Thursday, February 28, 2013

the leap between

On February 29, 2000, my mom leaped between worlds to a new place where I could not see. I drowned without warning, unable to swim as my roots were now tangled around me. To return to land, I took my own leap through cold time, dark embers, and hologram waves of the psyche. I since came around to myself, but recast. Death must be something like that, a luminous transformation where the soul is returned to the source but now changed.

The thing about the Leap Day loss is I have more comings than goings. Each August we dine on her favorites, sweet corn on the cob and ripe peaches. All of us feel the heat and the storms. The lightning is common and deep. The roots of the willow rise up to meet the lily, hydrangea and lilac. We are dressed up and singing like heaven or love when it's new and celestial. Your heart, that is summer, her birthday. The day she arrived in this world.

Since 2000, we’ve had Leap Day 3 times. It felt strange to see the occasion marked there on the wall. What else could I write in the square? Most years send the gift of detachment but here it was staring me back. Is there really a way to escape? Perhaps the void between the 28th and the 1st is the space the most real regardless. Because I wasn’t there when you came but you even shine at the end and I could replay pools of darkness but you always gave me your light.


photo credit: Hani Amir via photopin cc

Monday, February 18, 2013

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Now and then I come across a piece of writing that sets my heart howling. Like hearing a song that ignites you to break dance or watching a film that moves you to take part in your own life. Maybe you brush your fingertips across a painting that you long to crawl into because the grass is that perfect and it’s warm, acrylic wind sweeps up around your skin and brings you in. That’s how I feel about this fantastically absurd story of a home for girls raised by wolves.

The parents in the tale are werewolves who want a better life for their human children. A group of nuns take the savage girls into St. Lucy’s to be groomed and normalized for civilized society. The idea of these girls marking their rooms, wearing shoes on their fisted paws and learning to stand up on two legs is delightful because it is so bizarre, so ridiculous to imagine that they can somehow be made normal. They are really trying despite the fact that their words are more like growls.

Where reality is vulnerable, the notion of being raised by wolves brings primal romance. Imagine a place where inherent wildness is valuable and under protection from the pack. Survival is amplified with the keen senses of the wolves living telepathically as one with the cavernous, dark trees. Those who cannot connect safely, can relate to the desire to say that “Yes, I was raised by wolves and therefore cannot eat without making a mess or color inside your heavy lines! No I cannot quiet and soften where I am harsh and rough!”

There’s something alluring about these feral images. The deep inner call to tear with pointed teeth. Any child who has been hurt can tell you what it’s like to bristle and spit at every shadow. If only there were claws instead of fingernails and jowls instead of jaw, there would be some way to wear that old wild coat less painfully. How comforting it would be if there was a great furred pack surrounding our fragility.

Often in my life, I’ve felt like an impostor. Walking around in clothing and brushed hair while keening to bolt into the woods and take up shelter in her earthy folds. I could dig out a bed under a pine tree and circle into the soft needles. I could transform into my true criatura, let the wild woman howl right through my tangled fur. It’s what writing does for me. Here I roam unhindered with my paws out of my shoes. I am protected by my pack. One man, two dogs, one cat. They lick my wounds and nudge me back onto the path where I am writing my own heart out on the page.

I wonder what happened to the girls after they finished at St. Lucy’s. Do I ever pass them on the street and get a scent of that old legend that they lived before they polished up and blended? Maybe we all attended there in some way or another. Maybe we’re howling to each other when we nod and say good morning.

Thank you, Karen Russell, for this wonderfully strange vision.

photo credit: Douglas Brown via photopin cc

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Mental Haiku

Sometimes, when my mind is busy and spinning and sparking a notch too fiery, I tell it to be quiet. When that doesn’t work (that never works), I try to ignore it and find myself reading (but not quite retaining) self-help or reminders on post-its with advice for myself from myself.

If my mind is still reeling, unable to settle, I will write a list of the pulls fragmenting my attention. What books I want to read or research that needs to be done. There are scenes to be fleshed out. A page of displaced sentences impatiently awaiting adoption. Phone calls to suffer, people to connect with and appointments to schedule (the dentist - you must!). Not to mention the numerous life changes necessary for perfection.

The list expands into a fury of unrelated obligations and reminders about posture, forgiveness and potential dog behaviorists. I write a list of things to list on separate lists, and now I’ve really (totally) lost it, for underneath lies the compulsion to achieve it all instantaneously. It is the habitual inner crusade that drives all thoughts together into an impossible tangle of immediate demands. Now I am caught (again).

What I long for then, is to reset the mess and get clean. I seek out my haiku book. The white one with the fresh, spring green pear on the cover and open to any page. I carefully read one three-line set and float into simplicity and calm, thankful for respite and peace.


The time it takes –
For snowflakes to whiten
The distant pines

- Lorraine Ellis Harr


photo credit: jsbanks42 via photopin cc

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Poem

The soft inner touch of the spark
Meets the ancient turn of grace
And really what is grace
If not poetic
Or soft
Or a spark

~Abigler 2013

photo credit: bernat... via photopin cc

Friday, February 1, 2013

Maiden Blog Voyage

I dreamt of a blog where I would share words. Not just the big words but excruciatingly skinny words, frighteningly lucid words, gigantic, irrepressible, delicious, beautiful words.

My words. Your words. Poetry, memoir, fiction, thoughts. Pictures, drawings too.

A mishmash of the moment. Lucid dreaming. Fairy tales. Magic. Zen wisdom. Bipolar observations. Healing consciousness. The writing life. Yoga poses. Chakra mantras. The quest for inner peace. Thoughts about cats. Thoughts about thoughts. Communion with dogs. Blessings of life. Varied ways of breathing. Tools for the path. Theories on death and the mystery and everything. Nature as healer. God, Goddess, Wind.

Pictures of pets. Pictures of trees. Pictures of birds.

Thoughts on birds and the way their quiet wings are really layers upon layers of carefully spun threads.

Words are like threads. They weave us together.

photo credit: HVargas via photopin cc