My weekend of circling and song went swimmingly, leaving me brimming with memories and verses to ‘Down By The Bay’ trapped in my head with no one to sing them for.

We walked the land, the expanse of gardens and fruit trees and fishponds was nothing short of stunning. It will be a green paradise in the spring and summer, when flourishing flowers will be placed for passers-by to purchase.

Bright is the future right now, for on that big island over there is a wild, witchy and wonderful community of women to drum, sing, love, laugh and share with.

A sleepy mind is difficult to dredge words from; somehow it must happen, though it’s been a long day of travelling and drifting through sun-backed sensory mist.

The thought of sleeping without spewing forth my mandatory daily word quota is a goad to open the flow. My cortex is clogged by random fuzz: brain lint.

I must needs yawn and moan and close my eyes, to be surprised by the pre-randomized orderlessness of the words that emerge. It’s been a full two days, but don’t expect poetic odes of description; slogging through a slough of stewed wordage will have to do.

I’m somewhere else than home, here whose heart is huge and knows me. I’ve never lived on this land mass, yet its spirit hears me, feels me, encourages me to merge with its emergent field.

Shall I yield myself to this greater space, transplant my roots from their potbound state? This makes a statement to which I’ll be bound, creates a new fate for me to flail to find my place in. How could I move back to a smaller pot once roots grow larger than before?

But then again, why should that even be a question? Home is here.

Is there ever anything to talk about besides the weather? Storm warnings, quakes, reality shaking, knees knocking in fear of the next ill wind that blows oily smoke and pestilence my way. Whether it’s weather or climate, it affects every breath and I am not in charge, there is no predicting or changing, only surrender.

May I be a weathervane, knowing which way the wind is blowing but rooted deep and spinning on my own axis. Still, trees fall on houses and weathervanes can be knocked over; perhaps I’d rather be a bird, to roost or fly with the wind.

Hallmark holidays notwithstanding, life could have been better the last half of yesterday, and this morning I awoke with the sense of something stirring in my basement.

Buried urges seek emergence; emergency lights and sirens are wailing in the background. This is make-it-or-break-it time, life without fail or death shall me part.

I have cause for urgency for I’ve been putting this life thing off and off until now my life is starving, a drooling growly dog who wants more than bones if it’s going to leave me alone.

Feed me new experiences, that’s enough bread and cheese already.

How quickly the mood changes, the mercurial ebb and flow from high to low in sixty seconds or less. This morning I was high, flying in the truth of light and love, and that hasn’t gone anywhere, never really does.

I remember that feeling of trust in life and knowing that wherever I’m going it will contain good moments, better than I have yet experienced, and I know it will return, but remembering is not enough for this moment of grey dazed compulsive behavior, scarfing food like I’m starving, stuffing down the feelings of death that swell in my belly.

and in here, too. Some of me is sated, positively engorged with love and pleasure, all sticky-sweet and sweaty. Other of me is still waiting for the right one to come along to save me from all this sordid real-world of jobs, and duties, the mundane chains dragging me from one moment to the next. Where is heaven on earth, asks this other self, this lost me who doesn’t get it yet?

Here and now is the answer given by Us, the We-in-me, the part who knows; sometimes, when music is vibrating the spheres to their highest finest attunement, and when friends are gathered within love, trust and pure delicious lust for lubricated life; in those moments, heaven on earth is as real as blood and bone, stone and soil.

And yes, this is becoming a regular occurrence in my reality ever since women’s camp put heaven on earth within my real-world grasp. It’s always been there, sporadic and unreliably but real, and now it passes less quickly and recurs more often. The question of why does it end feels less urgent, since the return is (finally, hallelujah and hosannahs!!) crossing the line from feeling impossible–> to possible–> to likely and finally–> inevitable.

Now, I know that beautiful feeling will return. My moments are becoming connected. My experiences of heaven are not confined to a single facet of reality. Now, it’s not just music, or intimate moments with my beloved, or sister circle time and the sublime presence of Goddess weaving our tears and laughter; it’s not just the sea when it’s crashing on the shore in wild exhilaration or lapping peacefully amid the cries of eagles and gulls feasting on its bounty.

No indeed; heaven on earth is beginning to anchor itself inside me, in my very own flesh and breath, and I remind myself more often, bringing myself back into the moment where it is, we all are, all of UsIs together in bliss and pleasure on this proud angry planet raging to grow and change in some way that can meet the needs of all its creatures.
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Of course, we fit like a glove; all that love, light and flooding fluid movement could only take the space created for it.

Is it fate, or merely the end result of patient waiting for what felt like eternity, long enough to give the dancing monkeys on the keys of creation time to come up with the works of Shakespeare or its equivalent in experience? If I had known that truth, breathing and oh, life itself could feel so good, I might have felt more hope in the dark days.

All praises to the world, let my flag be unfurled.

Time soon to play music in this room, so much smaller than the one we played in last week that it’s hard to imagine how this will work.

Sitting in each others laps, musicians will have to get cozy, which should up the tribal vibe sensibility or devolve it into give-me-space irritability.

I wish I felt more up for this… I wish my drum wasn’t out in the car… I wish it wasn’t parked so far away… I wish it wasn’t raining. I’m full of wishes right now, and more, but let’s ignore that and breathe deep, get ready.

Aaahh.

The day lives on the inside of a pearl, grains of grit surrounded by luminous opalescent beauty.

Paradoxes bind us to this rock of life and stone, shit and glory, heaven and hell.

There is no ‘afterlife’; by the time we get there, it will become just another here and now.

Let’s get used to this and stop looking to the future for a better chance, a different life.

Things will be different by the time now turns to then, but I still have a lot of now to live through — I don’t want to miss any of it.