Sunday Scribblings: Action

This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt is action.

Of the Romantic Movement,

a glimpse at Giselle.

"...sprites in white gowns with hems that are perpetually damp,

fairies whose little satin feet mark the ceiling of the nuptial chamber,

the snow-white Willis who waltz pitilessly the whole night long,

and wondrous apparitions encountered in the Hartz mountains

and on the banks of the isle glimpsed in a mist bathed by German moonlight." (Giselle, par. 9)

-Heinrich Heine

Her fate is death and the daunting rest of time.

Winter Solstice and Yuletide Blessings

When a mistletoe hangs and holly is abundant, the colors turn to red, green, and white. A part of the world is silent and magic is practiced ever so peacefully. There are wishes and hope and cheers, our planet will soon be new again. This celebration is for Sol, the sun that will rise and fall, endlessly.

On this hemisphere, life will be short today. Along his journey across the sky, we'll see the sun linger a bit. This night will be our longest. We'll set out candles, draw a ring 'round a fire, and listen for our sun set still.

The Cimmerian season starts today. Homer described this place as "land of perpetual mist and darkness." Within this fruitful darkness, new life will eventually emerge. Let this dim light play the role of a spiritual cradle, within it, the Sun is reborn. Father Time with his sickle, bids farewell. Earth will lay dormant, it's night silent and still. Some creatures will sleep this season away. Others will rest, waiting for the slow build toward longer days.

This isn't a day reserved for Wiccan or Heathen, it is indigenous. Newgrange and Stonehenge and Woodhenge, or where ever else you may be. An Indian tribe might reserve it for dreams. In the Celt lands, a hilltop bonfire, surrounded by people hoping to keep the darkness at bay. In India, they've already beckoned the goddess of light. Rama has returned and the portal closed on the third day.

Each day will serve a little longer, light becoming a bit stronger, as we watch Sol wax and the darkness wane. 

Some will carry a tree home, fresh scents of pine and cedar, and dress him with ribbon and garland and light. Others might chant and drum until the end of the night.

Whatever your tradition may be,  let this also be a season of light. A time of year to make a simple wish, to color our homes with thistle leaves, to ring a bell at dawn, to scatter the scent of peppermint and gingerbread. Burn a yuletide log. It is the season of song and dance. A time to divulge our dreams aloud.

Sweet dreams and warm blessings.

Happy Winter Solstice.

Sunday Scribblings: Omen

The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is omen.



As darkness evolves I hold on to what is burnished and clear.
As Adam and Eve expel from their garden-temptation must always fall, my Friday is full of qualm.
So the woman eats, and gives to the man who also eats.
"Upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life."
Subservient to man, childbirth, the pain within.
My dreams sense death.
Naughty flies come in in the cold.
A fiend, feasts on dead things.
A bat strays still in the corner of my room.
I spill minuscule sands of salt, as I send it over my shoulder.
I remember a man who once spoke of Halley.
A shooting spirit, visible twice to the most naked eye.

"I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

And then Mark Twain died on 21 April 1910, the day following Halley's subsequent perihelion.

Happy Birthday Govinda!

Last night Aaron and I talked about a little boy's very first year with us. A boy that was born because the moon needed him here. We sat around reminiscing about his earliest nights. Aaron said, "He would let me hold him, love him, dance with him. He transformed me."

He had a purple hand, it stayed that way for weeks. He was our biggest baby. A happy one. He was silent and sweet. Not so quiet these days, but Govinda still seems to be coated with candy.

He spends most of his time in an automobile, whether is truly exists for not. He is also a mechanic. The yellow and green wooden tools compete to hold his interest, but Govinda finds his dad's tools to be more entertaining. Rusty tools and the dangerously sharp, pointy ones. He operates on his baby dolls with them; he's a doctor also. He frightens me.

He tries his hardest to emulate his eldest boys. He yells at Judah a lot. He doesn't want help putting his shoes on anymore. He adores his baby sister.

He wears mittens in the summer. He looks for the moon at night.

What I remembered last night was simply his touch. There is a succession of Zen Masters who are linked together by transmission of mind, pure thought transferred from mind to mind with no words. We tend to dwell so little on our whole range of sensory perceptors and receptors that our touch feels bland compared to what it would feel like if our awareness was one hundred percent. I remember Govi's "original touch", as Ina May Gaskin refers to it. She says that a baby born blind doesn't lose his original touch because he can't afford to pull his attention out of his skin and out of his hands when he gets so much of his information about the Universe this way. Govinda reminds me to hold on to my original touch. He is alive and electric. And I hope that he stays close forever.

Happy Birthday Govinda Hare!

Happy Birthday Haile!

When Haile came home she was still dead asleep. After spending those vampire days with her in the NICU, I didn't quite feel like her mother. I had to bring her home from such a horrid place, a hospital. All we could do, for lithless weeks, was figure out a way to wake her up. The hospital gave us a bunch of plastic bottles and told us where to find powder. I felt like I had never been a home-birth mother.

We fed her with a dropper, drop by drop, the purest of pure. And sometimes we had to give in, mix powder, for Haile would only fall deeper into that distant sleep upon her mother.

We gave her her time and we watched her shine.

Last week she gained her first 'war wound'; busted lip, swollen mouth, crusty scabs, and all. That's what she gets for playin' around with a bunch of ruffian boys all day.

I've watched her steal their food, she makes Govi cry sometimes. She plays their games, I hear her laugh when they try to scare her with wicked masks. I've caught her leaving home a few times. No more preemie, that Haile holds her ground.

She shared with us, something that baby boys, born at home with their comfortable start, had never shared with us. Her womb world.

In that maze of exhausted days, we couldn't imagine who she might become in a year. A scrumptious peach and a twinkling little star. Lotus blossom.

Thank you for sharing your womb world with us.

Our blessed little empress eye.

Happiest of birthdays, dearest Haile.

Haile at nine months

My Summer Flame

Last school year, Sunday nights were for family poetry.
Sahaj wrote a few haiku's.
Here is one.

Summer Flames

Summer feels like fire.

My birthday is August 8th.

Summer's brightest day.

Eight times around the sun today for our little Jahson.

Sometimes I walk in on his heartfelt conversation with his sister.
He tells her things like this, "You are the most beautiful girl on the planet."
And like this, "I hope this world never hurts you."

Before he goes off to bed he shows us his warmest smile and tells us things like this, "I want to wake up and live this day with you all over again."

He's nothing but light.
A happy birthday to our brightest boy.

Sunday Scribblings: Standing Ovation

The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is standing ovation.

I choose something that I had not yet finished developing but it seemed appropiate for this prompt. It may be sketchy but, hopefully, it's still worth a read...

Much Ado About Nothing

Juliet wandered onto stage, her careless air staggering behind her. A howl and a whistle floated her way from somewhere deep in the crowd. She sat down in a balcony of verbena and vine, lifting her gloved hand and settling it against her cheek. "Oh dear, oh dear," she whispered to the moon. It happened to be the only source of light this evening, blood orange and new. It seemed to whisper back to her; Juliet had an ability to draw out the attention of anyone and anything, even the moon.

She rambled on about the heir of Montague; her masked paramour; her truest love, family names, and her despair. Her voice was flat and plain and her eyes wandered.

As Fall fell into the night, a river birch draped its arms around Juliet's balcony. Its feather-veined leaves came dancing along the way. She lost her focus and brushed them aside. I sat in my set, amongst an audience full of admirers and I wondered if anyone else had noticed just how little Juliet cared. James leaned over and whispered to me, "She has such a mesmerizing way about her." As you can imagine, the last thing I needed to hear from my boyfriend was that he was mesmerized by my sister.

Her Romeo stood cloaked against the shadows. He improvised as Juliet struggled to remember her lines. No one seemed to notice.

How she had managed to bewitch not only Romeo, heir to Lord Montague, but Count Paris as well, and my Jimmy too. And every other simple sensed small town boy remained a wicked mystery to me.