Sparkling Lotus Ink

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.

blue flowers

Italian Alkanet shows up a lot on my blogs.   I love everything about the plant as well as the flowers.  When they go to seed goldfinches come to feed.  I hadn't realized they liked these seeds until we'd lived here a few years - the season of the flowers in this image.  This is one of my favorite Clarity essences.  When it's in bloom a few flowers always seem to volunteer for a couple of mixed flower blended bowls.
In the original Sparkling Lotus garden beds, Blue Alpine Columbine was a very strong presence that self-seeded with seemingly impeccable design sensibilities.  A massive colony emerged around the compost bins.

pro-tip:  nodding flowers such as columbines, hellebores, lily of the valley, blueberry, etc. are quite often associated with special aid/affinity channels towards/within introspection, spiritual retreat, or the need to embrace one or both of those qualities-of-life.  I've also found this flower structure to be invaluable for people who teach/mentor/guide activities geared towards such endeavors. 

Radicchio grows freely along the western edges of the field garden.  It's such a close relation to Chicory that I tend to use this essence in its place.  But I do have a very deep sort of Chicory mother stock that I prepared in the center of a three-road crossroads with a specific friend in mind.  This is for people who need to learn how to play nicely in the verbal senses.   Mixing Chicory and Calendula flower essence is a fave option.

Blue Sage flower essence is a wonderful tonic for the fifth chakra.  Notice how the flowers resemble - as one of the dive captains put it - 'a yammering mouth'.  Sage flower essences are stabilizing.  They're also a very stringent cleansing and re-balancing agent. 

(if you don't have access to - or simply don't want to fuss with obtaining - any of the colorful 'decorative' sages you can choose a classic and extremely versatile essence made from blooms of garden Sage.  This is a SUPER stabiizing and grounding option.)

Blue Vervain, although purple, is a wonderful choice for those who speak and listen to others speak about matters of mystery and human empowerment.  Deb Soule often mentions Blue Vervain flower tincture's affinity for those who carry tension in their neck.  That's what gave me the idea of working with the flower's healing signature vibrationally, and at the throat chakra level. 

Last summer I prepared a blended bowl with many blue vervain flowers - each cut individually.  I then added some evening primrose flowers.

I made this bowl for ongoing personal healing efforts related to overcoming the remaining layers of energetic depletion specifically related to having an inappropriate and consciously out-of-bounds mother.  That's the kindest, bluest way I can put it.   Healing wounds incurred in this manner takes a lot of patience and dedication.  The process is one of literal self-mothering.

Vervain's gift to the bowl relates to the plant's affinity with neck tension.  My mother had a certain 'move' when we were out in public and I was in some way non-compliant or she simply imagined I might become that way.  She'd press her thumb quite hard into the spot where my right shoulder and neck join and then dig her fingers into different tender spaces on either side of my clavicle bone. 

Sometimes I still feel that grip.  Evening Primrose flower essence is, in large part, used to heal any kind of mother-wound. So I made myself this blend and as I set the bowl in place for solarization, I thought consciously of a number of friends who at times grapple ineffectively with the challenge of clearing away layer after layer of scar tissue and toxic residue.  I had not planned to harvest any of the vervain flowerheads.  It wasn't the promise I made to the medicine spirit - to let her seeds form and flow freely.  But I did honor the physical plant's offering as being part of the  medicine spirit's guidance and wisdom.

This  past year I planted Blue Vervain in this place for the first time.  I got six plants from Select Seed - and planted pairs that self-designated once I let them know of my plans - in three very different places on the property:  in the south-west corner of the field garden, in the sunniest east-to-west portion of the evolving sanctuary, and in the sunniest spot in the side pocket gardens out front.  Although there were copious flower heads I held fast to the promise to make and sow all their seeds.  It felt right and I dreamed the plant's medicine spirit was appreciative to experience follow-through on my promise, as well as hearing and answering the invitation to make a healing blend.

My son was born a month early and yet right on time.  Medically, he needed some help and spent the first four days of his life in Mass General's NICU.

let me tell you something.  you know you're a parent when:

less than 6 hours after giving birth, a special team with an equally special ambulance arrives and the doctor looks you both right in the eyes and says "this is a 50-50 situation."

yeah.  that'll wake you right up.

But T was born in the year of the ox, and he was also in quite a bit better shape than any other babies in the NICU.  So he went back to Mount Auburn, where he was born, to receive the rest of the treatments he needed.  J would drive me to the hospital every morning at 7.  I stayed with my son until visiting hours ended at 9 in the evening.  J would arrive directly from work and hold T. until it was time to leave.

it was difficult.  For me, the no-choice hardwooden chairs were a nightmare but holding my boy was what we both needed and I would not recall this time with much thought given to the harsher aspects of starting out as a family in this particular manner.  I recall the love.  And the gratitude that our son was strong and essentially healthy.

on the way to the hospital each morning, we drove by a lovely old home with an enormous yard in which blue squills had been colonizing abundantly for a very long time.  The swath of blue - the color of healing in a lot of sympathetic magic work - gave me a definite boost.  My sense of joy was real.  Jeannine Parvati prepared me to be a certain kind of mother and I was not about to change the paradigm on top of The Plan.

I was present and I was loving.

and I'll go to my grave entirely certain that the magnificent carpet of squills

had something to do with that.

spring is almost here.  Well.  not here, here.  but Here.

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.

 

 

true blue heart

37 years ago, Jim and I were married in our dining room with 73 of our closest family and friends joining us - family with us in the dining room and all others in the living room and foyer.  It was super-cold that day and we had friends/relatives coming up from the Delaware Valley.  So I'd cranked the heat.  Because I'm a non-scientist, I did not consider the heat generated by 76 people (adding in Us and the JP who said he'd never been to a 'far out' wedding before but now he hoped there'd more ...)on top of cranking everything up to 72 degrees.  We were married directly in front of the old fashioned steam heater in the dining room.  The JP's face was bright pink.  I got dizzy.  started getting heart palpitations.  may or may not have been having an anxiety attack.  I rushed out amongst the family members, into the bathroom where I splashed-away my wedding makeup in an effort to calm down.  Ice cold water.  Laughing nervously from embarrassment. 

Later - Lordy Lou!  I heard from Aunt Grace's grandson (he was a wild 'un at the downstairs 'VIP lounge' section of the reception festivities.  that's all I'm saying) that after i rushed out a whisper chain flew through the living room contingent that I might be a runaway bride.

the mortification.  and Joey really enjoyed telling me about it, too.

be that as it may, three different people gave us copies of the book above. 

also?  people - throughout the ceremony and reception and up until the last time we had a gathering during The Before Times - have insisted, now and then, on referring to us as John & Yoko.

we don't like it.  at all.

for oh so many reasons.

5 years, to the day, prior to our wedding, we moved to our first apartment on the Allston/Brighton line in Boston. 

we decided to get married on Valentine's Day.

J suggested we 'home brew' things and have the ceremony on our anniversary of coming to town, three and a half weeks later.

there are stories.  but we pulled it off.

 

My mother's wedding gift was the above book which I kept borrowing from her.  She wrote a really lovely invocation on the fly leaf.

I sense a constancy in who we were, are, and shall yet  become when I look at these books.  41 years - years of all sorts, including a few that were undeniably out of sorts.

welcome to voice/hearing projection/reception truth-telling month.   I'll be back with the flower image/shift meditation in a couple of days.

LOVE

days of quiet heart nourishment

(The best part about my spontaneous trip out into the larger world was scoring a bag of seed starter without having to plan and implement a far more extensive trip out. More is coming.  I'm all set and will probably begin with some bronze and green fennel seeds provided I can get my act together in time, lunar-wise ...)

Today I socialized.  It was unexpected and that made it all the sweeter.  I saw my friend Bea and we spoke of many things including my friend rick.  i'd been meant to have dinner and a long walk around the lake by her home on the day he died.  I felt at the time he would have urged me - was, in fact, urging me - to go on with my plans.  He was like that, but I am not. 

It's the first time we've seen each other since that cancelled plan we'd both been anticipating.  I spoke of rick calmly and with an emotional lilt as opposed to a surge.  I spoke nakedly and without a shred of hiding who I am at the core level because I don't have to with Bea.  We don't see each other all the time but we share some fundamental formative life experiences that have bonded us in profound understanding of shared core awarenesses and response systems.  I could say to her:

he was the first, and for many years, only peer-friend I had because he always accepted me, just for myself, despite my crazy mother.

and she shut her eyes and put a hand to her heart before she turned her head away to laugh into her mask.

because she got it.  we share membership in that particular club.

I spoke of aloneness, that I realized didn't make sense, but yet it was real and had taken me months to layer into the rest of my mind and heart as my new situation normal.

At the end of our conversation she shouted to the sky that we would have our walk around the lake.  Soon.

As a child left to roam alone in vast museum wings, I considered Anubis a personal friend of some sort.  Took a long time to figure that out and even longer to grow into it.  The image above is from a postcard I insisted my mother purchase for me in the museum bookstore.  This Egyptian afterlife diety has come back into my mind due to his task of Weighing The Heart.  Am bringing it up because I'm thinking about it a lot.  There's a connection, for me, to the heart chakra that feels important to some type of insight or understanding that wants to happen - this idea of a guardian in charge of spiritual transformation via the afterlife - and the transitional system of measurement is the weight of one's heart.

The books above are two I like to re-read and recommend from time to time. 

Susan Scott's book is fascinating.  She's a Jungian based therapist who suffered a back injury that inspired her to change her entire way of practicing - it became walking talk rather than sitting.  On these walks she became aware of many trees that were growing in ways related to injury from which they sustained new growth patterns aimed at supporting a transition back to vibrancy.  I want to re-read some of the later chapters, when she's on a walking tour in England. 

Eliot Cowan's book is another favorite of long standing.  At a certain point in time it was hugely inspirational to my own plant/medicine/spirit co-creative commitment avocation.  It's feeling like a good time to re-visit and see what strikes me.

One summer I had tons of pink zinnias on the deck.  Somebody left me three six packs.  I don't know who.  They were just there one morning when I opened the door.  Three different values of pink.  They were all over the deck until frost.  The butterfly and hummingbird populations were ecstatic.

J has taken to reading my books.  I will not be reciprocating where the topic of macroeconomics is concerned. 

tonight's drawing night ...

...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.

 

 

Heart of Impeccability

not completely the right color range in the blooms but this image pretty much insisted on being the lede.  assuming it will resonate with somebody.

We're on the brink of another full moon.  This one will beam down upon us saturated in Virgo energy.  Like all the zodiac signs, the sign encompasses a lot of depth and nuance.  My long-standing awareness of the energy always leaves me leaning into the keyword: impeccability.

The Virgo full moon will bring us in touch with fast moving mercury-driven energy as well as an opportunity to bathe our consciousness in Luna's radiant reflection of impeccability, analytic prowess, and an ongoing invitation to move deeper along an individual and collective path of service.  Virgo's ruled by the planet mercury and the full moon's radiance may include swiftly re-written inner programming.  Stuff that hasn't made sense may suddenly fall into place.  Things that seemed insurmountably important may become less so or fall away altogether. 

Virgo's natural home is the sixth house.  This is the house of Service.  You heart chakra is, on certain levels, Service's primary temple of manifested illumination.  Try this, just now, as you're sitting to read:

Put your arms straight out in front of you so that your shoulders are straight but your arms slope down just a little bit.  Hold your hands out straight with the palms equally straight and facing each other.  Take a few cleansing breaths and then slowly open your arms while inhaling at the same pace you're opening your arms.  See how full and far you can fill your lungs.  Let your opened heart chakra breathe as if it, too, was a lung.  

imagine the universe breathing in unison with that kind of high quality energy flowing everywhere that sentience was equally open to project and receive.

light & love

rose

deep carmine

emerald green

magenta

jade - to rest and restore central, sympathetic and electric nervous systemste

chrysoprase to soothe and remove damage.  equally effective for land healing.  The Dive members and other friends are working with a blended red clover essence and chrysoprase elixir.  to repair and restore as and where needed. 

rose quartz to heal, period

sphaerocobaltite to strengthen bonds with a true friend

rhodochrosite - especially if your heart hurts enough to curl inward towards childhood response to such pains

rhodonite for self-acceptance just as you Are.

Think of these things and others that are personally relevant.  Pay attention to anything that appears or presents itself spontaneously.

 

 breathe through your heart and work with what you have that's been working so far to open and illuminate and heal the all-important primary chakras. 

 

try doing this every day for about a week.  Maybe two or three times a day.

see if you don't feel and perceive your heart center - and how limitlessly BIG it is - a lot more clearly after that time.

keep doing it, maybe ...

Meadowsweet is my favorite heart chakra toning and clarifying agent.  I work with this essence year-round as a constitutional of sorts.

thank you, Larry

Lawrence Ferlinghetti 1919 -2021

for all the words and all the rest

best and most wondrous afternoon, never to be forgotten, at City Lights Books with J. after living out of our van for about a month or so in '82.

this is the man who made me certain I could and should write poetry simply through the way I was electrified by his own work.

 

 

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