Moonrise Kingdom and First Love ~ And the Night of Full Moon Cows

    Who doesn't want to talk about first love? I just saw the movie "Moonrise Kingdom" and a flood of memory flowed like such sweetness with only a hint of bitter....but not really, maybe just like a dandelion flower. It's bitter but beautiful. In this movie, these two young 12 year old loves run away together on a wilderness adventure, to marry in a strange ceremony~
   I would run away and marry my love. Oh, wait, that's what ____ and I did. We sped west as fast as we could. No rest till we crossed the Mississippi and even then no rest until a frosty campout in the Colorado mountains. Ill prepared for such a chilly night. Oooooh, but we were free! We were true lovers! We were runaways, perhaps to be joined in marriage by a Native Shaman we might come across in the desert. That was our plan. To marry and never return, to continue, put our car on a cargo ship to Hawaii and live there, married, maybe continue up to Alaska. We were lovers, soul travelers, joined at the wrist. Holding hands, walking through the deserts of Utah, singing Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and Tori Amos. Running from Serial Killers. Finding a cache in a cave. Is this their hideout? "Leave it", I said. He wanted to dump out the water. I didn't want to get involved.

   "With my love by my side"

  Oh, the romance of old things and new things. I didn't even have an email account yet, in this time that I write about. We had a disc man with a cassette tape converter. ____ said I was a Pink Floyd connoisseur. He was in awe of my Pink Floyd-ness. I've never loved a band before or since the way that I loved Pink Floyd.

   Oh, first love. First love of a band. First love of a man. First time saying, "Oh my God, I think I really love you"...and....and...and....You totally love me! You love me so much you can't sleep! I can't sleep! Ah! And you bring breakfast treats to me at my job. And my coworker says, "How do you know?" And I say, in all my worldly and universal experience of being in love for a month or two, "You just know, I don't know."

    ~Fearless~

                The Night of the Full Moon Cows

    Oh, we survived. We were told by the officials to leave New Mexico on account of the Serial Killers. So we moseyed through the state line road blocks to our favorite campsite many, many hours and miles away in Utah on a clayishly-muddy river bank lined with cotton wood trees.
   Playing cards, drinking beers and listening to Sci-Fi late night radio, trying not to be freaked out by the 'serial killer' thing......
  .....But I kept hearing strange noises in the night outside of the Jeep. Were inside the vehicle, too scared of the serial killers we supposedly left in the dust, two hundred miles and a state line away, to set up camp.
   I felt a presence. ___ said I was paranoid. My skin was crawling. "Something is out there! I can't stand not knowing. If it's the killer, he'll kill us anyway! I can't stand it!"
   I summoned up all my courage and rolled down the passenger side back seat window.......only to come face to face, eye to eye, nose to nose, warm breath on my face, with a huge and totally benign cow. Two in the morning cow, staring at me, shifting his body slowly back and forth. "Oh, God", I sighed in half cry/sob/relief breath, "It's just a cow. It's a cow"
  And then I heard, and then I looked, and in the light of the big glorious full moon that graced us with it's mysterious and holy glow, I saw an endless sea of cows, some quietly moo-ing. All I could see were cows. All around my Jeep, around all the trees. All looking at me. We got out onto the roof on my car with more beers and just hung out with the moon and one million cows. I could hear them crossing the river. I could hear the coyotes. We were a drunk love island in a sea of cows.
   

 

As They Come~ These Moments

Someone said recently I should write more in my blog. I write about whatever comes up. Today, I have anxiety. After a sunny spot mid afternoon meditation, this is what came to mind~

 .....I erased the poem

.....and feel the warm sun on my back, and an opening in my heart and nothing else exists outside of that. Only stories.



Hmmmm, what else~

I can write about the dreams that weave themselves throughout my sleep time and into my waking hours.

"They weave their web around
My bed
And make their way
Up the strand"

..I often dream of very deadly venimous spiders, very close to my face. I wake up terrified, afraid to move, to even breathe. I slither out of bed, out from under the dangling, creeping arachnids and make my way to the door. Only when my hand touches the doorknob do I begin to realize it was 'that dream again'. Big sigh, deep breaths, go drink some water, go to the bathroom...okay, back to bed.

.....or maybe I can't go back to sleep.

"So I sit
And I write
And I am right between
This world and that
And I am right between
The hot pounding in my ear
And the heaving creature outside
My window
I hear it's roaring breath
As if to say
'How did I end up
In this strange courtyard?'
It doesn't make sense
Well, nothing makes sense
We are just accepting these strange moments
As they come~
As they come
Bubbling out from the pot
As they come
Speeding through the red light
As they come
Sitting in a quiet forest
As they come
The gentle deer and I
Eyes locked in the early morning
Both curious

~Namaste

And she still didn't really know what IT was, but she knew she was getting closer~

"ManyNames caught her bare foot on a root and fell to the ground. It's always startling and slightly upsetting to fall unexpectedly, she wasn't really hurt, but had skinned her knee on a rock and felt the tightness grow in her chest and her eyes begin to fill. A tear or two slipped down her cheek. 'Crying over a silly little stumble?, she said to herself.' But it actually felt good, warm wet tears coming down. The two tears became four, and then many more. 'Why bother stopping it, she thought, it's only me here in the forest, and my forest friends'. And suddenly she found herself crying uncontrollably, hitching sobs, tears flowing and flowing and flowing down her softening cheeks. She cried up her sadness, all her disapointments, and losses. She rolled onto her belly, onto the soft green moss and cried into the earth. The sweet mother took her tears, gently, and soothed her into sleep. ManyNames slept, a deep and dreamless sleep, awakening to the early morning birdsong bluetime. Feeling a deep calm and warm peaceful feeling in her heart, she felt closer to the source of all things than she could ever remember."

This story is our story. Of memory and old wounds, of releasing to make a little or a lot of room for new seeds to grow instead of getting drowned out by unkempt and unruly thoughts and emotions. I found myself in complete meltdown in yoga class last night. I started to cry in one challenging pose. I figured once the pose was over, I would be fine and could get on with class. But my face kept crinkling up and breathing became difficult, I got back on my mat and went into child's pose. Now I was really really crying. Anytime I would try to move or even entertain the thought of getting up, a whole new wave would wash over me and I couldn't move. I started to panic, thinking,'I can't just cry here in this huge room full of people, I need to get out of here', but the thought of getting up and walking across the room seemed so big. I found a moment where the class was engaged in an inversion,'Oh good, they're all upside down, here's my chance.' I left, but didn't want to entirely leave, so I stood by the big hallway window, and really let it fly. God, it felt good, and sad and painful. I was thinking back to dance class and gymnastics where the teachers would yell at me for not being able to touch my toes. They were mad at my body's limitations, and would have the other girs from class sit on me, as if that would help me release into a deeper stretch. I would be in tears as the teacher would push me down saying,'You need to stretch! You're not trying!' She didn't know that I stretched and stretched everyday, watching my cartoons,or whatever shows I watched, dancing in my living room, I stretched and stretched, hoping that I would finally touch my toes. When I got older and into yoga, I would spend almost an hour outside almost everyday, stretching meditating on releasing whatever it was that was keeping me from being able to fold forward. 'What is it that I need to let go of?'
I suddenly realized last night in class, how many yoga classes I've been to and never gone to again becuase I felt like the teacher hated my body and it's limitations made her mad. I realized that Eileen's class is the first one where I feel like the teacher isn't mad at me for not being able, maybe suprised or something. But I'm pretty sure she doesn't hate my body. I feel safe, and I felt safe allowing this process to happen.
Found myself standing in Tadasana by the window, feeling these things, experiencing ego in a big way, understanding a little more, and understanding a little less..but feeling that Mountain Pose, and asking myself, "what does it really mean to be in your full mountai?" I realized that this was my yoga practice today. Standing by the window, crying in Tadasana, feeling strong and soft and sweet and really being there. A lovin' sister from class was returning from the bathroom ,saw me there and offered some support. It was perfect, and I soon felt that I could return to class. That intense energy was still there, but it was time to bring myself back to the room , to the community, just as I was. Getting cozy on my mat with an eye pillow, I lay there while the class continued all around me. I drifted in and out of dreamy meditative concioussness. Feeling really comfortable and loved, I sunk into a knowing that this was right. I thanked myself and the Divine Presence for this day, this moment, and this body that allows me to be here.
And I felt closer to the source of all things~
Namaste, Sat Nam, Peace and Blessings

~MN

And she t

थे कोन्तिनुएइन्ग एंड रेतुर्निंग

This doesn't seem to be about hiking a long trail anymore, it's gone beyond that. It moves forward, but in moving forward it remembers. It remembers stars and nothing else. It remembers phosphorescence in the shape of whales. It remembers a storm and waves so big they would swallow my love whole and spit him back out again. It remembers diving overboard during a storm in the night with a rope tied around my waist, diving down to untangle the two anchors, blind. Diving in, in the dark where I know there are sharks. With an 'I love you' and a kiss, I jumped..I think I was crying. When I was finished I packed my backpack and slept with my boots on, ready to run if we dragged anchor again and hit the rocks. I almost wanted it to happen, so I could go. Go where? There were no trails on this island, not even a beach, not a soul. Just mangroves, saw palmettos and poison ivy...not even coconuts. There was no where to go. I resigned. The next day I rowed out to the little island and sat on my rock. And waited. I waited for the sun to come up, to move across the sky,and to go down. I watched my shadow move. I watched the clothes dry on the line. I sat, I breathed, I watched. I had never been so still in my life.

तेरे इस पस्सगे इन थे सुन्रिसे एंड इ मौरं फॉर थे मोर्निंग इ लॉन्ग तो सी

The sweet morning, blue time before daybreak..I miss so dearly this early hour. How to get back to a place of greeting the day in the darkness. The time when the collective conciousness of this time zone is in sacred space of stillness. My excersize lately is to try to honor the natural cycles of sleep,waking, energy, and creativity. The pull is to stay up late, I get this surge of creative and vibrant energy just as I used to be going to sleep. It's hard to pass up~these are the hours the songs get written, things get clean, and inspiration abounds. So instead, after sleeping in, I write of the morning, fresh from sleepy dreams, in mid-state of reality, hovering.

I open this grief for coming so soon
For the deep refuge broken by dawn
No travel for the dreams I refuse
The voices filtering through the mirror

There is passage in this sunrise
As I mourn for the morning I long to see

Notes of Coltrane reflect the outcome of memory
As I toss my questions toward the frozen city

And I arise, emerging from the sorrow

रैनी डे, दरें आवे

The rain is finally falling, steadily instead of suddenly. Soaking instead of running off. This exquisite drizzle is what my lately dreams are made of. I dream of wet places laden with moss, algea and frogs. Big frogs hopping around. The past dryness has been making me dry. I find myself looking everywhere for moisture .....inside the maze of my giant sunflowers, under a rock, under a stone, Mmmmmmm in the bottom of my compost pile. The roots of the plants in my garden must be getting pretty tough, having to work so hard, digging down deep to where the wet is. I'd say it builds character. I await the day my new beets will be ready to harvest and eat! But I will admire their strong roots first, of course, and give them compliments.
Someone asked me today if the rain was reminding me of the trail. He said it felt like New Hampshire today. He was so right on, I had a bubble up of emotion, suddenly perfectly reminded of the freedom of the previous year. Walking along through the green tunnel. I'm free now, only in a different way. In a less obvious way. I'm free because I've spent this last year really tuning in to my desires dreams and goals, finding out what I am good at and doing it. And I'm doing it. So closer, then, to the little farm, to the little studio where I make terrible messes and art where I don't have to clean up because it is my studio specifically for messes and art, to the garden, and the gardens. The pieces, my dear Watson, are coming together, sir.
Hmmmmm, all from a rainy day.How my body imitates nature. Not so. It's not just the rain that makes me cry. I can specifically remember quite recently in a dry dusty field somewhere, tears mixed with dust devils feeling so appropriate. But the rain definately urges those little ducts to open up and leak out their salty wetness to drip down my nose and onto my lips.....I think that is my favorite part of crying. The tears that make it to my mouth. Tears are delicious.