collision

and... because i am, yet again, bogged down with too much information i will be posting more poetry instead of plant write-ups.  i do promise, however, that several excellent posts will be here soon (i also need to find the cord for my camera so i can upload photos--i have tons of pictures!)--portraits of bloodroot, angelica & tobacco are all on their way.
until then, here are some more words:

I'm not sure this tumbling would resolve anything.

But, the lack--

the stillness of action

is eating my skin.

As i was walking, downhill

a scene played out in my mind:

"Give me your eyes," she said

as he opened his mouth

and she wanted to take the silver-spoon-slung with sugar

dress her eyes with sugar and coal

and feed him her stare.

Watch her eyes slink down his throat

licking, shivering tongue

your sweat

in my mouth

and i trip, distracted

but do not fall.

Poised mid-air collision with the wind

only a stumble

i wished for the pain

the full flat-facesmashed crash

knees scraped

to be pushed--facedown in the dirt

stones kneading my shoulders, heaving

(let my animal loose for awhile, please...)

let me

drink in the air that surrounds you

let me

use my mouth to breathe

instead of just

host tears of saliva

(the jitters are rushing the air out of my lungs)

i need to hold onto something.

I need to surrender

(let me let go of the wheel for awhile)

but my fingers, despite themselves, grip it far too tightly.

Knuckles red and swollen.

Let me

please--

release.

Chickens, donkeys, onions and gifts. (Many gifts....words)

(this was my brain today: remedios varo, nacer)

 I feel like today was a gift.  Last night was the beginning of the gift, but filled with much more subtle emotional intensity.  These past couple of months have been so loaded with freedom, longing, confusion, uncertainty and a great deal of unbridled joy that I've been existing in a more or less constant state of over-stimulation.  Today, the uncertainty faded suddenly--that's the magic of words and silence working in their strange way--and I found myself at work this morning, being paid to do what I love.  I planted onions and tended to a rather neglected vegetable garden near Sisar Canyon.  It was beautiful outside--the sun beat down on my face and my hands dug through dirt, pulling stubborn weeds and tearing out buckets full of heavy, twisted roots to make way for the little onion starts.  There were so many animals wandering around it was impossible not to smile.... so many noises, so many little creatures running around joyously.  Michaela, the woman I am working for, has SO many animals: a donkey (who is very sweet and gentle and loves to be pet), 5 dogs, a pond full of turtles, a lot of ducks that waddle around and quack at me through the fence while I work, about 17 chickens --one of whom is named Mr. Pants (because he has these funny tuft-like tuxedo puffy pant feathers on his legs, hehehe. Mr. Pants and his friends zoom around the pasture and chase each other all day)--, 2 pot bellied pigs that are just wonderful to watch and have this really WARM nest-smell--the smell makes me feel like I'm waking up early in the morning to a home-cooked breakfast, pancakes & eggs, really snuggly and safe and warm--, and 2 goats that love to climb onto the highest spot they can and bleet their little goat-hearts out (Michaela is going to build them a jungle gym of sorts to play on, since they love climbing so much--that's one of the projects I'm going to help her with).  Michaela also has a ton of tasty avocado trees of various sorts, almond trees, peach trees, orange trees, tangelo trees.... Needless to say, my job is WONDERFUL.  My brain was quiet, peaceful today--probably for the first time in months.  There was no incessant racing of thoughts, circling in on themselves and twisting around uncomfortably in my brain.  There was no brain buzzing, no rushing, no roller coaster, no angst, no dread, no frustration.... it was just quiet--ecstatically quiet.  There's something about this solitude--working outside with my hands in dirt and the sun on my face, being completely surrounded by LIFE in all its various forms--the sounds of life, the fertile smell of the earth, the aching of my hands as they scrape and dig while becoming even more calloused and embedded with dirt; the quacking of the ducks and the tyrannical gusts of wind that blow my shirt sideways--there's just something about that experience that makes me feel right.  At peace, quiet.  Almost bliss... full of love (and pain, as always).   The broken-ness starts to unbreak, and I start to think about the future with the somewhat foreign feeling of hope, innocence.  I think of my soil-stained hands touching your soil-stained hands, and I know that this is exactly where I'm meant to be.  I'm thankful the plants have taught me patience; I am going to need a deep roaring river of it before I can repair these pieces of ours. For now, gratitude is enough.

The Rabbit Hole

I seem to have tumbled down the rabbit hole... perhaps I have too many irons in the fire at the moment. I have been researching Angelica and Tobacco with untamed glee for the past week or so, and I keep attempting to synthesize what I've learned into some sort of blog post, but as soon as I begin to write I find more information that leads down another path, which leads to more information, which sends me down another path... etc. So, Angelica and Tobacco will be another post. Until then, I've unearthed a few words from the massive, sprawling pile of pages that is the mound of the ouroboros nonsense-book I've been writing for the past two years or so. As I try to edit this jumbled mess, I'm noticing I have a tendency to loop my sentences around like endless unhinged carousels--they run on and on and on and then fly off the handle into some random corner of the universe, totally unrelated to wherever the sentence began. I'm not sure whether this is something I need to harness in a bit & try to tame, or whether it is just characteristic of my writing and I should just let it be what it is... Maybe when I finish this writing project I will have found the answer... most likely I will have only found more questions, but that's one of the things I love about creative projects. Here's a snippet:

Inhaling deeply the odor of her body, the odor of the green light that had borne itself into her and was now traveling throughout every inch of her skin, she heaved her limbs into the misplaced laughter of the scattered light around her. The world was hallucinating, and she was peaceful in the center of the commotion, laughing, laughing, laughing...

Her head grew heavy and fell back onto the carpet as she slid the length of her body down off the bed, rubbing one way, rubbing the other, feeling the growth of the carpet onto her skin, and into her skin; it tickled her, and she began to laugh again. It felt as if someone was running their fingers through her hair ever so carefully, gently enough to make the small hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention, harshly enough to make her neck twist and her eyes close.

When her soul was quiet in that space there was no longer a world outside her, no longer anything else but her throbbing brain and its false silence, a convincing impostor of peace.

In this cocoon the green-eyed girl could feel her tiny caterpillar feet twisting in their reach toward ecstasy--soft, slow ecstasy that dissolved her body down to nothing—here, she was the caterpillar when it was no longer a caterpillar, when it was nothing but a soft pulp of potentiality awaiting its transformation into another life-form. When she inhaled this poison (her poison) she was inhaling the breath of that other being that lived in her veins, the hollows of its body thriving and throbbing, whose head lit up like a crazed frog when electricity coursed through the long rubbery strand of cord that attached its heart to the wall.

She ran—ran away from it, dove into the water of the pool, of the tub, of the river—to wash herself clean, to purge her veins of this scattered clattering energy—she swam back and forth, back and forth in the water as the bats dipped their wings into the green glowing liquid. But it was useless; the surge had taken her over, she could either ride it out or succumb to the frantic jumbling of her electrons underneath the skin of her skull—she was not actually sure that she had a choice, or that it would make a difference. So she ran--ran out of the house with her brown suede coat on, slowed only when she was far away at the end of the street, slowed to a fast walk, and paused to light a cigarette in the dark and started running again, onto the next block, two streets down she turned left, propelled in a senseless motion and paranoid about the gazes surrounding her, the people hiding in their houses with the lights off, normal people. She worried that they would see her--multicolored hair flying around her face with black eyeliner smudged around her eyes, smoking as she ran, coat flapping awkwardly in the wind, cigarette dangling limp in her hand, shaking and scattering ash all over herself, wearing torn stockings but no shoes-- sometime before midnight. She had run down this street in disarray many times before, and whatever the normal people saw they probably could not believe; she imagined she looked as if she was a piece of the circus that had cracked and lost its way, lost a wheel, and was hurtled in a violent splash of colors unevenly rolling down the street...and what could normal people say about the circus, anyhow?