Can’t always be positive, not even most of the time. Right now, I’m in a life sucks moment, and I accept it as I accept the many darknesses I share only with me, myself and those kindred souls who accept their own. I don’t pretend superiority except when I do, when I’m temporarily stupid or forgetful. Such lapses pass, and I forgive myself.

Presence of darkside selves doesn’t mean schizoid transformation into victim moaning, ‘nothing goes well for me.’ I know too much in too many places to fall into that too-easy trap.

Still, it’s tough to be me tonight.

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.

Breathing my breath in this moment, I notice tension in my shoulders, a band of confining iron. Some unconscious part, watchful of being watched. When I catch sight of my fleshy form in the mirror, I sneer with sideways parts that deny being me, that pretend to be ‘Them’.

You know the ones. ‘Others.’ Those parts of self claim not to be me so they can get away with flagellating my heart. I look pathetic to them, powerless and pointless. Silly of me to listen, but sometimes I am drawn into their sucking hole.

I forgive myself, and breath again.

(click on image to enlarge)

Today, the sun’s alchemy
brightens birds, breakers,
snowcaps and clouds
to dazzling brilliance
beyond mere white.
Indigo, lapis and teal seas
roll in perpetual motion
witnessed by distance-misted
lavender mountains.

Air, chill in shade,
heats happily in sun’s rays.
Eagles’ chittering scree
blends with seabirds’ keening,
brewed into synesthetic stew
with reek of rotting herring roe,
mellowed by woodsmoke.

Every sense comes alive,
every cell revives
jubilating in vividness.
Here, where sea meets land,
Earth’s blessings are
most bountiful. Where
wind strokes skin, bringing
malodorous decay
and clamourous continuance,
life and death are one
and the same.

June 20 marks 2012 days until the year 2012: and the countdown begins! A great change is impending. What that will look like I can’t tell, though I can safely predict how it will feel. Beginning in April 2011 and completing in February 2012, the watery depths rise to enfold us, delighting those who love darkness as they love the light and frightening fools who shun their shadows.

Neptune’s ingress into Pisces, her own style, makes me smile, for Great Mother in Her power can only portend pleasure for those of Her children who listen and surrender without abandoning themselves.

This band thing is messing with my head. The cool thing I was a part of has morphed into a new cool thing I’m not part of. I support what my tribesters are creating and I bless them in my heart but I grieve the loss of my part in it. I came alive in that circle, playing my drum, learning bass, sharing an inclusive, ever-growing magical flow.

Something shifted, the structure solidified, a band was born. I’ll groove on the dancefloor and it’ll be glorious, but not what it was. Would be nice to have Monday back for jamming.