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.