Bright Idea #80: Make Do.
"Xipe Totec, Lord of Shedding, god of seedtime. These are 13 days of devotion, companionship, self-sacrifice and love. This trecena points to the eternal conflict that tears at every human being: suspended between two great communions, love and mysticism, each of us strives to survive being swallowed whole by either. On the one hand, the painful shedding of illusions, and on the other, the pleasurable creation of illusions." Morning walk ruby sumac and duntons herd, longshadows guinea hens in the road challenging my dog. the good sweet smell of woodsmoke and leaves on the ground. the hills turning showing truer colors. the way needs a clean-up again, but its lovely when i look up the hill into the woods the tall slender trunks the smell of the woods the fall morning light soft and low to the fields two geese heading for the pond. i let my thoughts ramble ahead of me, unleashed, aching to wander farther afield than my feet will take me. i realize my autumn restlessness was compounded by my infirmity and getting out with the dogs is a miracle salve to muscle and mind. tomorrow is october, the very word wine in the mouth. october cider pumpkin haycock. #2 came for dinner tonight hes worn thin and elsewhere but assures me not to think the chasm between s. and i was a product of my shortcomings, which is a comfort. i think this is what is meant by there being no love lost. it is unfortunate but i am a solitary creature and know that when the time is right for me to share my time with a friend that friend will appear. thinking DUP will introduce me to a pool of souls in tune with the harp of my blood. more and more i wish to reach out and connect but a connection will only be made when the heart on the other end is open. so i walk and write and paint and dream and pray and my life is ladled out in peaceful lovely puddles of light with good safe sleeps in between.

Bright Idea #79: One Thing at a Time.
"The creative process takes place not under the burning rays of the sun, but in the cool, reflected light of the moon when the darkness of the unconscious is great: night, not day, is the time for begetting. Darkness and stillness, secrecy, remaining mute and veiled, are part of it... The nocturnal moistness of the moon-night is the time of sleep, but also that of healing and recovery." Warm and grey, a flannel afternoon smelling of mud and fermenting. trying to not be overwhelmed by the recent negativity, how easy it is for me to succumb to the cold pricklies. so today i decided to do one thing at a time. moved bergamot and comfrey, echinacea and elecampane in the lovely drizzle but i have no air and leaned up against the trampoline more than once, wheezing. fed the compost, laundry, kitchen duty, my castle wall of books (a mighty fortress is my library), walked L2 to the PO and saw how much the world had changed. swept, smudged, scoured, stirred, ate beans and buckwheat in front of democracy now!, made plans and watered plants. got my nifty retro obama pin from moveon and regardless i will go forward next spring with a garden tomorrow ill pull up the raggedy cosmos and the exhausted tomatoes every year i learn something better and deeper regardless of output in pounds. so little of my day spent at all idle and yet i worry i havent done enough to satisfy. my life on the defensive from those i should seek for sanctuary. life is for learning. grief settles in the lungs.


Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

Day Forty: The anti-climactic End to This Particular Experiment.
"The Normans gave us "mansion"; the Saxons gave us "house." The Normans gave us "beef"; the Saxons gave us, "cow." The Normans gave us "excrement"; the Saxons gave us lots of four letter words." Rainy but im up with the pack and keeping house keeping away from the instinct of book and chair and tea. I avoid it now and wonder how to give it away. But the forty days are over, and i seem farther behind than i did when i began. H2 broke his hand so were off to pick up #4 on fumes and prayers. Glad for the week, glad for the schedule and the regimen and again this year theres the bitter taste and the sore heart. again the brainless and demeaning acceptance of my fundamental unworthiness, my myriad failures, my infinite shortcomings. its a sunday. deep deep inside i hide the little light that guides me. i hold my hands around it for warmth and safe from cold gusts and bluster. i keep it deep and down there i found a picture of a panther and a caribou and the sacred cycling moon. ive never pursued my own happiness. papa chris always said i was on a crusade against myself. im tired of crusading for pain and punishment. i want all the pitch and petrol cells replaced with light. i want to be safe to care about what it is i care about, do what i think is right. i am a priestess of that little light, the panther, the caribou and the moon. may i be blessed with time enough to get it right.

Day Thirty-Nine: The Best Toasted Cheese Sandwich.
"I am glad not to have something that other people want so much. No good seems to come of such things." Regardless, i finished the wolf book and baked two rather remarkable loaves of bread. Made tea with lots of honey and fled into the next, one ive had on my list for years that i found lying on the floor of my second favorite bookstore. the day was damp and grey but warm, marvelous afternoon light before the early dark. my shortcomings paraded and im glad i have no illusions of security or worth in the eyes of any other save maybe my two boys who see something in me no one else can, perhaps through the seal of blood and the travail of time. my manifold liabilities enumerated and im so far back its like the smell of something burning a valley over when the wind blows just so. tomorrow ill walk and do what needs doing, fill whatever gaping maw needs filling, have use and utility distract from emptiness and the spirits silent hunger, play the part and never ever read the reviews.

Day Thirty-Eight: Making it Possible.
"A holy man gave two men each a chicken. 'Go kill them where no one can see.' One man went behind a fence and killed the chicken. The other walked around for two days and came back with the chicken. The holy man said, 'You didnt kill the chicken?' The man said, 'Well, everywhere i go, the chicken ses." All day in PK gluing cereal to contstruction papers A's and marveling at these miracles with bright eyes and runny noses, their own world-views and ways, their fear and delight. The one she warned me about was a kitten in my lap and i assured him i would never bite him, and that he was my friend. and i think maybe when its night and his heart is cold hell think that somewhere out there in the battlefield of his day there was a lady who thought he was worth loving worth something worth saying hey isnt it cool were here together? S. wading through dirty water in judicial trenches i think there are people out there exploiting children and were spending two months making absolutely sure who broke the glass. Someone mentioned the apparent sweetness between #4 and me, sitting there in a crowd of people, always connecting. I dive into the armchair with a book and a bowl of popcorn and the world can leave a message for a little while while the boys scavenge for smelting ore and i try to explain that glass melts at 1200 degrees. The cold damp draws me deeper into myself. Im to bed early and end up sleeping twelve hours with dreams of anger and frustration. The back wheel on my bike wont go and I wanted to find out who won the election but all anyone talked about was the game.

Day Thirty-Seven: Make a Wish.
"When will you have a little pity for/every soft thing/that walks through the world,/yourself included." Full morning chores enjoyed magical concord jelly with #4 made before he left for school left kitchen sweet and clean waded through backyard dew september roses still budding out behind the sunflowers lavender blooming the hill is turning in earnest now all the colors of autumn and the smell of burning. life coming back to my lungs by the weekend i should be back to the walk curious to see how the road has wound away into the fall without me. i hear theyre bringing back the witch hunt, for witches. its like they sensed a growing light...remember james facing the rhino? im not afraid of you. i believe i have to live from my heart and like she said, failure is impossible. i wont be bullied or shaken or shifted away. i will do what i can with what i have where i am. soup and bread for the family the pack a beautiful rhythm in the dark under a lavender sky #2 and i caught up and im looking forward to a long rainy weekend. i will not let them take my hope away from me. i will not let them take my voice, my spirit, my light. today she called me a beautiful woman. i hope i make them all feel even half that good.

Day Thirty-Six: Re-Entering.
"The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer./Make the human race a better head. Make the world a better/piece of ground." Thirsty, head completely elsewhere, unable to sit or do for very long, waiting it feels like. An open unobligated day and i think i should be a dynamo of accomplishment but no. i wander through the rooms, thinking thoughts like falling leaves, ovulating. outside it is late september but theres little life in my lungs today for toil or hiking. id much rather lie under a tree and come apart at the joints, the tender flesh falling back to the roots, my bones a last offering to the pack that sustains me. sometimes i get so tired. my soul is a light that shines through oiled skins, like frontier windows, more accurately windows of glass that are brittle and break, droop over time because its a liquid really, a liquid on mountain time. the feelings break against rocks my hearts gibraltar and wears me out. its been a rough couple weeks, the great shifts always eat me. by killing frost i should be clearer, done with the slow work of dying for a time, distracted by october and the way she smells. its like an unpleasant thought i cant get out of my head, the memory of some terrible smell. i want it wrung out of me, drawn from out the top of my head in a cathartic dream from which i rise clear and free. maybe the catharsis is on mountain time, like that old boat washed up on the shores of a far future, ready to reveal itself and be known. i wash the sheets and make a chocolate cake. the woman in my dream was beautiful so at ease in her skin and when i woke up i thought maybe that woman would one day be me.

Day Thirty-Five: Resting Quietly at the Bottom.
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?" As with all things that exist within a cycle, which is to say all things belonging to the natural world, there is a pause before the turning to another phase or state or station. before the inbreath, the pause. before the crescent moon, the dark. and so i today inhabit the cradle of quiet before emerging into a new light. the cycles are sometimes difficult to manage and its even more difficult to feel not-in-control of ones experience but i am learning that i can however control my actions and emotions regarding these cycles of mine. it is a late lesson but well learned. so i wont push me into false feelings anymore, ill just be curious like the guru says, be curious about the cycles, as one wonders at the phenomenon of breath, day and night, time, and the moon. false feelings are the eternal inbreath, the forever full moon. in further allegory the only constant is the Great Central Heart of Light that feeds the manifold systems of change. the madman philosopher tells me to enjoy this time of being 'blank and clean and empty.' was of use today out in the wider world papering rotundas of praise and circulating myself like some benevolent cell in the body of my job. standing there with a tape dispenser chanting the names of the Goddess in my head, hello beautiful hello beautiful im alright im alright.

Day Thirty-Four: I Have to Reach Up to Touch Bottom.
"Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?" Beating back the howling crazies with busy walking watering baking pushin' broom and out to the wild garden for another haul of tomatoes already looking forward to next years experiment in order and preparedness. checking my list of things to live for. last night the two of them under the duvet in the glow of my midnight oil a clean kitchen floor and we were up way past our bedtimes my anxiety channeled into chores and his delight splashed in laughter on the Book of Calvin and toast. to sleep and dreams of all my inadequacies, wrong turns and hollow follies. autumns debut her honeywine perfume golden gauzy train blowing kisses the earth scatters petals before her the ground gives a little making room to plow the summer under and simmer til spring. i am besieged by my own shortcomings and try to think of it as the dingy fringe of february, aprils abundance only a moon or two away.

Day Thirty-Three: (Dont Forget to Take Your Meds).
"If we will have the wisdom to survive/to stand like slow growing trees/on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it/then a long time after we are dead/the lives our lives prepare/will live here." Black cat came back from brink of elsewhere. i held him to my heart and today hes out prowling the creek little jaguar a new cat lease on life like milk hot and fragrant off the hoof in a quiet barn on a frosted morning. blessed be. tragic bats squealing from under the step. anxiety and dread lowering i fall apart several times and rally with use, sauce and japanese incense, a book and some eggplant. granddaughter comes over to pick pumpkins. the wolf book is a deep comfort at days end this last day of summer it was fun to wade through the wild garden through the burning smelling gourd vines and the stalwart zinnias and the patient pumpkins still gestating in the corners and the bloodless stalks of corn and the effulgent comfrey mother and the glorious ruby chard and the sunflower ghost sentinels and autumn comes to town in a brown riding cloak smelling of horses.

Day Thirty-Two: Do it Anyway.
"But an archetypal anxiety out there is calling me to the fkng rocks and i dont want to have to be tied to the mast. Ive got the rope. Ive got the knot. But what i really should do is fkng go clean the deck or something." Relentless vicious apocalyptic desperate horrifying nightmares brought on no doubt by acute antihistamine withdrawl assuaged somewhat by a sunny morning with no tang of lurking psychotic secret societies and shamefully aborted art projects (brain sucking alien invaders and missing plaster of paris) or maybe the elections. but we celebrate my grandfathers birthday, the one who shook hitlers hand, then eisenhowers, the one who kept the train alive in siberia while italian armies died in their boots the one who slept with this new wifes mother on his wedding night because he was stinking drunk and she didnt want anything to do with him the one who has a million impossible true stories hell never tell. my ancestors were all mad cossacks and mead brewing hill farmers, farther back theyre mongols and vikings and we speak a language most closely related to sanskrit which sauces our blood with gypsy. my otherness, which my mother tried desperately to wallpaper over in late-century american white-out, seeped through with an animal smell and refused to be ignored after millenia of perfecting.

Day Thirty-One: Better, Thanks.
"You can always tell an old soul by how friendly they are to trees and to dogs." Cold morning cleared the air phone calls negotiations post office pharmacy super c and a weekend of lovely little to do hang in the hammock with bolstering fluids and printed matter. go easy on the dairy, sleep perchance to dream the dalai lama and black horses and a wedding where i pilfered the favors, little scented candles in tins and mine had the french for pumpkin. trundled pumpkins for frontal display, left some for granddaughter and the Great Pumpkin in a little field that smells of ripeness and old hay, chorus of zinnia still singing praises at what looks like a sunflower funeral, huge haggard heads humble down preparing the black gift of secret flesh for decembers sparrow. all the little vertices of a small world, friends and small children to town for parts and dinner at the lowest common denominator. extraordinarily dehydrated after chemical warfare against whatever that biological shock and awe was. the whole hamlets burning tonight, little fires sending smoke down the valley over the swamp to the lake where people are taking one last long look at summer. one of these days i might get it together but its really not all that bad right now.

Day Thirty: Accept Grace.
"Among people who have no knowledge of precious stones or of glass, heaven is adorned not with minerals, but flowers." Still dragging a death of a thousand cuts carcass behind me but getting something done (oh cold cruel mistress duty!)in spite of myself. but this includes a hail from resident Green Man (MlM) who has a use for me in the future so i look forward, looking up from the damp schmata wadded in my hand. found a croaker in cowboy boots the drumlin shot a shout out to NoBe after a long way gone. the yellowjackets have roosted drilled a hole in the ceiling and of course i think what would i do without him? wasp slayer, bacon maker, blossom bearer, i gave him money for a jackknife cause theyre going fast. ones way tall and one is not, but theyre both well hydrated and they trees are turning the windpower towers not. the bones of invaders past or roadsigns for those to come? theyre calling for a killing frost a frozen blue edge of morning ill wheelbarrow the pumpkins and pull up the seeding stalks for next years loam. this summers been just enough and im ready to rest.in a month ill be a year older. champagne breakfast reindeer leaping over the moon indian buffet. a day.

Day Twenty-Nine: Give.
"If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life." Flayed by invisible armies of goldenrod beasties i retreat to cloud bed until its time for me to exchange vital fluids for a fig newton and a juice box then back to bed dragging and snuffling like the grippes ghost. my eyes are sea urchins my throat the top of a prison wall. but someone somewhere will open their eyes again to this glorious world perhaps because i dragged myself out of my own way and let the lady with the needle and the empty bag have her way with me. blessed be.

Day Twenty-Eight: Jump In.
"I believe that my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a clearing in the forest. That gods come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That i must have the courage to let them come and go. That i will try always to recognize and submit to them."highly skeptical of the whole facebook thing but its turning out rather sweetly, dropping deus ex machina into peoples lives (and they yours). something like the thread woven under but still woven, appearing later on down the magic rug of our life on earth together. many threads coming together two decades and madness and regret and forgiveness. an abandoned house opened and cleared and therein a revival takes place a rebellion against the empty cruelty apathy rage. may peace prevail. something turns something transforms she changes everything she touches something stirs something breaks the surface like spring. these are the gifts of self-forgiveness. these are the veins that shine with new life the monarchs have arrived. i am learning to extend myself with greater authenticity and ease. this creates a greater number of easy authentic exchanges of energy. i dont have forever i have now. miracles: monarch butterflies, my boys, my stove, bio bags, the wind, stars.

Day Twenty-Seven: Always Question.
"The organizer in his way of life, with his curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, distrust of dogma, his self-organization, his understanding of the irrationality of much of human behavior, becomes a flexible personality, not a rigid structure that breaks when something unexpected happens."
The branches were all over the ground, town trucks trundle through heading for the chipper. contemplating sloth and duty calls me out of my kimono and into the powdery roil of mostly postly-menopausal women. i open milk and remember names. i write little red numbers into a book for a lady who calls me "my favorite liberal." i realize this tumultuous hoard of hip-high souls have no table manners because they do not sit at a table. the brighter horizon looms. i refuse to pass judgment on the ladys fashion sense. i get a loren eisely book in the mail. i am the blushing recipient of a perfect sunflower "found it in a field of clover, all on its own, knew it was for you." dinner, laundry, the corn still bright on the stalk, the basmati a comfort with butter and salt over all. i pray for her beastie, set the coffee up for the morrow and say it is good. homework done, dishes done, laundry done, day done and the best i could. one eye on the hand and one on the horizon the horizon where the sun is always rising before my heart in the west the dusk the ocean home the closest thing to the heavens on earth depth and floating and you cant breathe. full moon dog star ides of september. turning wheel the dogs just want to be outside barking we wander the sward admiring gourds and pumpkins and so soon october, the very word wine in the mouth. i am transfixed by the mathematical perfection of this sunflower mandala. spinning outward meshing moving toward a greater understanding that essentially cannot be understood. the very least i can be is watchful and reverent.

Day Twenty-Six: Don't Push the Rope.
"...you have time to experience the blessing of your surroundings. You can just sit there quietly. Then maybe silence will dawn on you, and the sacredness of the space will penetrate." Sultry. Dense early morning mist on the ground and bright stars in the sky frames a day of thick bright heat. The geese take practice laps over the hill. valiant efforts to stem the tide of later mud season, merry gourds grow out of the compost, people at work stop and ask me about my sunflowers. today im reaching out, trying to untie the knots my lonesome road has tied in my tongue, saying yes. girls wading out into early indian summer lake as the sun sets and they talk about things they wouldnt on land, their fingertips moving through the water as they dream. blessed sunday evening routine, setting our clocks back to institution expectation obligation time zone the trees are turning along the road to town the pumpkins are out, soul lanterns of autumn. DFW, go with god.

Day Twenty-Five: String the Day.
"I reassured her a dozen times that I would never cook Mr. Doodle, this was just some chicken we didn't know." Misty moisty morning did my civic duty with bare hands and bio-bag tribal leader in astrovan salutes my motherlove. cornbread blueberry maple biscuits. shower and a kip. lakehouse. ice cream. lustrous little beads strung across the thread of days. bright beads brilliant and clear. J. and D. drift through, obsidian and citrine. the meadows sink into themselves, tall grasses gone stiff and bloodless the goldenrod like angels on a battlefield few chicory blooms like remnants of a beautiful dream. everything sinking back into itself, casting its seed. my soul must smell like the woods did this morning, resinous and loamy. the flowers this season are sunlight stored up over the summer, yellow golden with centers black as the far side of the moon.

Day Twenty-Four: Watching the Road.
"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl." Warm morning with no stars. late morning no sun. baking and laundry, i find the horizon got suddenly farther away. take Z. to the post office in my golden raincoat theres mist on the river the apples are red everything is soft-focus and glowing. J.D. turns me on to the Livingston project and i think, should i pan out? that would be moving out from the heart of the forest of symbol and into the edges where things are more clearly seen. but i love the existential universality (is that redundant or an oxymoron?) of symbols -- the earth. the egg. the flower. the tree. the things of man only symbolize his blind temporal surface not the Great Good Beating Heart of Light from which we come and these pictures of mine are little lighted boats sent down the rain gutter back to the ocean little scrolls tied in red thread that read, "Life is Beautiful. Saw You Here. Home Soon." The world is a nick drake song today, quiet rooms, the sound of someone sweeping with a corn broom. the more closely i listen to my body the more i realize how completely ive ignored it all my life.

Day Twenty-Three: Be Authentic.
"Right livelihood would prohibit strip mining and building warplanes. And so would “Love one another,” if anybody took it seriously." Wild. got everyone up and off to school scrubbed the floor the sheets the stairs walked and walked went for provisions and baked some bread that made the house smell so good. elbow deep in dishes covered in flour the phone rings and its BFF and theres a light there shining from around the bend in the river and i need to get into my boat and flow to it and as i am go and declare that this is what i want this is what i asked for, thank you and when i get back the man said 'cash or candles' and we live to suck the grid another day. a whirlwind of children and the phone keeps ringing. miracles: praying mantis attempts to streetfight B2. apples. opportunity. mint chip. laughter.

Day Twenty-Two: Be of Use.
"and let ourselves be carried.../to the river/that is without the least dapple or shadow--/that is nothing but light--scalding, aortal light--/in which we are washed and washed/out of our bones." she said peace be with you she said you are the lifeblood she said of course you are she said hello. weaving through the day with women navigating the shoals of interpersonal relationships the shape-shifting and split-second decision making plate spinning hoop jumping song and dance of daily bread hello beautiful hello hello just being present and meeting them all on their own field and fulfilling expectations and laughing all the way. miracles: hugs. groceries. my pack. books. feeling as if im stumbling into some sort of sick feeling compromised and elsewhere rattling and dry the bright pinch and the dull ache. came home to make coffee and liberate the dogs came home to kids in the yard and #1 on a motorbike leaving for vegas came home made oatstraw tea and left the dishes for tomorrow to do. in his picture the milk was left on the doorstep and the mother bird was wise. tomorrow is a long list of things to do.

Day Twenty-One: Ride the Waves.
"And if the world has ceased to hear you,/say to the silent earth: I flow./To the rushing water speak: I am." Recent miracles i failed to mention: the flame-colored newt on the road west. thought salamander was a better name, spirit of fire. monkey bread, tactile and sweet shared with #3 and #4 before bed. lovely grand bouquets of garden flowers. a clean tub. just no fire today retreated to the white cloud and slept. dreamed of a marriage, a mad aunt and eating glass. swept, laundered, made soup and bread. the sun danced with the clouds the wind blew grey through the prayer flags my body aches and i give into it. im starting to live in my body, live with my body, live in a truer mind more peaceful. somedays you eat the bear, somedays the bear ties your tendons in a trillion knots and glues your cells together with pitch. the lovely familiars of family dinner and homework and a chapter and the bread of bed that feeds and kneads and helps me rise tomorrow smiling and sniffing the air.

Day Twenty: Let It Grow.
"To travel hopefully is better than to arrive." Just Lovely. scrubbing bubbling filing whiling away monday with domestic blessedness knee deep in projects not even on the list. corn pudding chocolate torte out in the garden plucking romas from their withering nests like eggs with the living on the outside. the fantastic feeling of dirt on my hands the teeming square of earth parting the cosmos wading in the pumpkin vine so little am i beneath in the shadow of russian mammoths. everything spilling over overgrown bursting seams everything seeking out everything else reaching touching intertwining everything absolutely full of its self. the bees are happy and drink from a million grails. the earth is happy with worm workers. the butterflies find sanctuary here, a gorgeous flora orgy where one can more clearly see the way of the world and ones place in it. we each of us has in us this seed that knows what its meant to do. dont pave over your good growing space and park your car on it dont keep a putting green swath of dead air dont dump your 21st century trash on it let it grow.

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.
Day Nineteen: Bend.
"Tolerance is the homage which the finite mind pays to the inexhaustibility of the Infinite." Day began splendid windy sunny the sky a field with roving bands of sheep and schooner fleets by afternoon cotton batting and the silver sides of leaves. the first full week of school and scahlet jumpah sounds from far away, hello? these doves and crows, owls and albatross we send out from our boats in hope of...

Day Eighteen: Be a Verb.
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Slept late woke to weird white sky and sirens and no birds sang. jaunt to the p.o. with #4, L2 and Z. the man complements #4 for his pennywise ways. inside games of laundry and baking, setting and sweeping. the energy of zeppelin a train over a high bridge in the morning. gingerbread and brownies barking dogs and they seemed to have fixed what was housebroken, it could be the rain. #3 explains he has no place in his life for the female voice. i play my fiddle and stay in while theres a meeting in the shed, dogs and children. it drizzles lovely into evening saturday night leaving with a promise of sunday morning.

Day Seventeen: Believe.
"Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these/Of mid September; through the still warm noon/The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune/Than ever in the summer; from the trees/Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,/No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon/In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon/Finds motionless white mists out on the leas." Woke up, had coffee, morning sit and stretch, saw them off, walk the two, tidied up and went to half day work in the valley and say hello hello why arent you lovely? yes it was a lovely summer but im so glad to be back. i told her that in summer the energy is all this water flowing on the ground and september means pouring all that water in a cup, the energy is orderly and easy to dam and run, riding my own tides that change with the seasons my blood salt and water blue like the sky within me brown like the earth without. Artemis water and barley dogs and the moon. i believe and im not resigned and i believe and every day the waters cleaner resting and running and its the weekend its september its waxing moon in sagittarius and today in the growing gusts that herald fall (just like spring, as if summer were a queen preceded and followed after by an invisible blustering contingency) there was a cinder snuck into the harbor of my open eye and for an hour it scratched out a place in the universe there between the lid and the orb and no flushing or coaxing or conceit brought peace and patience blinking blinking by the end of the working day standing in the small room of many scented women the eye began to weep and the cinder was gone. blood tears ocean sometimes of an evening of a morning i begin to believe we are one drop of water in Loves infinite everywhere.

Day Sixteen: Be the Change.
"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all." Early rising far warmer the stars dimmer the crickets droning their morning raga at four-thirty. watching people stand against a wall of riot gear with automatic weapons and electric guns and this is my country. this is democracy and the dream of freedom. this is where three or more people standing against the dominant paradigm is a riot. my stomach churned and my hands shook and i was so proud of those who put their flesh in apathys way. i wondered what the humans in riot gear with their badges taped over thought as they beat, bled and broke another human being holding a piece of paper or crying to be heard over the drumbeat of manipulated fear and commercialized death. to behave like that you have to de-humanize the other. they cant have thoughts or feelings, hearts or minds. to drop a bomb or shoot a gun or set an exploited dog on a child you have to believe that the other is somehow not like you at all. that is why apathy is the opposite of love. in love we are all the same, all one. in apathy it doesnt matter because im the one with the gun, the grenade, the tape over the numbers on my badge. i send love and respect to my brothers and sisters fighting for the right to say what is written on their hearts and spills out into the streets of the world like blood. i say a prayer for those who have to hide their numbers faces who walk past the woman on the street cold and hollow who keep their dogs on chains night and day i say a prayer for those who drop bombs and write laws to keep the streets full of sick and hungry and the hotels full of blood diamonds and furs. i pray for peace in the hearts of all people, because thats the only place to begin.

Day Fifteen: Listen.
"Scatterghost,/it can't float away./And the rain, everybody's brother,/won't help. And the wind all these days/flying like ten crazy sisters everywhere/can't seem to do a thing. No one but me,/and my hands like fire,/to lift him to a last burrow. I wait/days, while the body opens and begins/to boil. I remember/the leaping in the moonlight, and can't touch it,/wanting it miraculously to heal/and spring up/joyful. But finally/I do. And the day after I've shoveled/the earth over, in a field nearby/I find a small bird's nest lined pale/and silvery and the chicks--/are you listening, death?/--warm in the rabbit's fur." Up and away #3 and #4 the dark half of the year the day stretches open before me a walk with B2 and Z. house chores and phone calls tomato sandwich and good coffee she howls when the phone rings in the middle of the linoleum little nose up it plays ode to joy. met the hamlet ceo talked defiants and dogs, the goldenrod is blinding the acorns are falling the shadows are deep and broad the sunlight burnished and slanting. cold mornings full of stars fog on the pond quickly burnt off and there are snakes in the road, the cows keep to the trees, all creatures busy with the turning of the wheel. season of drunk hornets, ardent stags, brave turkeys. season of ripe corn, fragrant tomatoes, golden swollen moons. more cleaning and organizing, making ready for the enclosure of snow. i made cookies for the boys to come home to and lovely afternoon coffee for me. let us make music, paint and dance. let us hold hands, laugh and cook together. let us walk, plant and love the world that lets us live alongside her.

Day Fourteen: Make Space.
"Go running through the streets/Creating divine chaos,/Make everyone and yourself ecstatically mad/For the Friend;s beautiful open arms./Go running through this world/Giving love, giving love." Hot. tended, petted, baked, washed, kept on. bones for the dogs lots of water folding opening and putting away. making space for the flow of things the music of daylight easy breathing. not allowing myself to sit amidst it all and read. the summer has left my head heavy and full but i listen to the music inside my head and the hours pass and im smiling quietly just to have the chance to follow my thoughts as you follow a stream in cool leaf scented light and sweet earth shadow knowing it will after a while take you home.

Day Thirteen: Joy.
"The firmament/That spins at the end of a string in Your hand/That You offer to mine saying,/"Did you drop this--surely/This is yours."The brilliant turning wheel the light the air everything moving in a dance of light years and cosmic axis (bold as love). Z. learns from B2 to drink the dew from the tall grass along the way there and back without a lift from me and bounding along the home stretch i hear her bones growing and think about how the horses in kentucky are strong because of the calcium water and the dream i had last night about trees falling and dancing on water. there was subterfuge and predators but not for me and thats a switch. the pack followed me down the mountain along the trees up the stairs to the old place in the city where downstairs a big wedding commenced and your friends were there. again this morning woke way early but my head was cloudy and it was holiday so i went back to the white cloud in the cold dark of four a.m. breathing easy. september. wheel of fortune and the hearth fire, the seventh chakra wide open and streaming Light, both ways. Last night at dinner i learned that my grandfather drove a train across russia to take the italian troops to fight and along the way the train got stuck and while my grandfather fed the engine to keep it alive the thousand men died waiting in the cars.