrots and the very last of the dill I grew on the deck this summer.  These are good things to do; my family will benefit for a few days and I'll enjoy remembering what it was like in the garden yesterday while I'm prepping the soup and sauteing the rest of the leeks for freezing in ice cubes made from vegetable broth.

I also picked slews of culinary herbs.  It's a first for me to collect anything past the season's mid-point.  But I had dreams and did some automatic writing, meditated out in the garden itself.  Before Samhain it rained almost continuously for three weeks.  There is a great abundance.  I was given the impression that long unchanged human rules might be considered arbitrary and in these current times perhaps downright capricious.

So I harvested and was grateful.  There's now authentically plenty of everything rather than strict rations to ensure enough until it's a new growing season.  Was able to collect fresh lemon balm shoots, tender kentucky mint tips, and marvelous sprigs of german thyme for adding to the coming weeks' blending-up a new batch of abundance of care tea.

The soil is still warm.  Nonetheless the upcoming weekend is when the garlic and shallots go in the ground because it's the only time J will be available before the ground freezes.  We've decided to do the planting together as part of our joined effort to build a mutual foundation, from scratch, in these amazingly goofball level of messed-up times.  Planting our favorite anti-everything bad food and also our most agreed-upon mandatory culinary staple is our living version of a red square.

*

I decided yesterday morning that irrespective of politics and piercing head pain I had to stop procrastinating a return to daily yoga practice.  I was waiting, ostensibly, for my head to stop hurting.  Then I realized between the weather and an obstreperous collection of the most appalling people on the planet that wasn't going to happen.  Yesterday morning I couldn't settle down after the poses to meditate.  Today I could do it even if the blank slate was occasionally overlayed with a kind of mental sky-writing - an unbidden glimpse of the son in law's mannequin-blank face. Barr-none laughing inappropriately.  golden child's hands placed just so over Times Square. Tom freakin' Cotton.  And then different skywriting:  these are PTSD symptoms.  You know that.  Just keep re-focusing.

It was seamless at least for the amount of time it took me to lie on a familiar carpet in the early morning sun and drop out of my mind for twenty minutes.  I went deep into the night sky then.  This particular lunar cycle has been outrageously compelling to me. On nearly every clear night I've gone out and crashed around in search of the perfect viewing location.  I just had to be near it.  I felt the light itself was singing.  I thanked the moon for the power to reflect its cyclical journeys by reflecting various arcs of sunlight.  As I was doing so I had the sense of an incoming message but maybe it was more of a very slowly to sprout insight.  These moments in which I stayed present in what I personally knew to be true and meaningful were an incredibly potent form of resistance.

let's all wake up some extra light in ourselves.  See if we can move it around amongst those we love and help it grow ...

the persephone gear shift

Weather-wise it's essentially felt like October since the second week in August. Yesterday it was cold in the house upon awakening.  Not chilly or brisk until you move around. cold, period. This morning it was freakin cold which may be a particularly new england sub-category.  For the past 48 hours I've been wearing stuff I generally start pulling together somewhere during the week before Thanksgiving.  It's a little bit nuts.  Cognitive dissonance maxes out further due to the green leaves on all the trees. 

The last day of Summer is always a mixed emotional bag for me. This year it's both more difficult and far easier in that I'm being asked to stay quiet and 'away' from the actual landscape out in the field.  Perhaps because I'm off balance from grieving but then again maybe that's a very human ego-driven perspective to hold.  I think it's most likely the land has stuff it needs and wants to accomplish that doesn't need my involvement.  I sense tremendous summer love flowing towards and through me.  I wasn't needed and in honoring that the gesture of good faith goes very much noticed, is my sense.

Still it's weird in a time where everything is strange.  And that's always the best time for something magical as I promised in my last post.  If you like music with a strong beat and a little bite you can listen to what I was hearing while I wrote.

listen only video:  Making a Noise in This World.  Robbie Robertson.

Ceremonial grief in the time of social distancing is a lot easier to manage and organize than an actual memorial gathering.  I started learning that all the way back on the February-March cusp when I began 'losing' people I loved to Covid but I did not experience such disembodied gathering as being energetically powerful until far recently.  It involved, first, someone who died from brain cancer rather than Covid.  And also someone I've known essentially all my life.  Everyone gathering at an appointed time to make noise in their own version of a sacred place because the person who left his body was a noise maker first and foremost.

It was really something. Especially the way unpredicted very strong and seemingly endless T-storms rolled in a bit later.  and it didn't enter my mind it was anything ordinary so much as I knew without doubt it was my long time incredibly loyal friend making his get outta my way into the hereafter.

and you can bet your ass he did NOT go quietly as he stomped and whirled his own particular sacred patterning into the deeper cosmos that we all assumed according to his spiritual beliefs was leading him to Bardo territory.  A man so wracked with pain and according to his daughter little more than skeletal (he was always scary skinny but still, she said ...) was transformed, by all accounts of those who had similar experiences, into an electrical maelstrom.  And when I went to check a floral offering I'd left the day before I discovered the above scene.

and it felt right to leave it that way for awhile.  he was not an angel person and would literally turn his head or once his entire body to look away from any and all evidence that I am.  I laughed.  how could I not?

On what proved to be the day before RBG's passing I was suddenly called to go back to this place and take pictures for sharing.  It's right in the center of the Evolutionary Sanctuary.  From the 'outside' it looks like this:

I call it the Temple of Trumpets because all those dark green fronds behind the goldenrod are trumpet vines. This year they flowered so prolifically a neighbor asked me what we'd 'done'.  Beneath the vines, from the inside, it is green-world with all that implies.  I went in with just my camera, a sense of holiness, and mindful care. The angel remained upside down.  I fixed that and sat quietly.  I was filling myself up with green energy.  It felt important to stay and let that happen as long as I could stay mindful with it and then to photograph the interior wooden skeleton of the Temple. I didn't know why then.  But now of course I do.

and so I invite all of you to step inside and refill yourself.  This isn't what I had in mind when I took the pictures and planned the post.  That's why I had to wait a little bit to share it in this new context.  It's wrong to say my heart is heavy.  It's condensed in every sense of the word.

Things will start slowing down now energetically at least in the Northern Hemisphere.  But there's counter-energy speeding up in other ways and most of them are entirely unpleasant and the very opposite of life-sustaining.  Nonetheless - tomorrow or maybe today when you read this - is a day of organic balance.  Perfect and inexorable balance between light and darkness.

When I got this far I put on warmer socks and shoes and my winter (no lie) car coat.  Went outside to walk around in the front yard moving west with summer's retreating light.  We spoke together.  I noticed an entire colony of self-seeded cardinal flowers blooming in an inconvenient location.  i smiled.  Smelled a spikey bugbane flower stalk and smiled again.

The all important third smile comes from this:

Namaste