My Blog
blurring lines
The sun is a smear, a spreading stain of light. The air hangs swollen from the sky, blending all lines of distinction into blurry transitions. Edges disappear and my eyes soften, preferring the gradual smudge of thickly forested green slopes covering the entire expanse of land except where the lichen crusted cliffs interrupt their path. A crew of mountain goats, 4 adults and one freshly born, in their shaggy pantaloons nibble on willow leaves and fresh herbs as they slowly amble up a steep rock face and disappear into the thickness of an ancient spruce-hemlock forest. Further up slope, the chattering remains of winter slowly creep up to their summer range. Below the sagging snow zone in the subalpine meadows, brown vegetation pressed flat by the weight of winter into the soggy melt of mud dyes the slopes brown. The greenness of fresh growth follows in its track, transforming 18 hours of gentle sunlight into a feast of colors and tastes.Down on the beach, the rocks breathe with the changing tide. The water is grey-brown with silt. Turgid and thick, it has the viscosity of mercury. An undulating skin of wetness covering Mama Pacifica and all of her appendaged bays, inlets, and coves. Different rules apply beneath the thickly bonded surface. Another dimension exists that few terrestrial animals can fathom. Stellar sea lions break the surface for air. They live on the cusp, regularly transitioning between the two worlds. Bound by the craving of their lungs, they can only go so far in their explorations of the deep. Hauling their bulbous bodies up on rocky ledges they rest, raise pups, and escape predators and then release themselves back to the ocean for catching salmon and to play. Their bodies cumbersome on land realize a gracefulness when immersed. Usually their whiskered faces emerge, a disembodied head sitting on the water, peering around with curiosity and then they quickly slip back under. Playing tag, they chase eachother in a churning frolic of tails and flippers. Huge smacks of their bodies resonating off the cliff walls. The only other break in the surface of smoothness are marbled murrelets blinking in and out of this terrestrial reality. Tucking their heads and diving deep, they fly underwater in pursuit of sandlance. Their heavy bodies and short, narrow wings are better designed for swimming than flying. When they take flight, they skip across the water, bouncing their chests one or two times before achieving lift off.
A slick of yellow-green pollen floats on the surface of the inlet. Protein rich missives of information dispersed in such prodigious quantities that everyone has access to the intelligence contained within. As the tide goes out, a thick line of pollen marks its furthest reach. The sun appears and spoons my body with warmth. I strip down and scrape off the top layer of pure pollen with mussel shells and begin to paint my naked body with stripes of abundance and fertility, absorbing whatever wisdom from the ancient conifers that can be learned by osmosis. Crows spread out along the widening beach and play a lethal game of hide-and-seek. Energetically tossing seaweed stranded by the tide into the air, they quickly gobble the exposed and startled invertebrate with the exhuberance of “gotcha!”
I rejoin my partner, Ember, who is sitting by the kayaks trying to glean as much vitamin D as possible from this brief sighting of the sun. However, there is no wind and this is one of the best summers if you are a mosquito. 34 feet of snow falling this winter translates into innumerable hatchery pools this spring and summer for them. They swarm our bodies, snacking happily on our life force. We relent and crawl back into a thick crust of woolen clothing too deep for their proboscis to penetrate. They concentrate their efforts on our faces and hands but these are easier to defend and we barely notice as our hands remember to sway and slap as we breathe the beauty deep into our lungs, conscious of the subtle calming shift occurring in the deepest levels of our beings. Regaining a sense of belonging, we are home.
re-visiting the song of my childhood
I am beginning to hear her songs again. The song of my childhood, of waves and sand, of vine and lizard, of heat and wind. The song of an island in the Gulf of Mexico, just off of the mainland of Tampa. It is here that I had my first mystical experiences: lying on my belly under the porch for hours, entranced by a lizard’s throat pouch stretching skin of red and blue taut and thin, stirring a witches' brew of shells, sea water, and incantations into magical potions, and tracing delicate trails of ants up into the thinnest branches of orange trees.It has taken me a week to feel the life escaping from between the concrete sidewalks and houses. Her breath slipping into my lungs and filling me, then slipping out in song. The tones and words forming as they leave my lips. No thoughts, just feelings moving, changing, and expressing themselves along the way.
The people buy their trees, mulched bark, and rocks and place them in perfect symmetry in their few feet of claimed earth. But spirit flourishes in her corset of landscape and flirts with me through the colorful flowers of jacadaw, hibiscus, and birds of paradise, the ropes of ginger plant draping from the sturdy limbs of oaks, the February sun shining on me cooled by the splashing of dolphins, the ospreys and turkey vultures soaring up high, effortlessly gliding through space.
I acknowledge this intelligence, their beauty and welcome the song deeper into my chest, into my heart, into the core of my being.
scared
i had surgery on my right wrist this wednesday. as i lay there in loopy land lined up in the holding room, the sensation that i was a domestic animal lined up in a factory farm for slaughter slowly built in my head. nurses rushed past, joking with eachother. a mad scramble of paper and fluids. people blinking in and out of existence. talking to someone and then not remembering what had been said and only that they walked away laughing. prior to this, when i was told to strip down to nothing but paper booties and a cloth hosptial gown, i ferreted away my spirit bag with treasures from the land of wholeness into my paper bootie. now, i press the fabric into the arch of my foot, trying to ground this experience into the wider realm of my reality. i am begging my life to be with me now, to guard over me. i close my eyes and clench a cerebral fist over my lover beating a drum of elk skin, reverberations of earth, intentions of love. beating a drum 2000 miles away, he is present at the surgery. but it is not enough. i am not strong enough to fend off the swirling pulse surrounding me. my whole lower body is convulsing with fear and i'm trying to hide it and stop it at the same time. i tell myself its a good thing, that i'm just discharging fight/flight energy, but it is an endless supply. i rub my nose, eager to feel a part of me, a reminder of my physical boundaries, but my mind is too foggy to recognize self. i look at the blue tiles on the floor to ground on the present tense, to avoid the dizzying rush but it is impossible.the tempo is too much for me to resist. my own rhythms, moving like silt chiming on the hull of a kayak, steady and slow. i am overtaken. it enters at my chest and my heart is sabotaged. it beats wildly, out of my chest, flogging my lungs into overdrive. my gasping lips lead my lurching body into an upright position. the panic spreads like wildfire and all i am is trying to breathe and it just won't come in right. its not enough. its not enough.
"breathe," a nurse commands. "your oxygen level is at 100%, breathe slowly." but i can't. i don't trust her or her measurements. all i know is the jagged, sterile air is not enough. "through your nose and out your mouth." she shows me and i try. i mimic her. i clasp my jaw shut and force the gasp through my nose. there is a fear sound building in my belly. a plaintive howl and i am so careful not to let it out. i keep trying to breathe the way she's showing me until i get it right. "what's wrong?" she asks. "I'm scared," I confess, spirit trembling. she looks at me with no understanding, "of what?" my mind spins. where do i begin? "i'm from alaska," i say, as though the rest would be self-evident. "what are you doing here, then?" I raise my right hand, the one they are preparing to cut into, "oh," she says.
the anesthesiology nurse comes over. she repeats the question, "what's wrong?" this time, I say "I'm scared." but she looks me in the eye and holds my gaze and there is comfort in being seen by another human as a human. she puts her hand on my shoulder and her angel eyes on my eyes and i knew as long as she stayed there i would be okay. they gave me more drugs and knocked me out. the next time i came to was after the surgery.