Moods

Seasonal shifts in light and color, temperate mountain forests, compacted dirt path scraped with faint marks, signs of erosion, drought, and presence. Rotting logs lay in regenerating loam from countless shedding, burning, blowing, and collecting to form soil. Tires spin by, tearing at her skin, pulling down the ridge-line like gouging chisels with every pedal onward. Bells and whistles overtake the soothing birdsong of Pacific Wren. Still, the winged beauty persists where it can; working tirelessly towards harmony with place.

This is my home. A short span of action in the long geologic evolution of the world I know, but the thriving within the natural world has always felt compelling. Perhaps this is spirit; bird song, celestial light, literal electric exchange between bare feet and soil. When was the last time you grounded? Language is cultural identity, but what of the very nature of life in a place- a language deeply rooted in all survival? When knowing is the lifetime experience, making relationship with a living system you’re a part of, struggle of comfort with place. There are moment of disconnect, and the longing for greater awakening. The song of seasons, lifetimes run in minutes, sometimes seconds, like ideas. Digesting every moment, like the stomach of my sheep, always hungry, chewing cud between meals. Swallowing and not keeping it down. I’m glad people don’t have to mull grass with many stomachs. We can vomit, thank goodness too. Colic is frightening. Ancestral bowls, how can we all relate as people where we stand now, always looking back, through the layers of time, granite, sand, and fire melting it all together- again and again and again.

What if we could feel all life at once? Would it mean feeling death just as much? I think so, and that’s an important balance to maintain in sewing seeds and spilling blood. In killing the stalk- shearing down a growing line directly connected to this earth from start to harvest. In the same dance of death, close relationship with breathing flesh, covenant of survival and reproduction. Cutting lines of ancestral paths stretching as far back as my own, out of star dust to dust again. Can you see the universe in everything?

Hollow or full space? Crouching downward before every leap of faith. There can and should be spokes on every perspective, anchoring circle of movement from one time into another, many hands make light work in spirit too. Song and dance come to life, learning new steps takes us closer to all enlightenment of self and place. Where are you placed at this time? Step into the circle and look back, who stands to your right and left? How often? When did you last stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers? New vision creates change. From outside the circle, this might appear chaotic. Wheels shatter under intense and continuous stress. Like that string Buddha was enlightening on. And without enough spokes no working circle can form. No vision is lights out. Wandering in darkness would still be something. Is total paralysis always a bad thing? Not when you are stilling the pain.

That golden light on Winter’s last stand shines triumphant with Spring’s banner of warmth heralding the end of cold quiet and the beginning of new life and fast growing weeds. Lambs leap like leafhoppers into snow melt pastures greening as the day brightens. Two deer stealth into shadow at hedgerow’s end as the dog picks up scent and starts for the thicket. A gate holds back pursuit and dawn spills down the drive and through the window, onto a made bed where two cats sleep curled in blissful comfort. Rooster crows a proud greeting to mourning as she sails over us in pale yellow laced cloud. Heaven and earth meld through another day in paradise.