The Book of Shadows and Grace (Pt. 2)

My second offering for National Poetry Month, and also the Tucson Poetry Festival, which is going on this weekend.  Looking back to poems I re-discovered in my files, poems some 30 years old.  You can learn a lot about the threads that have woven your life together by reading very old poetry you once wrote.

I think I've always  been a part of that wave of women and men who have been dedicated to bringing the Divine Feminine back into the world, to "restoring the Balance".  And I have always sensed what Clarissa Estes called "the Wild Woman archetype" (and "the Dangerous Old Woman") just under the surface of the various repressions, trivializations, and enslavements I've seen or experienced as a female being in this world.  A force  that bubbles up from the ground like melting permafrost, like a call in the moonlit night, echoing from within the darkened woods,  "Amazons" ran like the sap of maple trees  in the early  spring of 1982 when I was living in the woods of Vermont, like hearing  an ancient voice.  "Veils" I remember writing around that time as well.  And "Cocoons"  is so old........I think I wrote it in 1976 or so, shortly after hearing of the death of Tim Buckley.

Amazons I.

At the bottom of this cup

sweet illusions coagulate 

tacky residue

so be it.

I spin tea leaves

place the Tarot

consult the oracle

to receive the same answer:

there is no exit.

All my dreams are steel now,  

and of brier

an arm raised, sun burnt,

with a gleam of metal

edges sharp,

the forge.

At the bottom  of this cup

my secret Amazon waits

for the full moon of Artemis

for the hunt.

Amazons II.

Take me with you, sister

let me ride the pale Pegasus,

the moon is humming

the time has come

See the way,  open at last

incandescent as the stars

and the words they form

above our heads.

A woman waits in  black oak tree

with a shining face

Only she can know my heart

Amazons III

It is not my fault

that you came here,

blundering through the woods

with the subtlety of a lame bear

did you think the moon belonged  to you?

did you think you could trespass in this country

disregarding the boundary markers

with your clumsy spear and your wooden arrows

your goatskin bladder of sour wine

your huge faith in your  importance?

We are calling on powers you have no right to.

This is no circle of insipid muses

gently urging you to smiling inquiry.

One breasted women are not gentle.

Our scars are for remembrance.

It is not my fault you hang there,

pinned to a beech tree.

You still do not understand your danger.

You have never been able 

to see the teeth

sharp and white

beneath the smile.

Amazons IV.

At the river's edge

I set my armor down

laid down my sword and bow

untied my hair

this I did for you.

I approached you resting

lying in the grass

at the river's edge

your body brown

graceful as a tree

unshod

you waited for me.

I approached you with desire

O my enemy

Veils

Veils can be as sheer

as gossamer, as ectoplasm 

the cloak of stars so fine 

you might touch what lies beneath

so transparent you might see eyes

almond, or round, 

under such a veil.

Some are more solid.

Some are colored like lead.

Some are shrouds.

Some are not fabric, but cement.

Some are given armaments

conforming somewhat to the figure

these are set gradually to harden.

Some are tombs for the heart.

Cocoons

(for Tim Buckley)

6 years ago

I slept under a lemon tree

in Ojai watching the fall of pollen

yellow and orange,

on our hands, our hair

I saw patterns in the water

that spoke a private language.

Now

I am pollen

I know the life 

of lemon trees

the water runs in me

I am of no substance

I encompass the length of the ocean.

What I most cherished

has fallen from my hands.

I have no hands.

Fortune, ambition and chance

are trails of smoke

behind me.

I have left the pain of slow decay

to become something less than light.

Talking with the Gods & Sacred Places

"Australian dream time seems strange to us because we distinguish stories from places.  For the aborigines places arestories:  song-lines.  To "settle" a wild place means to create not only houses and farms but also the stories that make them a home.  For native Australians, their deserts are home because they are verdant with stories."

David Loy, The World is Made of Stories

Here's an article I put together a few years ago, after visiting Avebury in southern England, as well as the sacred wells of Glastonbury.  Ah, how I would love to return!  But one does not need to go to  Wiltshire, or walk the Camino, to make a pilgrimage and to realize the life and sanctity of places.  If we see ourselves as participating within the Body of  Gaia, well, then all places participate in Her life, are infused with evolving intelligence.

I have long been inspired by dowser Sig Lonegren, who has spent many years exploring  sacred places, in England, Europe, and in the U.S.  As a dowser myself, I've experienced shifts in energy - which means also shifts in  consciousness and perception -many times when visiting areas that are geomantically potent, be it the henge of Avebury,  or the labyrinth at Unity Church in Tucson. Sites are able to change consciousness (raise energy) because they are intrinsically geomantically potent, and/or  they also become potent because of human interaction with the innate intelligence of place, what the Greeks called "genus loci".  Geomantic reciprocity - as human beings bring intentionality, reverence and focus to a particular place, building sacred architecture, or engaging in ritual.  The conversation becomes more active as place accrues myth, story in the memory of the people, and the memory of the land.   Sacred places have both an innate and a developed capacity to transform consciousness.  And the power of myth is important if we wish to engage the numinous presence, to  "talk to the Goddess and petition the Gods".

"To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension.  In traditional bardic culture, the terrain was studied, discussed, and referenced:  every place had its legend and its own identity....what endured was the mythic landscape."

R.F. Foster

Why would the ancient people who built Stonehenge spend generations hauling monstrous (and apparently specific) stones hundreds of miles to pose them in  circles, laid  in various alignments with the skies, seasons, and land?  

According to Sig, who references psychologistJulian Jayne''s controversial 1970's book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, possibly because, as human culture and language became increasingly complex,  we began to lose mediumistic consciousness,  a daily, conversational Gnosis.  We became more individuated, consciousness became more verbal and less spacial (right/left brain).  With the gradual ascendancy of left-brained reasoning he suggests the ancients developed a concern with how to continue contact with the gods, the ancestors, the numina of the land.  Stonehenge was a temple on a sacred landscape - according to Sig, it may also represent a "last ditch effort" to keep in touch with the spirit world, to enhance communal experience.   As the rift between personal gnosis and spiritual contact deepened, and especially with the later development of patriarchal institutions, gradually the tribal and individual Gnosis was replaced by complex religious institutions that removed individuals from the earlier tribal mind, and rendered spiritual authority to priests who were often viewed as  the sole representatives of  the  Gods or God.

Perhaps this capacity is returning to us, a new evolutionary balance. As crisis engulfs us, we need, once again, to re-member how to  "speak to the Earth". 

"I have been arguing for decades that these (sacred) spaces were special places that enhance the possibility of connection to the other side - to the One.  Please judge what follows in that context. You may well find that it challenges some of your paradigms you hold about the past.  It combines two separate lines of investigation that support the perception that these spaces really “did what’s on the box.”  The gods came to earth.  And us humans in great numbers communicated directly with them.  (I end with a counter argument just to keep things in balance.

Since the mid-seventies when I began work on my Masters’ degree on Sacred Space, one of the major themes I have chewed on has been the shift from the dominance of that more intuitive right brain in prehistory to the analytical left brain brought to us by (IMHO) the increase of influence of the Patriarchy.  The book that really turned me on initially was The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, first published in 1976 (see "Works Cited" at the bottom for all book references).  

 I must say that this has been one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books I've ever read, and is a must in the development of consciousness studies.  I don’t agree with some of what he has to say, for example, his choice of a particular word to describe how our prehistoric ancestors received their right brain information - "hallucinations."  I don't think that's what they were, and later on, I'll go in to why I think so.  But on the whole, I found his thesis most useful in forming my perception of this shift in consciousness.  

It began with the Neolithic Revolution - the increasing use of agriculture rather than hunter gathering.  It facilitated a shift in consciousness.  My understanding was that the driving factor in the construction of purpose-built sacred spaces in prehistoric times was the loss of the ability of more and more of humanity to connect on a conscious level with the world of spirit.  I felt, and still do, that the archaeoastronomy, sacred geometry and Earth Energies all enhanced the ability of this connection as we became more and more left-brain/rational.  I wrote about this at great length in my first book, Spiritual Dowsing, initially published in 1986."

Sig Lonegren
www.geomancy.org

--------------------------------------------------
Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. (Available from Amazon Books.)
Lonegren, Sig. 2007. Spiritual Dowsing. Glastonbury, England: Gothic Image. History of the earth energies, healing and other uses of dowsing today. A book for the spiritual pilgrim. Initially published 1986. ISBN 978-0-906362-70-9.  (Available from Amazon books).

Hymn for the Earth

2014:  A Hymn

by Ursula Leguin

Our prophets lead our people on
Fast to the promised land 
And where we pass, the green of grass
Turns to bare brown sand.

So high our cities' towers soar
Above the deep-set fault,
Immense they rise into the skies,
Pillars of cloud and salt.

Impatient with the patient day,
We rush to gain tomorrow.
Our ships that plough the seas with nets
Leave a long, empty furrow.

Our quick inventions spend our time
Faster and ever faster,
While kind and unforgiving Earth
Endures our brief disaster.

For all we do is nothing to
Her bright eons of days.
So let my dark tune turn and end
As all song should, in praise.

And in the hope of wisdom yet,
I'll sing the hymn that praises
Earth's greater life that gives us life,
The grace that still amazes.

Remembering Lydia Ruyle

I was very saddened to learn of the passing of Lydia Ruyle, creator of the Goddess Banners that have adorned and sanctified to the Great Mother so many places where people have gathered in Her honor.  Lydia was ever generous with her gifts, and shared her work freely with all, as well as being so encouraging to me personally.  She will be enormously missed by the Goddess community.

May all the Goddesses of her banners surround her with love and blessings, and may she rest in their arms and be renewed.

March 27, 2016

http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/21334637-113/greeley-resident-world-renowned-artist-lydia-ruyle-dies-at

Lydia Ruyle died Saturday morning after being diagnosed in February with terminal brain cancer. A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday at First Congregational Church, 2101 16th St. in Greeley.  World-renowned traveler, educator and artist Lydia Ruyle has died at her family’s farm in Alles Acres.

The lifetime Greeley resident was a wife, mother of three and a grandmother. She leaves behind quite a legacy as evidenced by the family members, longtime friends and admirers who hosted a party in her honor Feb. 20 at Zoe’s Cafe — shortly after she learned of her cancer diagnosis. Ruyle said at the time she didn’t want the party to happen after her death. She wanted to be there to celebrate life with those closest to her.

Ruyle touched countless people during her lifetime. In the 1970s, when she was elected to the Greeley-Evans School District 6 board, Ruyle fought to add art classes to the curriculum and won. It was about that same time she began painting,

In April 2013, Ruyle received the Century of Scholars Lifetime Achievement Award at the graduate school’s 100 Year Commemorative Celebration. She also taught art at UNC. Given her influence in spreading goddess art locally, the college dedicated a room — The Lydia Ruyle Room of Women’s Art — in her honor.

But it is through her depictions of goddess figures on Nylon banners for which Ruyle is best known. During the early days when she began focusing on goddess works, Ruyle would visit holy sites in England. Over the next several decades, more than 200 women would join her on spiritual journeys to Britain, Turkey, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Sicily, Malta, the Czech Republic, Russia, Mexico, Peru, the Himalayas, Hawaii and the southwestern United States.


— Tribune reporter Catherine Sweeney contributed to this story.

The Five Dakinis

Masks for The Five Wisdom Dakinis (2016)

The Dakinis are the most important elements of the enlightened feminine in Tibetan Buddhism. They are the luminous, subtle, spiritual energy, the key, the gatekeeper, the guardian of the unconditioned state. When you want to accomplish something, you always invoke the presence of the Dakinis.”

— Lama Tsultrim Allione

Actually, I think I have to thank the humor, and lifting of the Depression I spoke of in the previous Post to...........the Dakinis.  I don't understand the wonderful Beings I recently made a collection of 5 masks for as a commission, but I honestly believe in spite of my ignorance, they have been helping to release me from..........myself.  My gratitude to the Sky Dancers!  And I hope that they are pleased, along with Mekare***, the Tantric dancer and teacher I made them for, with my humble efforts on their behalf.   May these masks be filled with transformative energies, and be of benefit to many others as Mekare dances with them, and teaches others to do so as well.

"The Dakini is a primordial female wisdom energy.  They are called "Skydancers" for they are completely free, able to travel between worlds and dimensions, free of the entanglements of the mind, and intimate with impermanence. They dance in limitless luminous space. Embodiments of the Dakini are said to do their practices in graveyards,  adorned with skulls and bone ornaments representing their intimacy with impermanence and their freedom from all fear.  They are ferocious and wise, primal and magical. Fierce allies and agents of change.  Their compassion is immense.

They can be tricksters of the most sublime order, terrifying and demanding of truth, and also the most kind of guides, playful and nurturing.  They break through barriers, invoke strength and power, guide us across the thresholds of awareness and change. 

Depictions of the Dakini show her with a crown of skulls, in a wreath of flame, teeth bared in ferocious  display like a tiger -  eyes piercing and somewhat terrifying but with a rare beauty.  The beauty of understainding, compassion, and hilarity shines forth.  In Tibetan Buddhist Tantra there are 5 Wisdom Dakinis, each having a specific gift of mind transformation - the transformation or transmutation  of the poisons of the mind into wisdom."...............Mekare

I immediately related to the Dakinis being associated with the Five Elemental forces, the "Medicine Wheel" of the  directions.  My sense is that they are like the Devas, primal beings and builders and creators, their concerns and origin are not necessarily human.  In this sense, they are elemental beings, associated with the 5 Directions,  invoked perhaps  just as Pagans invoke the Five Guardians or Powers of the Elements - Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Center or Aether.  Perhaps, like Kali dancing with Her skull necklace, or the dancing Bone People of the Mexican "Day of the Dead", the skulls and bones that adorn them represent a ferocious hilarity at the fears that beset us, the joy beyond death, beyond impermance.

"Dakini is a source of refuge. Besides taking refuge in the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha), we also take refuge in the Three Roots (Guru, Yidam and Dakini): Guru as the root of blessings because he or she will guide us to attain enlightenment; Yidam as the root of accomplishment because through the skilful method of practicing on an Yidam or tutelary deity, one will realise the nature of his or her own mind; Dakini as the root of all enlightened activities since Dakini represents primordial wisdom.

Dakini is associated with spaciousness, therefore has the ability to give birth to limitless prospects of enlightened activities: pacifying, enriching, magnetising and destroying. Dakini also embodies the union of emptiness and wisdom. There is nothing more than this.  A Dakini has the ability to move freely in  space which is beyond thoughts and beyond fabrications. This is the state of awareness which is under control, stable and yet free. Everyone has the ability and the potentials to realise the Wisdom Dakini principles or nature within oneself."

The Green Karma Dakini,  Element of Air

 The transmutation of overwork, struggle, and competition  into  

all-accomplishing wisdom and enlightened activity.

Associated with Karma Dakini:  Fulfillment. Aware choice. 

Grace. Ease. The Tao. The Martial Artist aware in every direction. 

 Compassionate and capable action in the world.

The Red Padma Dakini, Element of Fire

 The transmutation of desire, lust, and grasping into discerning awareness.

Associated with Padma Dakini:  Compassion. Radiance. Magnetism 

in order  to bring benefit. Warmth. Comfort. Delight. Joy.

The Gold Ratna Dakini, Element of Earth

 The transmutation of arrogance and greed into equanimity and generosity.
Associated with Ratna Dakini:  Abundance. Stability.
The richness inherent in every moment and everything. 
Golden. Generosity. Enrichment.

The Blue Vajra Dakini, Element of Water

 The transmutation of confusion and anger into mirror-like wisdom.

Associated with Vajra Dakini:  Clarity.  Precision. Intelligence. Intuition. 

Reflection.  Clear seeing wisdom.

The White Buddha Dakini, Element of Space

 The transmutation of despair, depression, apathy, 
and disconnect into  illuminated spacious mind.  
Associated with Buddha Dakini:  Calm. Peace. Spacious. Soothing.
 Realization  of connection and the web of all. 
The restful state of enlightened mind.

Dakinis by Penny Slinger
http://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com

***

MEKARE is a Sacred Dancer, Artist, Storyteller, Shamanic Bodywork Therapist, and Visionary Creatrix who is passionate about embodiment, evolution, sacred dance, and healing.  She has traveled extensively, studying with indigenous healers and dancing ecstatically around the world, including performing for His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the Mandala Dance of the 21 Praises of Tara.

Mekare is an initiate on the Path of Pollen, an ancient shamanic tradition of the Honey Bee and the Hive. The potent energy of the sacred Bee flows through all of Mekare’s work … in dance, in healing, in love. A practitioner of Tibetan Buddhist Tantra, Mekare is a senior teacher and transmitter of the sacred dance/sadhana practice of The Mandala Dance of the 21 Praises of Tara, which is recognized by all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism as a direct lineage practice. She is also a transmitter of the powerful energies of the Five Wisdom Dakinis and is an adept in masked dance performance and ritual.  She leads classes, workshops and retreats internationally, offering many rich experiences of dance, ceremony, and transformational practices, as well as individual healing sessions/temple bodywork.

Mekare is the creatrix of Wild Honey Ritual Theater and Dance Prayerformance. Created as a medium for her ritual prayerformance offerings, Wild Honey is a dynamic sacred container for the magical cross-pollination that occurs when bringing together artists and innovators from many fields of experience. It is Mekare’s vision to gather and create this wild honey of extraordinary nourishment all around the globe. You can contact Mekare at: DevadasiM@aol.com and (US) (336) 971-1427.

A Circular, Literary Synchronicity

from Catalog, Aldon B. Dow Fellowship, 2007

"No one can  tell the difference between the true azure and blue mud anymore."

I haven't been writing much, because, to tell the truth, I've been depressed.   I've become virtually  invisible.  As an aging person, an artist, someone living in 2016, a strange time and place to find yourself embodied.  Strange indeed.

I tend to feel that, along with the end of art districts to gentrification, and art to photo shop and commodification, I have become a dinosaur, with no outlet or interest any more for my antediluvian  creativity, which endlessly bubbles up anyway.  Do we make art just for ourselves?  Well, yes and no.  Art is a Conversation, and a conversation should not always be about talking with yourself.   I guess I'll have to make my own retrospective one of these days, since there is no institution that will do it........although I'm not sure anyone would notice.   But I would dearly love to put together just one more grand catalog, and have it sitting on a table along with the wine and cheese................I always loved openings.

I share this sense of uselessness with many others, but it doesn't help "my depression".   I go to bed with the darn thing at night, and damn, there it is in the morning, casting its pall over the  rising day.  I've been so depressed that among other things I have been on the verge of deleting this Blog several times, wondering what is the point, I haven't a thing to say anymore.......but then I look at some of the posts and realize that some of them are pretty good.  I might even trace myself back to some point of self-realization  in the process of reviewing them,  if I have the energy to pursue the threads of my own journey again.

So the story of this synchronicity may take a while to circle into..........but synchronicities are like that, aren't they?  Circular, Webbed, ever expanding if  one keeps looking.  Perhaps, that is the way, as the Romans would say, "the Gods speak".  the  Goddesses.

With a "webbed vision".

I decided to let myself rant, or try to write about it, to see if it helps to at least concretize the depression,  give it words, give it a shape,  give it a name, and see it that helps to tame the beast.  Yes, even as I wrote,  all the cliches of contemporary society come rushing into my mind like a torrent of mediocre shame,  buzzwords and New Age positivity.  In an extroverted world so relentlessly devoted to accomplishment, achievement, and above all, Goddess help us,  commerce, depression has no place at the table.

(I would like to note, for the record, that spiders have been doing strange things around me again........little ones crawling across my pillow, the computer, threads suddenly arresting my attention as they connect this with that.)

So a story, and a quote,  from my favorite author, Ursula Leguin, came to mind, from "The Farthest Shore".  It was about a world that was losing its life force vitality, its "soul", and the travels of  the Archmage Ged to find the source of this  malady.  On an island once famous for the dyers who created beautiful colors into silk fabric, Ged finds himself in a dispirited pub, where the locals are lamenting the loss of artistry and prosperity.  "They can't tell the difference between the True Azure and blue mud anymore"  says one ill tempered local to Ged.

I've always remembered that passage, and on my grim days, sometimes feel that the same malady has  befallen us, in the Era of Cheap, Era of Walmart, Era of Disposibility.  So I decided to google "True Azure and blue mud" just to see if I had the quote right.  And guess what came up?

Me!  Only it took a while to figure that out.  The page Google landed me on  (posted in 2007) seemed so aligned with what I believed and envisioned that I felt inspired by it, applauding the author for being a kindred soul.  Until I realized that,  actually, it was a uncredited total plagiarism of my own 2007 post as I pursued my project "Spider Woman's Hands" as a fellow of the Alden Dow Creativity Center.  I saw that the blog person, whoever it was, had posted verbatim many pages of my Blog, all without crediting me.  Here's the link to, well, me again, without my name attached:  http://animabrat.blogspot.com/2007/06/shadow-work.html  Did this blogger want to appear as if she/he were me?  Or, as they say, is imitation the highest form of flattery?  Considering how dreadful the rest of the blog is, probably just as well that my name isn't there.

But then I started to read what I had written, almost 10 years ago.  And realized, along the way, that I LIKE MYSELF.  It's not bad, and I understand something true from it, something that pulled me from the abyss of my depression, gave me the insight I needed.  A "hello" from a younger self.

And I like the idea I had, 10 years ago, of creating a Society for people who have fallen through the cracks.  Out of the Loop.  Aging Invisibles.  The Loopy People.  I haven't found them yet, but maybe it's really time to start looking.

In the end, I have to thank (Spider Woman, of course) and the unknown plagiarist for helping me to re-connect to myself.  Thank you.  Who is the weaver, after all?

SHADOW WORK
June 19, 2007

I'm having a problem working. I suppose that's part of the process. You can't ask a question, a real question, without the universe, so to speak, providing both polarities. Or at least, so it is for me.

"Hello", my demons leer at me, gathering at the door. "Before you get 0n this Unity idea again, allow me to point out the dragon guarding the treasure at the heart of the mountain." By the age of 57, you can have a lot of dragons, a lot of unravelling of heartache and disillusionment to.

I'm going to get a glass of whine, and write. I suppose I need to vent. From this Saturnine point of view, I might as well take a look at the down side of the Web. The Information Highway, the Internet, all this electronic and media connectivity. Are we better off, now that we can "connect" so quickly? (as I write, a tiny spider drops onto my laptop. There She is, reminding me that it's all very relative. And there are bridges over every abyss.)

Well, of course. The Internet is the greatest library ever made, and best of all, it's available to everyone.  Yet how has it also redefined communication? Is it possible that we are also becoming so over stimulated, so "busy", that we can no longer tell the difference between real intimacy, conversation, communion - and superficial or even just  imagined "connections" with others?

I don't hate email, but I try not to take it seriously. Once upon a time, I lived in a world where people wrote letters. It was personal. You had pen pals.  When I put up my website more than 10 years ago, I had this perspective - it was about making friends, having my own cyberspace gallery, not so much about business. I used to receive notes from people. I even had a guest book, and met a few real friends this way.

Then the guestbook began filling up with spam, even pornographic spam. And notes between friends became group emails, then increasingly impersonal things, like political information, or, of course, announcements of openings, books, shows, etc. for me to circulate. And those little chain mail prayers and uplifting stories you have to pass on to "10 more people" in order to benefit from whatever kind of  grace so doing so would accrue, all the while being information gathering devices for spam companies.  And now there is Facebook and Myspace, where people I once knew well, people I once slept with or cried with or marched with or created with.........stream by so fast, reduced to a multitude of nano-seconds.  Images and brief glimpses into their lives that are vaguely unsatisfying. 

They depress me sometimes.

Realizing that people receive hundreds of emails to read and process,  I share less and less these days. On my not reasonable days (like today), I feel the whole world has ADD  and can't tell the difference between a poignant moment of real human contact and a sitcom. Between, as my favorite author Ursula Leguin wrote, "blue mud and the true azure".

Everyone is so very, very busy.

Or maybe the "pace" of our "lifestyles" has continually become more intense, and I'm just one of those who falling through the crevices of modernity.

Could it be possible there are other people like me, fraying, unraveling, beginning to say strange things to electronic answering machine menus that get longer and longer and more labyrinthine........lingering for meaningful conversations at checkout counters........mumbling Rilke or Lessing while ordering coffee at Starbucks drive thru......are they quietly wondering if they really are becoming invisible, and they do these things just to test the waters?

If that's so, maybe we can find each other, start a secret society maybe.

We'll become people who have fallen outside of the loop. Loopy people. We'll have a drink and some of those long, long soul satisfying conversations that went out with the '90's and the invention of laptops and cellphones.

Our membership will include people who were geeks but they reinvented ourselves to become something else, and are now regressing back to our earlier geek template because we're in various stages of breakdown, confusion, exhaustion, overweight, or just waiting for rebirth while still inhabiting a body - all ages, sexes, races and economic backgrounds welcome.

We can have comfortable camp outs (in places like the Berkshires in July, when there are fireflies, and with hot showers and barbecues).......or go to Sumatra economy class and stay in a home stay for $3.50 a night, and drink rice wine and bat at mosquitoes and talk about art, or crumbling temples, or Hindu mythology, or lost loves, or spiritual ecology, or petroglyphs, and live in ways that are frugal.

We will talk at length.  Leisurely, encircled conversations that wind and spiral around themselves, with memories that are really stories with no particular beginning, and no particular end, and all the lovelier for a little embellishment.  Our conversations will no doubt intertwine, with threads from each woven into the fabric of others, so that sometimes it is not clear if the colors are distinct.  That's fine.

We might burn little oil lamps to read cheap paperback books by, and fall asleep without clocks or cell phones or bras. We would allow each other our delights, and our melancholies.  Exaltations and Maudlins are welcome as well.

I won't apologize for "creating my own reality" in ways that leave me sad or discouraged sometimes.   If any other aging geek in the bunch has a rough time of it, I won't promise I can make things better, or even that I'll always be able to listen. But I won't expect them to apologize either. And we'll never, ever talk about "money" or  our various bodily complaints, unless it's absolutely necessary.

We might, however, remember people we've loved, loved in all of its forms and fashions, Agape, Eros, hot or cool, and how privileged we were to have loved them, more so, if they loved us back, for whatever moment or place or time. We might contemplate the real value of things, sweet things, hard things, natural things, vivid things, sad things, but all valuable things because they opened our hearts, and made us not only feel alive, but be alive.  The threads in the tapestry that you notice, that stand out in the warp.

We might write poems no one else will ever hear, and it doesn't matter. We might remember the remarkable lives of a beloved father, or an eccentric aunt who ran a boarding house in the Great Depression.    If we're feeling risque, we might talk about Dionysus and the mysterious Eros of nature.  We might remember  more personal examples worth sharing.  We might talk about books. We might talk about Georgia O'Keefe and Stieglitz, or read from Walt Whitman. We might talk about jazz, we might listen to jazz.  

We might ask what god a gamelan is speaking about, or is it a river, or is the god or the river, or both, speaking through the musicians?

We might come up with reasons why Beethoven wrote the "Ode to Joy", we might toast to every beach and river and forest we had the privilege and pleasure of walking in, being submerged by,  and talking to. 

We might.