Sparkling Lotus Ink

burgeoning super moon report

The sparkly effect around last night's moon is the result of tree flowers and newly unfurling maple leaves.  I stood outside for quite while.

The upcoming Scorpio full moon has been asking for advance preparation on my part.  This is a significant switch up from me asking my water-cousin's moon-in-waiting to be gentle with me.  I tend to do that as a matter of course and have ever since I was 18 or 18.   'Mixed results' would be a diplomatic way of putting it.  I generally feel like I'm trapped in a psycholgical and emotional cement mixer with thousands of boulders tumbling around intent on 'polishing' me  in the emotional, subtextual, and depth-charged way of such things.  And then other times, it's amazingly healing and feather-gentle.  That's how it was last year, for instance. 

now this year the Scorpionic medicine spirit is talking to me rather than keeping quiet while I figure it out on my own.  Telling me to Prepare to Receive. 

This switch feels appropriate in my life's arc as well as where we are in the chakra wheel: Scorpio moving right on in and murmuring hey baby.  just get yourself ready, okay?  I assume my mind will blown in some way that may or may not be translatable in language-based way.  Part of getting ready for that in the physical sense is another part of what I generally experience during the Scorpio lunar fullness.  Just as usual, I've had really debilitating head pain for the past few days. It's been intense enough to promote altered consciousness. 

People who make a habit out of talking to themselves through their bodies know what I'm talking about.  In my case, it's been vividly clear to me since my late teens that my mind and spirit turned out to be my high cards.  But I try not to flash that around like physically healthy people like to do it.

We all get gifts, we all get burdens.

and then we either sack up or demand to see the manager.

that's my boiled down sixth chakra/scorpio full moon takeway.

it really never varies at that level

but the particulars are endlessly rearrange-able

and so they have been.

The fire pit area post burning is always a kind of new year because the old growing season's been burnt clear.  J's in the background attending to some of his newest tiny white pine transplants.  I've been going outside everyday (except the time it snowed) and slowly tottering around with the cat, and my eyes peeled for new signs of life.  Sometimes I weed a little, and take a fair amount of pictures during camera days.  I dream and envision and listen to all the invisible voices and dreams of the waking plant world.

I'll take the head pain involved

with that level of high frequency reception because I consider it a reasonable price.

Also there's stuff I can do to keep everything at a dull roar so I can maintain some semblance of regular activity on its slowest speed.

add to which:

after I heard the verdict and finally exhaled?

my head pain didn't vanish

but the level is now both livable

and simple to control when it's not.

now i'm going back to not listening to what people have to say

because I'm seeing now, and what I see hasn't yet found a dovetail with word tincturing.  Not in myself or an ability to absorb that kind of conscious word use as it's offered from others.    This happens a lot.  Like the eight year period when I went analog and knew without doubt I wasn't 'missing' a thing. I think the part of my brain that felt it was vital I clock the mainstream level of what's on other people's minds is undergoing major revision.  A lot of this head pain that's louise hay-worthy in nature, is all about how much I need to disconnect from what the shadow realms of keeping track of Everybody are up to.  I've always considered it a point of honor that I don't disconnect from my species along lines of affinity, time management concerns, or discernible 'point'/purpose.  Maybe it still is.  But I'm ready to retire from the front lines there, as well as elsewhere.

This years Maple flowering season has been straight-up magical with its primarily sunny days full of warmth and freshly emergent human experience.  All the new alchemists were able to achieve their first co-creative success by way of working with the flower medicine spirit of the first flower essence they came to know - through the dive program - Red Maple.

This a profound culmination of shifting awareness.

The sense of satisfaction I feel is deeply nourishing.  As is my profound gratitude to the trees spirits who so obviously gave of themselves to these budding healers and light workers.  I felt their energy rippling with invitation:  come.  we are ready to receive your reception.

and they meant me, too. 

and so I went to the red maples here and there around the property, simply receiving.

Ladies Mantle is the alchemist's plant totem by long-established principles.  I invited the new alchemists to approach the plants on the mornings they were here and drink from the leaves if they were so invited.

they were not.  and neither was I.

but we all stood in wonderment

and gave ourselves some points for not going ahead and doing it anyway.

'that would have been so human', one of them texted me.

I considered it a moment

of professional achievement wreathed

in deeply happy sense of personal fulfillment.

I have this plant growing in two parts of the dooryards:  the tiny strip gardens by the porch and a far more sizeable colony in the sidepocket gardens.  They were the only thing the moles didn't destroy back when I was trying to create "nice" beds that looked like I knew that kind of knowing what I was doing (which I do ...)  rather than maintaining a largely feral pollinator corridor, that rings my chimes about a thousand times more.

Another thing I really enjoy is successfully growing a plant from seed to flower - particularly when it's on my holy grail list.  Today I am SO INCREDIBLY UP AND HAPPY because yesterday I spied flower buds of the one and only Cowslip I've gotten this far.  An old friend has grown dozens of them and once created a simple but effective walkway border of just cowslips and japanese ferns.  She's a double Libra.  Seeds instinctively know what she wants from them, and take it from there.   I'm good with just the buds on this single plant. 

it's what my seeds know I want from them:

to shine in their own way and make a meaningful statement in my heart.

Yesterday I didn't care about my head's atrocious hammering neuro-circuitry

because of those buds.

mission accomplished, i say ...

all the plants in this post are neighbors to each other.  The way this coral bell's emerging suggests there's a division of parts in her future.  I refer to this quietly lovely companion as The Dowager.  She reminds me of really old ladies in my earliest formative memories.

Tried for years to grow wild columbines from seed.  Finally gave up and got three little plants from Select Seed.  I planted them in a row for the hummingbirds to feed during a gap in the flowering cycle.  One was summarily dug up by a squirrel intent to replace it with a cache of sunflower seeds.  The other two are pictured above.  There are also three seedlings growing in the cracks of the bricks.  One really wet day  in May, when my head stops hurting as much until thunderstorm season,  I will transplant the babies in the same small bed with their mothers.

This lunar cycle's new moon in Aries has had me on a mission to complete a single hanging-on task that requires a degree of mindfulness a day.  To that end, yesterday's endeavor involved repairing a pomegranate seed rattle I cured and began working with in my early 20's.  have posted about it a fair amount over the years but don't remember if any of those words exist in this iteration of an SLI blog.

Above the repairwork is still wet.  It has since dried and I've lightly sanded so the matte acrylic gel isn't bumpy enough to announce itself.  Underneath the silk ribbon is a hole that developed when the skin of of the pomegranate cracked.  I figured out what to do, and then waited until I was in the right head and other cosmological alignments had occurred.

at first I thought I might like to take other portions of the ribbon scrap and apply them randomly.

silk is such a magically conducive organic material.

am going to use something cellulose based though to be more in keeping with the rest of the rattle.

didn't mind using a little of the gel for the repair rather than decoration because it makes that piece of ribbon better supported from the inside of the hole, and little seeds shaking against the silk.  Have shaken it a lot this morning.

it brings me into myself.

If you have a chance to make yourself something meaningful & sacred this month

especially between now and the week after the full moon

go for it.

Why This Particular New Moon Was So Significant

The new moon is always ruled by the same astrological sign that's ruling the sun at that time. In this case, the new moon/sun was ruled by the cardinal fire sign of Aries.  And this New fire moon is the beginning of the astrological year.  When it's possible to burn brush on that day, we do so.  It activates a kind of elevated, hyper-reality vibe out in the field and I've come to the conclusion that's a perceptual skew aided and abetted by the fact that we both have an Aries ascendant.  A lot of sympathetic magic seems to compound itself as a result.  Elemental pieces come together in a flowing effortless way if we're outside doing this particular activity in sequence with the lunar cycle.  

  Normally it's raining, or sleeting, or snowing, or hailing on that particular day of the year.  But this year we burned less than a day before the new Aries moon rose.   And the special, hushed sense of pending release that many are able to experience on New Year's Eve, or Samhain, or the timeframe signifying the last few hours before they were born, each year on their birthday -- all of that same incredible energy was there in the field's atmosphere.  I wandered around rattling, weeding, clearing away spent branches, and such.  As I was moving I was also considering the Pam Gregory video I watched about this new moon cycle, and the idea of setting intentions/seeding our consciousness with the coming year in mind.  I felt called to seek out a stone from the general landscape.  Something to represent my amped-up commitment to the land and our gardening endeavors.

As regular readers are aware - I'm currently immersed in a really wonderful class with Deb Soule.  It's been an astonishingly grounded and grounding experience which has also elevated my sense of virtually endless possibilities related to both soul and spirit nourishment, as well as caring more mindfully and in a deeper sense of shifting balance with the four primary elements as well as the year's lunar cycles.  Am positive that raised and upgraded awareness is a large part of why this particular Aries moon felt as sacred and elevated as I've ever felt on that day since my mid-to-late 30's.   

but there was a lot more BIG tree magic fueling my sense of vibrational upgrade:

The red maple tree flowers hit peak.  Their brilliant, ruby red energy field was vibrating everywhere around the property, and that omnipresence felt like a wonderful enhancement of the Aries Sun & Moon energy.  For five days the sky and landscape was flooded with sunlight and mild-temperatures while these wonderful hardy trees brought the first sustained burst of flowering life (including masses of pollen) to our locality.  Oftentimes the maples bloom in cold and inhospitable weather.  But this year the flowers where plump and fluffy.

You see the red haze here and there in the tree line above.  Now the elms are also flowering. 

and the shallots I planted last fall are up and lookin' hardy.

Many people do not enjoy working with indigo, particularly if they skew towards certain forms of depression - especially seasonal affect disorder.  If this is you, try adding a little red to the blue and work with deep purple instead.   It's actually a much better color-ray choice if you want to get some depth-within-depth perception going.

stones you might like for this month:  Tektite, sodalite, grape jelly amethyst, azurite.  Hematite is also nice as a grounding and protective agent.  Something about its mirror-like properties of protection are a really good fit for Mind.

what to expect:  at some point this month you're going to be invited to know yourself in a new way. it might be something familiar and recurring that needs to be seen from a different calibration arc, or it might be something previously unsuspected.

How to stay grounded:  eat high quality root vegetables a few times a week. Cook with Garlic and Ginger.  Add a slice or two of burdock root to your spring broths and soups.  practice alternate nostril breathing.   it makes such a difference. Try it for the rest of this month and see if you don't agree.

This is the rock that called to me from the edge of the woods. It wishes to represent the new astrological wheel-year.  Seems likely that will come to mean any number of things.  I found it ...

right after I took this picture

and this one, by the old well. 

Then I wandered all over for a couple of hours while J. burned brush and I got better acquainted with my projected roles in this year's various gardens.

May the eternal firelight of new beginnings guide and guard you well throughout this year's wheel-around.

What do you want YOUR wheel/house to be?

Decide now

and follow through

.

an exercise of sorts

Two days in a row now I have had a text from Miles:  Where's the Zinn post?

I've been waiting for an internalized sense of the jump-off point to the Sixth Chakra.  Because for me, Zinn was primarily a visionary, although I clearly grasp he comes to it by way of Fifth Chakra notoriety.

here's the exercise:  follow this link

Look at the banner picture.  Then look at the three visible book titles over his left shoulder.  Look back at his face.  And then come back here or scroll down until you see the same picture, as well as the one to its right.

and then

soften everything inside

and have a bit of a think

concerning au courant/Trendy booklist forms of paying attention

and

the real deal.

If you really want to get real

about being white

and actively

dealing with

(rather than simply 'acknowledging')

racism:

read Zinn

I say it all the time

specifically because he paid attention

all along.

He spoke out - and waaaaay loudly -

during a time

when it was seriously risky

rather than de rigueur fashion

to do as much.

have a think on that too as well

as your reading and speaking habits

in relation to specifically what guides both.

and then:

Go to your nearest mirror

look at who you are

right now

and answer this question:

where do you want to be as we leave this chakra and move on to really paying attention to that which is equally Within and Without You

?

Figure that out and stand tall in it

Be what you say.  Listen through ears that are committed to making an ongoing choice

to hear or not hear

whatever.

To speak or not

and

why

.

something's changed for you this month

because of this month

including the trial I refuse to watch

because I'm not letting my

heart break any farther

simply because my Other half

isn't willing to sit by

(not any more)

while my white half

does what all the other

"good" white people

are doing.

simply because

good white people

are telling me

I "really should"

.

speaking this truthfully

and directly

with the sense that all my chakras

are pretty well in balance

is completely new territory.

I've done it as I intended

on my other blog

and now I'm getting around to what Miles really meant

by The Zinn Post

here and now.

***

please don't set it aside:

this moment

in our collective

experience

as a mere

experience

.

Let it set a good strong root

that sustains the rest of your life

as well as collective experience

instead.

***

returning to source

Am trying to incorporate more daily trips to contemplate moving water.  It's right on the other side of the back dooryard.  Sometimes I tell myself that without actually crossing the short distance.  It doesn't just feel like a with-holding form of energetic unkindness to myself, and a dereliction of co-creative duty, it also feels like an ongoing wasted opportunity to ever so easily move closer to living the life I've imagined since forever.   

Ever since the sun moved into my ascendant sign of Aries I have been energized with a capital E especially at the mental level.  This happens every year and I've noticed the flow and productivity rate of how it goes is directly relational to how closely I pay attention to what Aries means and reflect/notice afresh the details of how the energy tends to manifest in my awareness and embodiment of it. 

Cardinal fire energy wants to MOVE.  andiamo, baby.  As in three weeks ago come ON what are you waiting for???

J also has an Aries ascendant.  We embody what I just typed out with words in completely different ways, and within totally mix-and-match spheres of influence.   And usually we are quiet on the outside, except with each other.  A lot of times we reach for grounding and re-alignment by standing together on the bridge over the stream.  Just being and breathing with the ever-moving water.  Yesterday we noticed the Peregrine Falcon is back. Also of note: Select Seeds sent out a notice they'll begin shipping plants in three weeks but I doubt I'll see mine for a further three.  They sold out.  everything.  

Above is last night's moon.  I went out to see the rise and enjoyed bearing slow breathing witness to Luna peak above the White Pine that I have named The Cherished Daughter.  The tree and I had a very meaningful encounter last week and then last night we had another.  This time there was triangular energy because the moon rose in the same alignment. 

Here are my springtime books.  Am excited to dive in to the book on the left this evening.
Have decided to continue reading poetry first thing in the morning.  Incarnating in this manner is something I used to practice in my early twenties.  It's nice re-membering to grow old with it here in the Now.  Tomorrow I'll start the volume above.

And my chosen re-read.  It's been about fifteen years.  But I look at the sketches I made for some of the exercises every two or three...

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 ..

libra fullness

During the past week  I've been meditating on the sign of libra - sometimes stopping what I'm doing in order to incorporate the action and whatever it yields into the fabric of whatever I was previously less than fully engaged with.  also re-watched Pam Gregory's full moon video last night.  It's been clarifying and given me food for thoughts and actions

yet at the same time

For me Libra is always seeming to be about:

social/justice

I think of it just like that, and then visualize separating social/ from justice in order to create a pair of scales.

Libra is a cardinal (self-directed/leader) sign and thus everything that underlying energetic imperative tends to mean as it pertains to the key of mind&wind.  

other Libra-specific properties and stomping grounds:  Elegant lines in life and thought.  aficionado and lover of beauty.  balance.  iron fist in velvet glove (for years I was very close to a double Libra soul sister who deeply relished that description of her particular mojo ...) and  at a top-down humanity level:  Queen or King of any given room of whatever kind  - which librans are justly known to read with impeccable grace and skill.  All stuff I habitually think about when considering Libra qualities and specific people that I know or have known - love or have loved.

But what I forgot about, and then recalled via PG's video - is something really paramount to moon gazing:

relationship.

The libra full moon energy began to gather itself two weeks ago.  It will continue for two weeks once the full moon sets. 

In that linear time frame

all manner of inner - and inter-personal - relationship may be illuminated.  All relationship of Self-to-Thing.  self-to-Self.  s/Self-to-Other

relationship seems to be coming up for a lot of us

the way presumed givens about our established RELATIONSHIP

to impeccability got real with any number of us last month.

.

What is our relationship to our earthwalk?  Why do we feel that entire chunks of our existence leave our connection to other-relationship impermeable, but this 'can't be helped'?  How are any of the other things we imagine to be true when we kinda-sorta know we're out of balance - but most primarily hold awareness of all the various things we most definitely do NOT intend to do about it - really as important as 'getting' balanced in order to maintain and consciously/constantly re-calibrate what balance authentically means to our hearts and souls?

I guess I'm asking

what if our most authentic richly layered life

of radical self-acceptance

isn't synonymous

with some type of special occasion

we deign to allow ourselves

every now and again

?

.

When I look back on the past week and a half or so, I can see how important Relationship has been to every other component of my life's flow.  Every single thing.  Furthermore, the energy surrounding this linear awareness has been illuminated by my ever-deepening understanding that our current cosmological flow is one of sacred unity and peace.  Both universal qualities are very elevated Libra ideals, and I really love my sense of the two universal properties flooding the earth's surface by way of reflected light that's also amplified by the cosmological specifics of this Libra full moon's point in spiraling linear time.

..

For the past day and a half I've been experiencing an offputting neurological and perceptual re-alignment process of sorts.  It's very reminiscent of grace's recent experience in that, although it's playing out quite differently, it contains the same cumulative experiential quality of combined linear happenstance and Visitation.  The other glaring similarity is that I was thrown all the way out of balance in a tangibly physical and perceptual/mental way. 

(i see for myself this happening as an act of imperfect perfection as I begin shifting prep-wise to the Sixth Chakra range.)

Thursday night I was sitting very happily in lotus position at my place at the dining room table - taking some realignment time following an amazing ancillary Healing Garden workshop with Lisa Estabrook.  She is a very gifted (libra) Spiral Talker.  Think everyone who participated wound up on a higher cloud as a result. Within that period of still elevated consciousness a tick bit me.  repeatedly.   I could see the small track the creature made along my outer breast, arm pit, and underarm. 

Ticks being the reality they are around here, and me having a very compromised immune system, I know some measure of what a tick can bestow beyond Lyme.  Lyme I know through J and his cumulative experiences with it.  'Knowing' (aka my favorite human entrapment) wasn't immediately relevant.  I was tripping my brains out courtesy of the two most successful bites .  It happened really fast - by the time  I was looking at the results in the mirror.  Even in that condition I knew to mother myself effectively.  I took the tick out in one clean pull like i do it all the time because I do. 

Usually, with a tick bite, I have a lot of local discomfort for maybe twice as long as would be normal with a more robust immune system.  But I've never had consciousness altering responses to any sort of insect bite beyond yellow jackets.   In this case, I stood in front of the mirror looking at the weird trail the tick forged on my body.  And it reminded me of ritualistic body scarification in a zoomed in scale-distortion version of itself.  It also reminded me of the parasitic tracks our species makes - not just on this planet but also out in space.  And - obviously- it reminded me of racism's ongoing parasitic determination to Win.

I recall speaking about the latter topic to my reflection.  That's not really unusual at all, unfortunately - but in this case I was doing it to make ongoing note that my tongue wasn't thickening and my pulse remained steady and wtihin normal range.  It was a very weird space of time.   In which I was my own mother, medic, and disintegrating self's version of Being My Own Best Friend.

it left me open to life-changing revelations concerning what's best kept and let go as well as where personal responsibility ends. 

getting that last, very particular piece caused me laugh for an extended period of time last night and in the earliest morning hours of moon gazing.  it was so far beyond therapeutic and elevating that I'm not sure what I would call it beyond

breathing in a very different key.

**Namaste**

 

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.

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.