Last night I had a couple of dreams.
In the first, I was on a plane. Planes in their own right are terrifying things for me. Something about giving up control. Something about my life being in the hands of someone else. Of course, I am realising that this idea of being ‘in control’ is just an illusion, and that my life is always on a thread, regardless of whether I choose to acknowledge that fact or not. I think the plane was in outer space. Probably because I was looking at photographs of nebulas before I went to sleep. The sky was purple and filled with stars. It wasn’t even going down yet, but I was terrified.
Dream 2: I’m walking with my mum down the street, and remember that I’ve left something very important in my car. I tell her to wait where she is and start running back to my car. I’m barefoot. The concrete hurts the soles of my feet. A black mercedes is driving slowly down the dark street towards me, passing into the glow of each orange street light, getting closer. All the windows are blackened out. It’s lights are off. I am running as fast as my body will carry me, the balls of my feet barely even touching the ground. I have to cross the street, right in front of this car, or else I’ll be trapped between it and a wall. I imagine that there are guns inside. I imagine that there are rapists inside. I imagine that my mum is back there very scared, and I feel terror like I’ve never felt before. The road isn’t finished, my feet hurt, I fly, but am in the open without any armor. I wake up. Cold sweat. And force myself to go back in and finish what I started.
I wake up this morning understanding something about myself and about life:
Some things cannot be fought; some things have to be let go; sometimes you have to be vulnerable.
This journey is all fun and games until you ask something impossible of yourself.
I dance this morning.
These notes, I think, that ride on the energy of the room,
dance to their own beat.
So unencumbered by physical space
by bodies and walls
they fly
I remember lying on the floor at Kerry’s house
and she sent me into a trance where
my body started moving
the rattle she was playing and
the rattle she was playing was moving
my body
and we both filled the room
with this pulsating rhythm
like a field of wheat moving in the wind
or like a body of water moving over a mountain
except that there was no wind
and there was no water
only the sound
only the rhythm.
How easy it is, I think,
when there’s music there.
How easy it is, I think,
to dance alone.
Music notes cannot hurt you
and cannot chase you down the street
or crash your plane into the ground.
One does not need armour when dealing
with music notes
or with colours
or with words
or with plants.
This sword, it seems,
was forged only for humans.
Why is blue associated with sadness?
Is ti because blue is the colour of rain, and rain is sad (because it’s like the sky is crying but also because the wetness reminds me of tears, and the wetness inevitably leads to coldness and/ or curling up in bed or on the couch– both of which, if done for extended periods of time lead to a different kind of sadness to depression but still sadness none the less.)?
Or is it because when blood has no oxygen in it, it turns blue, and a blood cell with no oxygen is like a lover with no beloved, and this in itself is a sad state indeed?
Or is it because when you die your lips turn blue, and we are all trained from birth to think of death as a sad thing (and in my opinion, at least, if I like the person who has died, and especially if I love the person who has died, it IS a sad thing)?
Or is it because when it’s raining, usually the sun is gone too? In Scotland, it rains a lot. An awful lot. More than you’d think it was possible to rain, and DEFINITELY more than it should rain on a single group of people, as evidenced by the distinct lack of bubbliness in the people as a whole. And rightly so. I wouldn’t want to smile a lot if I had bad teeth* and the sun hadn’t come out for months on end. What’s there to smile about when the sun has disappeared or possibly even died (please refer to aforementioned point on death and turning blue to see why this might be sad)?
Or maybe because blue is the colour of stagnation. When I was leading a man through the sun salutations a few months ago, he was in pretty bad shape. He’d just had a couple of major surgeries and when he was breathing this cloud of blue-ness would hang around his face, and then go away, and then come back, and then go away. Stagnation. Life is movement. Stagnation leads to death (please refer to aforementioned point on death and turning blue to see why this might be sad). He’s still alive, mind you. I think all that deep breathing got stuff moving.
But then, on the other hand, blue is the colour of forget-me-nots, which are pretty little flowers indeed (and they used to grow in the front garden of the house I grew up in and I think they might have even been the first flower I learned the name of– because how could you forget?). And of the sky. The sky when it’s sunny, and the sky when the clouds clear. It’s the colour of the sea in the carribean in those pictures of those beaches that are supposed to be paradise even though I’m pretty sure that nobody alive has actually seen paradise. I used to look at those pictures and think that these places weren’t actually reachable (ooh… maybe that’s why they’re seen as paradise) and the first time I ever went to Hawaii I went looking for one and I think I found it but sometimes these things are better off being unreachable. It’s the colour of the sea in other places too– places that I’d much rather spend all of eternity than in a timeless photograph. And if you jump in then you’re completely surrounded by blue (and by plankton) and suspended in stillness while the blue world moves around you. Like being in a big grown-up-ocean-womb. Which isn’t really sad at all, though can be kind of scary sometimes if there are sharks and jellyfish and monsters lurking nearby.
Maybe it’s a semantic issue. Maybe there are really two blues, and nobody got the memo.
*No Scottish egos were harmed in the typing of this post.
In the dead of night I creep out on to
the cliffs and look down at the surging waves that beat persistently
at these hard rocks that will one day be
sand.
One day
long after I’m gone and you’re gone too.
From up here these hard rocks are
too strong to fall but
from the perspective of time
it’s a different story entirely.
Sagebrush clings to the cliffs
even this far north.
Even with the onslaught
constant
surging
grey
and salty.
Is it not in the nature of every thing
in existance to
fight for survival?
The strong rock can say that it is just doing its job
but when the tide
turns
and the time comes it
will fight what it knows to be a losing
battle because
a life,
without fight in it,
is hardly
a life
at all.
Silence again.
Silence, and the sound of fat rain drops dunking themselves on the metal awning over my back door.
And the sound of cars occasionally splashing down Kings road.
Supposedly there are a number of storms heading towards LA right now, and where we usually get on average 10 inches or rain a year, in the next week we’re going to get seven of them all at once. I say supposedly because I haven’t bothered to validate this information that I’ve heard. I mention this because the sound of cars splashing down Kings road is getting louder, and remember that the roads here aren’t built for heavy rainfall. The houses perched precariously on cliffsides aren’t either. Not that I mind too much– signs of nature triumphing over man make me secretly gleeful. I am a traitor.
This is all people talk about, in a place where it rains maybe five times a year. The opposite of Glasgow, where, when the sun pokes out, people strip down to their undergarments and talk about the ‘heat wave’. The first year I ever moved to Southern California was El Nino year. I had no idea what El Nino was other than it was to blame for the mountains around the desert being the prettiest colour of purple I’d ever seen. Here, after a few raindrops, cars start swerving erratically (while people look for the windscreen wiper button) and people discuss the storms that are coming in the check out line at the supermarket, or while getting their morning coffee. Not that I mind too much.
What I do mind is that the rain makes me feel like a caged animal. I think my cat feels the same way. She claws at the front door, and I open it, and she’ll sit outside in the tiny bit of space where it’s still dry gazing longingly at the wilds that fall in the shadow of the Beverly Center (a place I have affectionately dubbed the ‘Sentinel of Evil’… this is how I will refer to it from now on. Those of you who read it now, you’re in the know. Everyone else will worry their hearts out of their chests for this poor girl trapped in some distant land under a tyrannical overlord that is brainwashing the minds of everybody who falls in its wake). One day, I promise her, we’ll move up into the mountains, and I’ll remove her collar, and she’ll get to catch me presents like a normal cat, instead of being hindered by the tinkling around her neck. She brings me things she can catch, like crickets and cockroaches. The squirrels that live here should really be thanking me.
Owl, you’re not missing much here right now. Getting to practice in the morning would be a definite danger with all those high-on-spirit kundalini yogis skidding around the westside in their Pri-i.
Here lies Nancy Nettle.
ashes to ashes
Formerly Miss Nancy Nettle of the garden of North Kings road, now Miss Nancy Nettle of the rubbish bins.
Born, March 2008, in Ontario, Canada, Nancy Nettle was daughter of Bill Nettle and Harriet Nettle. After a quite idyllic childhood at Richter’s nursery, she was sent to what would become her last home in the late spring, and planted under the fig tree almost immediately.
She flourished under the fig tree, growing into a beautiful, big and strong plant. Her days were spent doing things that she loved to do (which means that she had quite a lovely life if you ask me):
tickling squirrels;
hanging out with the borage and the comfrey and the chard and the wild lettuce (which somebody (I don’t know whooo) now regrets planting because she doens’t use it and it’s now everywhere);
hanging out with Rebecca early in the morning when Rebecca could sit and talk to plants without anybody else being awake to hear it;
metamorphosing into soup and tea and tincture (is there no limit to the magical ability of the nettle plant?);
and stinging people who didn’t like her… which made Rebecca quite happy to watch– especially when it was the silly handyman who traipsed mud through the entire house AND DOWN THE LENGTH OF REBECCA’S YOGA MAT, and also when it was the woman who would turn out to be her murderer.
Ironic, it seems, that just by doing what nettles are known to do, Nancy may have sewn the seeds of her own undoing.
Nancy Nettle was the innocent victim of passive aggressive behaviour. After almost a year of thriving under the fig tree, she was brutally ripped out of the ground and thrown in the trash can along with the grass cuttings.
Rest in peace, Nancy Nettle– you will be sorely missed*.
Your soups warmed my stomach,
your company warmed my heart.
*In memorial of your great life, I have dug the remains of your roots through the entire patch of earth where you lived, and spread your seeds across the garden.
Nancy as a baby.
Watching the sun come up over the desert,
there’s a reason I come out here so often.
These big expanses of space,
the cool, light sandy earth.
It’s as airy as it gets.
Out in the wild, it’s easy to expand–
to see how small we are
how insignificant.
Centered and strong, I understand that any choice is the right one;
any path leads to the right place
because right is nothing but the present
and wrong is nothing but fear.
Cocooned in the mountains
supported by sand
licked by air
sun like a fire
(even in winter, when it’s cold)
Earth, calm
these choppy waters.
This, dear readers, is a turbulent ride.
“we’ve reached an endpoint in human history. That the modernist tradition of progress and ceaseless extension of the frontiers of innovation are now dead. Originality is dead. The avant-garde artistic tradition is dead. All religions and utopian visions are dead and resistance to the status quo is impossible because revolution too is now dead.”*
-Kalle Lasn
Observations in the early morning:
1. Everything can take on meaning, or have no meaning at all. It just depends on perspective, and how badly you want an answer.
2. Breathing. Just sitting and breathing, in the early morning, before it’s light, before the neighbours are awake, before you’ve had caffeine (which is also before your brain starts running at 100 mph… no correlation, of course) when its just you and the cat sitting and filling your lungs with cool dark air, is one of the most pleasurable experiences ever.
3. Everything in the present moment is intent. Everything in all of the universe is intent. Your (all of our) personal intents have made you (and all of us) arrive at this very moment. Where you are and how you arrive there is up to you.
4. Facing backwards is pointless– everybody knows that history is determined by the eye of the person reading it (much like dots and waves).
5. Rationality is reaching the end of its tenure. Good riddance, I say.
6. Perspective is everything, but also nothing at all.
The postmodern condition, in my opinion, is much like the story of Narcissus. We (as a society) started out in awe of the world around us. Exploring everything, touching everything, trying to figure out why it is the way it is. Gradually (as a society this could be seen as teenage years) everything started to become more boring. Except the inner landscape– the inner landscape could still be explored. Through the tunnel of the inner landscape and out the other end we came upon a still pool of water.
Holy crap, we (as a society) exclaimed! We’re CUTE.
And there we have sat, ever since, masturbating all over ourselves and gazing into our own eyes.
Life is going on out there, people.
Plunge into the water.
Wake up from the spell.
Please.
*Although I am not a fan of Osho (flawed logic in every chapter), I highly recommend reading his essay titled: “Rebellion is the biggest YES yet.”
“Dwell in the cave of the sacrum.”
This is what Eileen keeps telling me when I’m panicking in Baddha Konasana (and when I’m not panicking in Baddha Konasana too), which is not as scary as being dropped back on to your head for the first time, but more scary than walking in to a place that you’ve never been to before when the door is closed and you can’t see what’s behind it.
Out in nature, I don’t really need to think about this too much. My brain switches off, my energy expands and I just kinda, well, move with everything. My energy automatically sinks to my root because that’s where I feel earth energy interact with my body the most. The second civilisation enters the picture, however, I need to consciously ground myself. Consciously and constantly.
One of my teachers was talking the other day about breathing IN the earth energy, but I disagree with her entirely. I don’t think we have to consciously pull any of the energies into our bodies, I think we just have to allow them to flow in, as they’re meant to. Inhale and yang flows in through your head. Exhale and yin flows in through your root.
Something to think about when bored in class.
I’m sorry, I miss you too…
Been around my family for a week.
I think I’m going grey.
Most definitely not feeling any words coming
(except ones that would make you blush).
In the meantime, here’s some pictures to prettify your day and to remind you that there is always a remedy for hectic frazzled family time…
usually in the form of mountains, canyons, streams, trees and sunrises (though there’s one pretty sunset in here too).
Happy new year, o six readers.
May it be filled with words and colours and magic.
Just like the one before;
just like the one after.
In my dream this morning, I was chatting with a wee baby, and started talking in poem.
I swear, I said the lovliest poem I’ve ever heard,
and woke up, and sat straight up in bed and thought
“REMEMBER IT”
except
the dream was already fading back into sleep
and my mind was already grasping at straws and lines
and frantically trying to remember
but pretty much failing.
After a couple of minutes the only straw I had left in my hand
was a short one
the first line
“To M_”.
