Sparkling Lotus Ink

full moon harvest

Libra's power and majesty has been roaring its way up and down the ridge were we live.  I went out when things were calmed to a dull roar and retrieved my stone allies.   It was pretty fab.

Stopped to get a documentation shot of the garden still vibing with full moon energy. You can see I have been working.  The objects I attached to the gate have been indoctrinated into their new surroundings through the typically dramatic weather shifts. Everything seems happy to have a purpose.  And I am considering (this seems like quite a Libra thing, actually ...) 

Elegance of Purpose.

Tonight's the second class with Deb.  I may take a few days off screen afterward.  Just to see what that shifts ..

amazing daze

Today I saw three hawks - the first of the season for me though I have seen a lot of turkey buzzards.  The hawk above had a partner and the other was solo.  Their cries are a happy addition to my garden time.  I've been outside a lot - poking around in the woods, doing chores, and spending a lot of time really bonding with this new growing season as it asserts more of itself.

The white pine tree I call The Treasured Daughter is really bursting with life force.  This tree was about eight inches tall when we moved here...

Day before yesterday I was called to make a 'surprise' crown chakra remedy for the Dive people and continued life in the SLI repertory.   Below the all important act of reciprocity has been implemented.   Poured excess matrix back on the colony after returning the nine bowl flowers to the ground  with each bloom tucked into the edges of the grouping.

Every year that I co-create in this way, the process becomes deeper and more layered at the same time it gets increasingly straightforward.   By now it's a form of muscle memory as well as an ongoing prayer.  Sent the captains a text with a pic of the bowl once the mother stock had been harvested and shaken to life.  Later, in the early evening enlivened by late slanting sun, Rory dropped by and played his harmonica for the colony.

I think they liked it!  This morning every single bud had opened and the colony seemed jubilant.

Mama holds lynx aspirations ...

Today I visited the special portion of the field's rock wall to repair the stone prayer stacks and a few new layers to one of the stacks.  While I was putting stones back into stacks I happened to notice one of the rocks has grafitti'd a crossroads symbol - must be from the mineral deposits that run right alone the fissures of the rock.

I made this sun ornament during a family Summer Solstice crafting endeavor to commemorate our first Summer 'in the country' after leaving Boston.  It's hung somewhere in the garden ever since.  While living in this place, I've changed its location every year but I think it will hang on the gate from now on. I also added some miniature cowbells and a few crystals that had been a bundled gift from a friend - with each item equipped with individual hanging ribbons and rope.  Didn't get this far last year but this year there's the luxury of more time.  I plan to embellish the gate a lot more over time, providence willing.

There are three bells and three crystals.  I hung the amethyst point so it's in shade for all but the earliest morning sun part of the day.   etc.

Am getting the feeling this may be a year when the local rocks are going to vibe a lot. 

Wakey, Wakey ...

Spring Magic

Ms Hellebore has risen overnight ...

i was delighted to discover a self-seeded foxglove in a part of the property where foxgloves haven't grown in 10 years.  She's growing right at the base of a flowering quince.  Have noticed the volunteer foxgloves like to cozy-up close to an existing plant.  While I was out on this morning's perambulation, I paused to weed here and there - to greet many returning colonies of lemon balm, to plan removal, nurturing, and later transplanting of rose campion seedlings rising from the brick walkway. 

Yesterday J cleared up some brush in the evolving sanctuary bed and adjacent frog pond area.

I've been standing on the middle of the bridge at the stream to watch the sun go down and engage with portions of Deb's Equoinox meditation.   The excitement rising among class members as the clock moves closer to our first lessons with her at 7 p.m. is a very tangible energy.

We had a worksheet relating to the Equinox presentation.  I chose to write in sky blue ink.  and something true:  I will indeed need that extra note book for additional journaling room.  This morning I moved into the additional notebook I'll be embellishing with the half-size copies of the class journal.  Wrote about stuff that happened in the yard today - things I noticed/approached/amplified cognitively and energetically because of shifts the Equinox work afforded with effortless ease. 

As you can see, the very gorgeous volunteer 'crown' of last year's mid-summer garden still has some things to say.  We had a long conversation.  I spoke aloud.  It embarassed me for years - the way some of my more expressive friends would announce and proclaim and just generally act like humans were the swing vote in it all.

I'm speaking quietly.   Sometimes with tender gestures. 

It's a big step for me.  And I had to, in good balanced blue conscience delete some unplanned opinionated asides concerning why that is.

Also of super Blue interest to me:  I was psyched to this really insightful piece in The Guardian yesterday.  The headline alone had me clicking on swift reflex.

i deleted what i 'said' about it (by way of relating quite tangentially to recently re-upped marketing of the book on the above left).

the piece itself

speaks more than eloquently.

The book on the right is just me reading ahead with the 7th chakra in mind. 

***

I feel a lot of shifts and shedding skin.

I keep having totally out-of-the-blue and previously unimaginable fictional breakthroughs that somehow aren't wreaking havoc with my pre-ordained weekly deliverable schedule.  I don't know how it's happening but assume it's open-crown/kinda-sorta cosmically driven

I feel like this had to happen during Blue month or I wouldn't have known how to hold it steady

while the world wakes up and Persephone rises to the surface to evoke all her glorious subjects to bloom everywhere.

 sometimes I feel like I'm just this close to losing all control of my original vision but somebody who's writing I love

and greatly respect

once told me that's the only time you're writing worth a damn.

Right on that edge.  No exceptions.

Sometimes I know exactly how to hold steady

but it will mean sooooo much work

and additional thinking

during a time of year when all I want to do

is be outside.

I claim I don't know anything

but really I'm saying I obviously

know and choose to imagine I don't.

After the sense of not knowing anything

builds up enough fire&water steam

I stand in the doorway of J's office

and talk myself through various forms of dismay, uncertainty, elation and utterly victorious a-ha moments.

sometimes he's 'there' ...

sometimes he wishes I wasn't.

equinox: blue-balanced light & dark

Giving myself this day of immersive relationship to the energy, yet also sharing the experience.   Usually I go all-in or just kind of dabble here and there throughout the day.  Now I'm considering everything that happens part of the medicine walk.   "sacred time isn't separate time"  Am considering making a painting to resemble a cross-stitch motto.  for substrate, use a piece of salvaged wood and hang it in the mud room.

J will remove another layer of leaves from the pond today.  We will rattle and sing.  Others have been by per loosely arranged schedule. 

At sunset we'll stand facing west and absorb the shifting light of this new season on its first day of life.

As is my way I am going all in with The Healing Garden class material.  There are many altar spaces in and around our home but I wanted something especially dedicated to the energy work for this course - and in a place where I could see it alot - that was grounded in our home's energetic structure rather than my studio space.   Set up a wooden folding tray just by the door of the living room leading to the kitchen and downstairs hallways.  Built the altar slowly over an hour's worth of time and gentle contemplation of my inclusion options.

building an altar is always rewarding, elevating, and above all else intentional BLUE in living action.  Deb's exemplar featured a backdrop.  Haven't worked altar space that way in decades.   So, yeah.  Let's re-ignite the horizontal axis.  This is SO BEAUTIFUL and smoothing for the entire house.  Planning to smudge with all the doors open.

Included on the wall:  my layered red square from 'way back at the beginning of the Dive.  The other three are literal as well as more spiritual guardians and guides in the field.  J's fox tribe.  My song dog howlers.  the bluebirds that travel with goldfinches during the winter from their thickets in a nearby overgrown orchard.  During the summer both birds nest and roost in the field. A goldfinch peeps around the edges of special stone and crystal friends. Raven spirit led me directly to the eye-portal stone at the Quabbin Reservoir about 30 years ago. Also included with what's to come in mind: citrine, danburite, larimar, amethyst, chrysoprase, lemurian seed crystal, ruby matrix, chrysocholla, obsidian, and a tiny bit of emerald matrix.  And of course an aventurine egg gifted quite long ago - in another century/millenium, in fact.

My grandmother's beloved snowdrops teacup.  Later I'll fill it with beach sand and just as the sun has settled out of sight we'll light the silver and gold candles.  Also my grandmother's spring rabbits.  I wound up switching-out the basket for my mother's willow basket with a grapevine handle.  that way there are three generations of my bloodline to tie me to my personal mother-line as well as Gaia.  A small Tree of Life talisman that was original gifted to me by the piscean dive captain's mother on the day she learned she was pregnant with his younger sister.  It just felt right to her, as a memorial of that shared moment in our Time.   And the talisman has found a special protected home in every summer's garden since.

go outside and breathe as deeply as you can.

we've made it this far.

and now find ourselves surrounded by Blue.

(hopefully this post is helpful for the few who have written asking what to do, how one might arrange, etc. for an altar space that's organically developed in a manner that's equally Spirit-and-self directed.)  Below, Gaia waits to be recognized through this working.

pro-tip:  if you're sharing on social media and whatnot - post pics that don't show all of your building & intention work.

it's an energetic and magical boundary thing.

and it makes a great deal of difference what frequency vibrates and how.

let Blue have its way with you.

 

approach BLUE from the bridge connecting the upper chakra to the central anchor of heart.

bring with you everything of value from the primary chakras, their bridge to the heart, and the heart itself.  Allow your arms to fill enough that bits and pieces drop along this new bridge to be crossed.  Later they can serve as road markers and short cuts to lessons and insights gleaned throughout the process so far.

Consciously open your mouth and your ears.  Prepare to bang a gong if that's what it takes.  Because the fifth chakra is our singular and collective center of communication. 

  The fifth chakra is about Clarity.  It's also the spinal column's first energetic opportunity to receive and reflect messages from Spirit on Spirit's own terms.  Once Blue is introduced into conscious energetic work, Clarity and Spirit have an opportunity to enter, and inform, the heart and primary chakras.  Sit with Blue's entry and let it find it's own flow.  Let it infiltrate the thinnest tendrils of Root before you slowly bring it back up again to its house of resonance and resonation.

Spirit and Clarity (and Blue) are everywhere in our daily lives.  Throughout this month, imagine every instance of BLUE you see to be an indicator of holiness in our everyday landscape of meanings and purposes.  Consider it a friendly spiritual hello reaching out to you.

Deliberately place Blue in places where you'll see it a lot and the color can be further known to you through a fusion with light.

  Follow Blue to the places where you already know and love it best.

 

**Namaste**

running every place screaming excitedly

an anniversary gift of sorts.

one that will play an important part in whatever the garden becomes within and without.

wow.

this is beyond 'beyond' even.

 

 

...here we go...

Here are all the new seeds I didn't plan to purchase this year.  But then I remembered a fence means peas are possible and things just went from there.  J apparently realized this would happen but in all our budget discussions I kept saying it wouldn't. 

tis a wise man who knows his wife better than she knows herself.  I've no control in this arena and he does indeed know that.

Lettuce for the guy who makes my world spin.  I don't eat it any more due to how enthusiastically my body makes calcium-oxalate kidney stones. 

I have other sunflower seeds in waiting as well

J's down below me in the garage right now cutting the new table-top board he purchased yesterday.  I'm psyched.  Will provide bulletins as they emerge concerning additional food plant crops to be sown from last year's seeds.  

I made the heart chakra cloth used as a backdrop for these pics for my very first chakra intensive workshop series at a local apothecary.  I included a rose colored Japanese wishing bell and a grouse feather to promote new rhymthms and intentional heart-centered wishes for the group created altar space.    Am planning to put it atop my studio coffee table work space for the final week of heart-work.

found this badly abused photo earlier today and thought to share it.  That's J taking in the vibe at North Beach at the end of the day on which we met Ferlinghetti at City Lights.  The photo's set aside in case I ever again go out in the world for a frivolous reason such as loading up on fresh laser copies of photos, artwork, etc for collage purposes. 

I really love how the damage done to the physical photo lends the strong flavor of Dharma Bumming it in '82. 

NoCali.  In the early 80's.  Staying, at times, with folks who lived deep in the canyons with all that implies.

hell yeah we inhaled. 

a lot.

The companion photo of me looking like I'm in direct contact with the Starman waiting in the sky makes that abundantly clear.

not sure where it is.  if i find it, i'll share.

I wouldn't do it now but I sure did have fun living out of a van on Market Street in San Francisco for the brief moment in time in which we did it.  You haven't lived until you've peed in a bucket while watching a nun eat deep dish pizza at the Numero Uno's just next to where you've parked.

she demolished everything but the plate.

 

 

our spine is a ladder

Buddleia flower essence helps our electrical circuitry, particularly within our more subtle bodies/fields of energy.  Specifically, the Buddleia healing signature inter-relates with the wear and tear caused by neurological cut-outs and damaged neural circuitry.  In my anecdotal experience(s) people with any kind of neuro-atypicality find this soothing.  I work with it a lot during snow and ice season.  In other words, now.  Pic above from the field's main garden bed, long before it was fenced.  I love the exuberance of high summer enough to refrain from cropping the image.  It is not like this in the field right now.  But the last snowfall, yesterday and overnight,  has left everything very much blue-white with a strongly glittering surface.  We're warm and well supplied.  Am making it a point to appreciate the blue-white presence surrounding and covering everything.  Interesting that blue-white is one of the selected colors for the earthstar chakra.  This blue-white fell from the sky ...

yesterday afternoon I was told that someone was 'too filled with images of my sons puking and other stuff in the toilet for ten centuries now' to pull together a meditation of Our Journey So Far.   I'll keep things simple.

at the root we contemplated where we come from

at the sacral center we slid into our creative and emotional water and searched for its most lustrous pearls

At the solar center we met the destiny our volitional agency sets in motion every day.

and now we open the central center of our Heart.

one tender yet resilient petal at a time.

 

Namaste

 

all of this for two weeks

[a detail from a side-kick journal in such slow progress I should really just re-bind it and say it's officially unfinished.  The gold lion is about five inches long.  Started out with 16 of them and gifted many to other Lion-influenced folks.  Wanted to gift two more recently but cannot find as per usual.  Photocopy of a long-gone postcard of arial lower manhattan cast in color-boosted lowering sunlight 20 years or so before the towers fell.]

This is my power moon cycle.  It's a very cool synchronicity indeed that it's falling during Solar month.  So much about this particular lunation relates to solar chakra qualities because Leo's ruled by the sun.  In astrology there are a lot of correspondences that get overwhelming especially is somebody gets tetchy about 'correctness'.  But I think after being around astrological wheels, geometry, and murmuring for most of my life that all the this corresponds to that stuff really boils down to flash cards related to energies connected with sign or planet.  For example Leo's correspondence in the human body is the heart.  A friend sent a link to some written material about this particular lunation.  She hoped it wouldn't be too late and instead it happens to be right on time. Full moon energy generates a lot of vibrational power two weeks before and after the actual point of fullness.   If you choose to read the link, or already have a bead on this particular cycle in this particular year, then you'll understand how invaluable it may be to simply imagine so much loving and healing light infusing the entire planet.

Here on this blog and Nichobella and within the Dive structure we're doing an upgrade re-set given what this past month has been like in terms of finding a center that holds.  It has been challenging for one and all so far as I can tell - even those flying pretty high on inspiration and divine forms of volitional ballast are still living with a great deal of turmoil and misinformation on full display.  This is profoundly destabilizing no matter how diligently (or for that matter subconsciously) you move energy throughout mind and body.

  For the above reasons the focus will remain on Red/Orange/Yellow - and how they combine - during the next two week/full moon drift-down timeframe because the first three/primary chakras are super important.  They become exponentially more important in times like our when both personal and collective energy needs to have strength (Y), vibrancy (R), and mutable fluidity (O) - especially while in active/elevated motion. 

Consider embracing:  two more weeks of running light up and down and up and down your energetic spine and corresponding energy wheels.  See how much of that you can do before the heart center begins to spontaneously involve itself.  It's likely to happen over these next two weeks but don't worry if it doesn't.  Pam Gregory keeps stressing in all her videos that we're all getting the upgrade irrespective of what we put into it or perceive receiving from it.  "It" being the current full Leo moon energy, at least in part.

***

Rory's come up with the idea of visualizing blinking lights on the empire state building which we've all seen - if only in a movie.  Visualized red-orange-yellow-orange-red over and over again until you feel the colors running strong and illuminated in your perceptual and energetic self-awareness.  He likes the idea of a large easily visible tower because it suggests a collective illumination elevating itself to a steadily higher level of consciousness.

Try for yourself - when I tried it I spontaneously segued into incorrectly colored northern lights rather than something man-made on a building.  Or maybe they're lights from other compass points measured against some other sky ...

power/moon/shine even dirty glasses cannot dim.

on accounta today i finished the skeleton of an emotionally and technically challenging chapter entitled All Kinds of Swagger.

how appropriate ...

in her bright yellow coat

Amanda Gorman.

hear her if you have not already ...