Monday’s Child #30

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s time for the moon to go to sleep
To set its head upon a hidden starry bed
But it lingers and the night can’t turn to day
not with the moon behaving this way
So the lady – keeper of the moon
floats out of her tower on high
and herds the moon gently to beddy-bye.

Monday’s Child

 

Nightmares, Dirt and Poetry

Woke up before daylight crying so hard I was hyperventilating.  Another nightmare. I held my breath and counted to ten slowly, both to stop the hyperventilation and get myself under control.  I had to keep counting my breath over and over as a wave of the emotions from the nightmare would sweep over me.  Breath.  Observe the emotions, the pain -but don’t react.  Keep breathing.  Finally calm again yet not wanting to go back to sleep.  Exhaustion finally won and I drifted back off curled up close to Mark who had drifted off again as well, his hand still resting on my back where he had gently rubbed as I tried to regain composure.

I dream again.  This time, though, I am lucid.  I know I am dreaming.  I am sitting in a bed, my husband next to me, when I see a large dog standing in the doorway.  I point it out to Mark but he can’t see it.  He still can’t see it as it starts moving towards me, aggressively.  I realize it must not be a real dog and I sweep my hand through the air where it has come at me.  I announce that the dog is in the astral and I get angry.  I jump up, my heart in my throat as I yell a chanting rhyme at the dog and chase it.  It runs before me, but reluctantly.  I keep chanting.  Banishing it with words and actions till I chase it out the front door.  But before it gets off the porch it grows larger.  It reaches down and angrily grabs the last dwindling basil plant out of it’s planter.  Shredding it.  Then morphs into some hideous creature before disappearing.  I still know I am dreaming and I stand there in my dream, pondering.  I feel I know what I need to know and so I start to try and wake up, it’s hard.  Then I’m awake and back in bed next to my husband, but things don’t seem quite right, and it is like I am moving through quicksand.  I realize I am still asleep and I start yelling, “I want to wake up.  I want to wake up.  Over and over. I finally do.  For real this time.  But I take a moment to be sure.  I sit up, absolutely certain I will not allow myself to drift off again.  Enough is enough.

Despite the horrors of the morning, our energy is good.  A little tired but looking forward to the day.  We read about various ways that the holiday of Imbolc  or Candlemas or any of it’s other names over the centuries is celebrated.  We talk about how we might like to celebrate this balancing point between winter and spring.  We have some good ideas, some of which I may share in another post.

We take off to run some errands and end up at a nursery where I fall in love with a Daphne bush and these bright pink primroses with lacy white edges.  Mark wants to make these my early Valentines gift this year and I won’t argue.  I’ve missed the Daphne I had for years that I finally planted in the ground in Olympia and had to leave behind.  I’ve wanted another ever since, and finally, this year, instead of cut flowers I get a whole small shrub of them to bloom over and over each year – at this balancing point between winter and spring, where I am needing a little more spring and a lot less winter.  We gather up our treasures and as we drive through the city the car is filled with the scent of daphne.

Today included a walk through the Arboretum in the rain.  We visited the Rowan trees and the big sister Maples next to the Rowan grove.  We walk through the woods, seeing the Magnolia trees fat with blossom getting ready to burst in the coming months.  The rhododendrons as well and the Indian Plum about to burst.  I can’t help myself – I gently kiss the tip of the nearly open blossoms, grateful for what they tell my winter weary spirit.  We walk past fragrant blooming Witch Hazel with Helebores flowering at their feet.  I hug a cedar tree or two, breathing in the fragrance of their bark.  We visit the Oak Grove where we sat and meditated among the trees last year with a group of Druids.  Each visiting the trees we sat with.  As I stand before my oak tree, cheerfully wishing it a happily approaching spring I clearly get the sense that Trees are not impatient for Spring.  ”Fine then”, I say, “Enjoy the rest of your winter.”  Humbled by this bit of wisdom, yet still, myself, impatient for Spring.  I am not a tree.

We eventually make it home and I wrestle the Daphne out of its plastic pot, placing it into the planter I have for it and nestling the primroses around its feet. I have dirt under my finger nails and in my hair, where I kept trying to push it back out of my face with soil encrusted fingers.  I bury my nose in the Daphne again and grin, ear to ear.  Satisfied I go back inside and to dinner.

After dinner we read poetry to each other.  Three books sitting on the table to choose from.  Mary Oliver, Robert Frost and Shel Silverstein.  We move back and forth between the books.  Moved deeply by Oliver, pondering at Frost and laughing hysterically with Silverstein.  The eclectic nature of the poems being read making the evening that much more unique and fun.  Then I notice my sketch journal sitting on the table as well, so I pick it up and read a few poems from it and then a few entires from the past couple years.  I see the sketch I did of Mark wheeling me through the p-patch under a full moon in a wheel barrow and we laugh at the memory.  We marvel at how much it snowed in 2009 and at the eclectic nature of three Haiku poems I wrote that winter.  The lightheartedness of a couple captured moments and then the blatant truth of the last one on the page.  It capturing the reality of that time for us in so few words.  We’re glad we aren’t in that place anymore.  We’re glad that we can move from nightmares to dirt to poetry all in one day.

Here are the three poems from that page in my sketch journal.

Bagel and cream cheese
Cat pushes closer
My bagel, Thank you!

Open Haiku book
Cat wanting attention
Close Haiku book

The homeless man asks for money
I shake my head
I may be homeless tomorrow

Morning Mumbles and Magpie 50

Foghorns at 1:30 am.  Some alarm going off nearby at 3:30 am.  My shoulder spasming at 5:30 am.  Sometime you just have to give up on sleep.  It was nice to spend a little time with Mark this morning though and to share some of the steel cut oats he had cooked up.  I ate those a couple hours ago and my stomach is growling like I haven’t eaten anything.  I thought oats were supposed to be one of those stick to your ribs kind of foods.  I don’t have a clue what I’ll eat.  So I’ll procrastinate.

It’s still pretty foggy outside, and cold.  I’m covered up with a blanket, wearing a big fluffy sweater and two cats cuddling close.   Even so I can’t help but dream of spring and summer and warmer times.  Which makes me think of this weeks Magpie writing prompt:

All I really have to say about this is:

Winter, exit that-a-way – and pronto!

OK, maybe I could say more…

Winter wonderland was lovely and glistening when it was fresh and new but now it has lingered too long.  The skies stay gray, the air chill and I’m ready, ready for it to go away.  To early yet, I suppose, but my hands and my feet and my toes, they dream of being warm again and free and naked – no gloves or socks or closed toed shoes to hinder their free-spirit style.  Tevas  and flip flops they cry, and bare and free to run in warm sand and wade in cool water on hot days.  My shoulders and cleavage dream of low plunging tank tops and halter tops in fun summery colors exposed to a light breeze across sun kissed skin.  My legs want to be left bare, nothing hindering them from wading deep in tide pools and up creeks and into summer warmed lakes for swims.  My body yearns for bikini time and watery kisses as the summer swallows swoop low over the lake and summer moons rise as summer suns set.  And if it were to tell its deepest secrets, what it desires most, well it would remind me of the freedom of being four and having no reason for clothes of any kind at all.

 

 

Thursday 13 – In Quotes

In which I share 13 quotes that have touched me in some way:

1. “They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.” ~Khalil Gibran

2. ” There are many that are living far below their possibilities because they are continuously handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man made rules that are not founded on principle. “
~Ralph Waldo Trine

3. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those that mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind” ~Dr. Seuss

4. “I think it’s important to watch how deeply we get into social media and if it prevents human interaction or encourages passivity instead of earnest and true relationships, it’s not doing us any favors.” ~Ecogrrl

5.  ”The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever”
~ Jacques Cousteau

6.  ”With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy?”
~Oscar Wilde

7. “At times we look like moving trees, reaching arms from our trunks to the moon and stars, gathering nourishment from the ground under our feet, our energetic roots.” ~ J. Ruth Gendler

8. ” I can think of the various ways I have thought of the Invisible world, some quite contradictory to others and how each time seemed to manifest itself as I thought of it to some degree.” ~Marion Weinstein

9. “Words are symbols.  They represent ideas, which are Invisible .”
~Marion Weinstein

10. “If there was one unifying belief among them, it was to question all the assumptions in our consumer culture that have us convinced that a family cannot survive without a dual income.” ~Shannon Hayes

11. “I am the weather.” ~ Mama-Om

12. “Drop by drop is the water pot filled.  A little at a time, wise people make themselves good.” ~Buddha

13.  ”I love you.” ~Mark Kirschner

My First Thursday 13

In which I list 13 things I wish I could give to my husband for his birthday.

1. A haircut

2. A “get out of debt” free card

3. A wheel rebuild with generator lights for his bike.

4. A trip to the Methow Valley for a long weekend of snowshoeing from hut to hut.

5. Me – 100% healthy.

6. One of the two bicycle calendars he was drooling over.

7. The perfect work and commute schedule.

8. Every Terry Brooks book he hasn’t read.

9. Really good binoculars so he can see the birdies as well as I do.

10. A yoga studio membership.

11. A lifetime supply of delicious organic beer.

12. A certain future which holds backpacking or camping trips every month.

13. A house elf.

 

Happy 40th on January 2nd, Mark Kirschner!  I really do hope it’s the thought that counts…

Thursday 13

Magpie #38 – A Short Story

It was a beautiful autumn morning and I was pedaling my bike along one of the back country roads I had yet to explore.  The tires of my blue mixtie crackling through fallen leaves of gold and brown, orange and red.  I sat upright, my hands lightly holding the cork grips of the swept back handle bars, a bright yellow scarf trailing out behind me.  I wore an easy smile, my eyes bright from the crisp air and the joy that comes when riding your bike on a beautiful day during one of your favorite times of year.

Monday’s Child #18

Monday’s Child #18

If you insist I stay inside, I must confess, 

I’ll make a mess you can’t abide.

So if this bothers you then let me go, 

let me go outside!

What if – Writer’s Island Prompt # 24

Writer’s Island Prompt # 24 – Envision

 

What if –
What if, when the skies are grey and the clouds are grey and your thoughts are grey
And you sound like Eeyore, only not fit for children
What if -
What if you could peel back the layers and lift the fog and shine a light into the darkness
And you could see the bright possibilities
What if -
What if beneath all the gloom and the dreariness and the sordid angst
You found a colorful life of promise
What if -
What if you could see beyond the past and into the future and clearly the now
And you could envision a future of hope
What if -
What if you took steps forward and made intentions and followed through
And what you envisioned became real

Mondays Child #16 – A writing Prompt

There were two witches and a wizard made three
And a potion they did make for you and me
With little bits of this and vials full of that
A few worm castings, kitty sheddings and snail slime
Bat squeeks, spider sneaks, and rat’s cheese sublime
In a boiling bubbling cauldron upon a firey flame
With giggles and snickles and snookles they did brew
A halloween night full of fun and fright
For everyone, everywhere, they did stew
Mandrake screams and ghostly dreams
Doors that go slam and steaming socks full of toe jam
With salamander spit and toadstools grown in…
Well, never mind that
With a final sprinkle of powdery book dust
And a young frogs ribbet they did thrust
Into the swirling, twirling cauldron of goo
Their wishes of a spooky fun night for me and you.

Inspired by Monday’s Child at http://childrensverse.blogspot.com/.

Magpie #35

Magpie Tales #35 – A Writer’s Prompt

Autumn’s offerings
captured -
beauty revealed
through the
death of chloroplasts.