The future is bright, but the present is busy and where did the time go? I’ll be at the housing conference for the next couple of days, blazing a trail with an interestingly diverse group. Something may start here tomorrow to bring good changes to our home front. Shift must happen, or this community will become just another ritzy resort where broke folks commute from off-island to serve the rich fogey residents.

Wherever I go, this is still one of my homes, and I will help as I can to co-create ways to foster sustainable living on this island.

It happened, and it was fun, magical, special, nearly everything I could have wished. About one in five of the people who said they would come showed up (typical), so the house wasn’t too small after all. They were the right people and it was a lovely night. I received gifts and honourings, played music, sang, drank homemade beer and even had a deliciously pleasurable cry when Brett gave me an abundant angel shower of appreciation for my songs and singing.

Made me realize how seldom I receive musical feedback. That was the sweetest gift and I shan’t soon forget!

I went to the other birthday party after mine. It was delightful in a darker, drunker way, as I switched from homebrew to Bombay Sapphire gin. Music, dancing, sexy snuggles and laughter, yum. It ended on a sour note with my car in a ditch, compelling me to walk too far for my state of being at four a.m. How it happened, I can’t recall, but I was clearly in no state to drive.

My friend Kim’s sure-fire cure for depression: get pissed, stagger home in the dark, the farther the better. It might work, except for the hangover (groan).

I’m hardwired to weather. My tears flow readily when it rains, and it’s poured all blessed day, a catalyst for pent-up emotions seeking release. Visions of a fire on the beach tomorrow are withering, but tomorrow I’ll bring wood in to dry and hope for the best.

Tomorrow’s forecast is a forty-percent chance of rain. Is that a sixty-percent chance of no rain, or rain forty-percent of the day? If it rains and more than twelve people show up in this teensy house, we’ll be sitting in each others’ laps.

Mmm… come to think of it, that could be fun…

Breathing in clouds of spores is not the way to have a nice day. My head hurts and sinuses swell, but what the hell, the thing needs cleaning. Next time I’ll wrap a handkerchief over my face. A surgical mask is best for that task, but I’ll use what’s available.

The weight of work awaiting doing in this finite span of time hangs around my neck, anvil-like, but only when I ‘think about the future, Jack.’ Don’t think about the future! Root here in the now, while somehow maintaining awareness of what needs doing when it’s time to do it.

I am thrilled to turn fifty. I haven’t been so excited about flipping decades since I was ten. Ten was my passage into menarche, womanhood insofar as that is defined by hormonal surges and monthly blood-purges. Fifty is my passage to moonpause, womanhood marked by the absence of such surging and purging. A joyous prospect!

I have been debilated by bloat, cramps, low energy, seeing through dark red-tinted lenses for three days of every twenty-five for nearly forty years, and, while honouring that phase of life and blessing the babes I bore, I am now beyond ready for my freedom.

It comes back to this moment in which I breathe, my heart beats counterpoint with my pulse, and my fingers perform their stuttering keyboard dance. Forget last moment when similar things happened, and moments from now, when anything might happen. I speak of tuning my consciousness to the precise intersection of time and space where past meets future: here and now.

After a half-century of living, such basics are still news. Admittedly, it took me a while to begin the actual living part of life, but it’s an expanding process. The future is bright and vivid in my sight.

Deep in red, I sink into bottomland
floor of my flesh and
ground of my being.

Seeing through bloody haze,
my dazed brain wishes on a star
now hidden by clouds.

Artemis opens her radiant gaze
to see me bleeding
in her silvered shine,
time passing like syrup,
sweet and slow.

I reclaim gold that is mine by right,
my veins mined by invaders
in ancient days
once familiar, now foreign.

Riddles are kin to poetry,
tongue of mystic and seer,
key to locked boxes
hidden in hindbrain.

Understanding comes clear
when cards are shuffled
revealing truth
unfettered by logic

It’s a dance, and I could use a dance as my poor body stiffens over this winter of dormance. The great world out my window flaunts itself, moonsilvered and haunting, yet I stare at this mesmerizing screen, oblivious save for that small voice that whispers, ‘go!’

I would that voice were not so easy to ignore and so difficult to act upon, these days. It was not always so; not so long ago, the balance was reversed and my default was to walk on such nights. When magic called me, I would go, but now… I am ready for change.

As I breathe into belly, I listen for other voices, ones affirming my goodness and worth. At first, they whisper softly while the hateful self-shamers shriek and howl. When I learn to listen, focus and quest, the nasties fade into the background and the love occupies the centre of my stage.

“Thou art beloved and dear, a treasured gift to All That Is,” blessing voices state in tones of truth. Doubtful mind seeks certainty: might I be making this up?

Silly mind, it doesn’t matter. Such thoughts are boon and bounty, fuel for the flames of a sacred self-love revolution.