Saturday, May 21, 2016

The Nine of Wands








I am here, and then I am there, almost transported against my will. The sun beats desperately against my instantly sweating brow. I raise my hands to shield my eyes from this harsh heat. And in the scintillating waves of heat I realize there is someone standing not far from me. There was no trying to find this man. He stands before me now and eyes me warily. I feel uncomfortable in his harsh and defensive gaze and I drop my hand and my eyes with them. "I'm sorry," I say quietly, "can I help you?" And he shakes his head barely altering his stance. He seems suspicious of me. And then I truly notice him. He stands tall in clothes that he must have been fighting in. There are smudges of dirt and the edges lay in tatters and he is holding tightly to a staff. I look at him more fully and see his head is coarsely bandaged with a filthy torn rag and his hair is sweaty and matted with blood and dirt. Blood seeps out from under the bandage to run slowly along his rough and unkempt face.


His eyes shift towards me sharply. "What are staring at?", he growls as his eyes seem to narrow in defiance and distrust. And I startle to realize I have been staring at him. "you're, you're hurt" I stutter and I fumble as I try to reach out to help him but he gestures angrily, lowering the stick he holds slightly toward me. I react taking a step back. "But you're bleeding" I try one more time, more sure of myself. But he grunts at me and seems to end this conversation. I realize he will not speak to me again.


I glance to the side of him and suddenly notice that the stick he carries is multiplied eight times behind him. He must have placed them as a guard about himself before I arrived. And most assuredly, the do form a bit of a fence or boundary behind him. And I realize that once they were sticks, but somehow these eight staffs seem to broaden and grow under my careful watch. They expand and sprout the tiniest of spring green leaves. Roughly they form, and I am fascinated as I continue to watch and realize that these sticks he chose to place behind him are now supporting him in his determination. With each wave of strength and resolution I feel emanating from this broken soldier, I watch the branches sprout farther and the leaves darken. He seems magical without even knowing. He has created this strength and this resilience. He has created his own defense against the enemy and I lean into those subtle energies. I feel my own soul being honored in that flow.


And I realize he no longer looks in my direction and I glance at my own hands somehow grown sticky and notice they are bloody even tho I never touched his wound. I brush them on my pants suddenly noticing my ragged and dirty cloak. Suddenly my hands and feet seem to fade away and I notice the green coarse grass waving under them. And then my whole being seems to fade and I realize I am spirit and I can still see this place, but no longer can this worn but triumphant soldier see me. And then I start to realize that I am seeing from where he once stood. I hear distant sounds. And I feel this same resolve and strength I had seen earlier. I am standing strong and holding onto a staff of my own. The sounds again pierce my consciousness...metal on metal and indistinct yelling.


Am I now that soldier himself? I have only done as I needed. This is not a path of struggle chosen - rather I feel myself rising to the form and calling. There is no other path. I must only do what needs to be done. But somehow I have gained acclaim in only doing as must needs be done. I have been thru so much and I have endured past the point had ever imagined I would. My body is beaten and bloody and in some ways unrecognizable from before, but I am stronger than I ever imagined being and I clutch more firmly even now to this staff in my hand. It has changed as well. I feel the rough bark under my raw fingers. I realize my blood has stained this wood and created a staff of remembrance. Somehow my spirit knows that this will not always be like this. I have this knowing that when night falls, I will be released of this firm stand. Beautiful night with the moon shimmering over coolness and stillness. I have persevered so long and I choose to be proven worthy. At this moment I stand alone as the hermit of old. I wonder at that. Did I choose this path? Or was it chosen for me?


And I realize this is my life with a special needs child. I am this soldier in the battle and I have struck out to form my own shelter and my own world of safety for him. I have done only what was necessary and I have come to each battle and fought my hardest. I have only done what I had to in the moment to survive and protect what I hold so dear. I have held firm to that which I so ardently believe.These things have changed everything. They have changed the scenery. They have changed my trajectory. But most of all, they have changed me, irrevocably. I am injured but I am strong. I am dirty and full of memories of trauma and fighting but I am overcome. I am a victor.


And again I glance at these tree beings behind me that have become solid and unwavering. The have continued to grow as I have been standing here numb in the face of so much revelation. They are now forming a luscious green canopy above me. I relish the cool shade and feel myself lift into the arcing and graceful branches. I feel myself comforted and slipping away in the knowledge that this soldier will endure to the end and the victory that he alone can see. I have become him after all.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

The Empress




The middle of the the afternoon. Summer draws its lazy hand across a deep blue sky and eddies of heat and shimmer blur my vision of distance. Insects buzz around me and soft breezes catch at my loose hair and I feel languid and drowsy. I am under this wide open sky not too far from a tree line. It is a field and it is full of wheat and dusty fragrance. This is late summer, the time of harvest and plenty. I feel this deep satisfaction and I fill my senses with the warmth and the harmony and the scents of this time of abundance.

Finally I gain the strength past my drowsiness to look up and see at the beginning of the trees and bathed in this aura of warm mid afternoon sun, a goddess of sorts. She is surrounded by cotton pillows and blankets and softly swirling netting. An aura of pink light seems to infuse her area. She is gentle and smiling at me and I push myself to rise and quietly walk on bare feet in her direction. Things change around me a bit and I feel the cool comfort of so many trees behind her and smell this piney scent and notice a babbling brook. The sounds of little birds flitting and cooing to each other fills my ears. It is a heavy but not uncomfortable blanket of comfort that covers my entire being and I am walking so slowly and picking my way thru the field of wheat to this beautiful lady. I notice that my clothes are tattered. I am wearing a dress of some sort in dark colors and shredded fabric. My feet are bare and dirty and I am unkempt and unready to meet someone so sensuous and beautiful as this Empress

She smiles brighter and a little more as I keep coming closer and I feel encouraged even tho I am aware that I do not shine as she does. She radiates the sun above in this warm comfort, but she is not uncomfortable in this heat. Rather she smells of sun-drenched hair and folds of wind dried cloth. her dress billows about her and she resides on soft and ample pillows. She is pregnant and I am sure it is twins. She inclines her head to me as if to indicate I know the truth. And she reaches out her hand and I come closer at once overcome to touch these soft folds that surround her and I feel strangely and deeply aroused. She is so lovely with gently waving hair and a crown on her head of twelve diamonds that reflect like stars.

I wonder at her ability to have so much wisdom and then wonder how I know that. She is divine feminine at the strongest. And I am in awe of this loveliness and this sensing of deep, deep rivers of understanding. She has seen all. She has seen pain and travail and she has seen me. She has noticed this emptiness and void and she has called me across this field. She has heard my supplications and my aching for more meaning and more understanding. In fact she has called me into this soft world when I wasn't here before. She knows that from great pain and travail can come great compassion and the ability to nurture. She has drawn me to heal me. She has called my spirit from another time and place. She is the mother I never had - she is the soft and the strong. She is the friend I always wanted. She is the mentor my heart asked for. She is the strength and the yielding. She is beautiful and soft and yet powerful and defined. She is all in this very moment I stand beside her so deeply aware of her power and presence.

I see her soft cheek and her fair and perfect skin. Rose light shines from her face and her eyes are liquid pools of compassion. She is perfection and she is looking at me as tho I have something to offer and I feel embarrassed by my thin and filthy appearance. I am not worthy of so much glory and strength. And I have brought nothing but myself to this place. But then I glance again at my thin frame and notice my dress has lengthened and it is this gossamer flowing linen. I am no longer dirty and my body is shining. The edges of my skirts soak in the flowing water beside us and I feel this gentle tug from the fabric. I look again at the empress and she seems to be sending this light into me as she hands me a pomegranate to nourish my depleted body. I eat and the stains of the fruit spatter onto that soft white fabric of my dress but it is not as it shouldn't be. It seems as if these stains grow and emanate outward and become this living life force. They radiate and now the dress glows in this rose quartz color. I am stunning in her glow and her life force. She radiates so much life and abundance that I am swallowed up into her aura and now I am as she is but with darker hair and lush brown eyes. She is full and I am fuller still. I am as a gem and I know I will never be as I was. I am full of her life and her ability to create. I am full of her love and her compassion.

She never saw me as I was but only as I was to become. I have become and I am never. I was and I am. I feel this life swirling from the beginnings of my toes and up through my legs and into my navel and chest and as it flows thru my being, my head becomes this crown of many colored stars. And I radiate. I am in awe and I don't step away from this scene but rather I am suddenly in this moment as I was then. My organs pulse and my body radiates and I feel sensual and drawn to pleasure myself and continue this drawing and filling of life and force and spiraling and energy that I felt so deeply in her presence. She has given me far more than anything she held. She has given me a piece of her spirit and her love. I will create as she. I will draw in the light and diffuse it. I am gentleness and soul. I am compassion and nurturing. I hold all and I am soft and strong as she. She has turned my mourning into mirth and my grief into enlightenment. The dark things have become my light and I am aware of those I can nurture and love others just as she has me. What she has given is now mine to impart.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Claire de Lune



Claire de Lune is often played and well known. But I have reinterpreted this journey starting with the moon and ending among the stars. These are the things I see as I play this well loved and admired piece of music by Debussy.

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Two dulcet chords, one barely outshining the other and the mood is set. I face these ivory keys one foot each on parallel pedals. A soft shimmer and vibrating beam. My fingers touch so lightly and so deeply too. I hear the moon in my piano and the phrases flow as her own shining. First one and then the next and I am swept away on tones so soft and so gentle. It seems easy to touch these notes. I find my fingers carried on them and then my mind lifts away from this physical sense and I am floating. Floating up to the top of each lyrical ascent and then drifting back again. And I am never quite touching anything but these silver beams. They wrap around me and fill me with a scintillating light. I am enraptured. I am enchanted.


And now a pause and these heavy things lift themselves into the motion. The moon shines in the dark after all. And it is darkness that plays at the fringes of my mind and echoes the past of my struggle. Rising, rising. There is more to come and yet the chords grow brighter in the steady climb. I feel this pulse in each measure now; two then three, then two then three again. And each one lifts me higher and higher until all resolves in an orgasm of tiny fast paced tones. And the dark has faded into moving waves. Waves that carry these moonbeams and shatter that light into thousands of tiny undulations.


I am seeing this dark water. Vastly stretching into inky shadows. I can imagine it travels on forever after the beam of light has vanished. On and on the waves roll, never faster but always as sure. Up and over and back again and they seem to wash my soul in their repetition, tugging and tearing at the places I have held so sure. I am undone. Now a melody. Unadorned and yet not, like a fine piece of glass with simplicity it's most pure quality. This melody reaches first here and then a little higher. And I am humming with it, sailing over these tender phrases with ease and love. And my voice falters where my body joins it. And I am one with these phrases and I am their lithe form shaping and creating and moving just so to these perfect brush strokes. I am one with them and they with me and there is no separation any longer.


Falling, falling. It seems a death of sorts. A lovely death. A choice, a shift. There is nothing of pain or sorrow here but rather a transformation of my own being into this symphony of sound. Rising again but this time in my spirit form and I no longer sit at those hard white keys. Rather I am part of this scene woven so deeply into my fiber. Lake, shadow and moon. The moon. So silver and so creamy and so luminous and yet so dark. How does she capture all these phrases? How does she weave them so effortlessly and I feel her radiate deep into my marrow. She has filled me with her light and her peace and her own radiance. And I am shining and I am reflecting her as she is reflecting me. I am this luminous orb and she is this radiant sphere and we are one and we are both and I remain so still for just a brief moment feeling this deep sense of belonging.


O these tiny notes. These tiny sparkling glitters falling all around me. I reach out and touch just one and feel its soft heat. It warms me. I feel it in my feet. And I feel myself lift just a bit. And now I am amongst these tiny points. I am feeling each one strike at me just so and tug this deep emotion in me. And I feel these tiny stars on my face and my arms and my legs and my breasts. And I raise myself to them and realize these same stars falling from my own eyes. They are so full and my emotion is so great. Each tiny star is a jewel that sparkles as it leaves my heart and joins this celestial race. I wear them and I move in them. They have accepted me and filled me.


And now I float softly and begin this descent. These waves call to me again. This up and this down and up and down and this rise and this fall and I sink lower and lower. I feel the waves touch my being. It is a warm water. Water that welcomes. It is a womb once again that begins to take hold of my soul. I sink lower and find myself almost completely submerged in these gentle waves. Folding, caressing, taking me close again. I am secure and serene and I at last surrender to this moon drenched sea.