On the Craft

I write like I want to bathe a person in certain feelings, or ideas.  I write like I want to drop you in to an experience.  I write like I want to stir.

Think of a clear glass pitcher of something sitting on your counter, sediment and color and ingredients all settled to the bottom of clear water.  If that pitcher were the thing I want to give you in my words, some people seem to be of the mind, the expectation - with a miserly doling out of time and attention (TL;DR) - that I ought to be able to stick a spoon in, give it a brief perfunctory single “efficient” whirl, an economy of intention to “stir”, and serve you the glass of whatever it is.  What you get is only water filled with a smattering of grit, a grossly watered-down faint memory of a whiff and a whisper of the essence of what it was really meant to be.  What I want, what I always intend to do, is to stir and stir and stir again, whirling upward the deeper things and bringing them together, coaxing upward and together new folds on each pass, incorporating them together with other ideas, other ingredients, thoughts, feelings, connections; until I’m not only stirring my concoction, suddenly it’s you who are also stirred as you imbibe, bringing up things in your own sediment and essence, things that have fallen to the bottom or maybe you had never met in this way before. What I want is for you to eventually taste something new, feel something coming-together inside of you. My craft often requires the sum of parts and rhythm - a sort of motion - alongside attention and senses; and it takes time, it takes repetition, it takes a willingness to stay present with me for the incorporating so what you leave with is a real drink of something new - lifted sediments and thoughts and feelings in a dance where before there had been stillness and settled layers, when maybe you hadn’t even known you longed for taste and different nourishment, color, a new potion.

Sometimes I want to bathe you like the ocean and her waves – again, the process is one of time and repetition in slightly different ways, not because I can’t be efficient - succinct - but because washing takes some time.  The first few waves maybe you’re not quite present, getting settled in the temperature of the water, the texture of thoughts. By the fourth or fifth stanza of waves, something in you may let go and relax, you sigh, you receive, you are present, lifted, and then you go somewhere new – a place you weren’t when you stepped in.  But it won’t be done in one pass.

For every writer - sometimes the writing and the reading is like lightning bolts and thunder: illuminating in an incisive instant with a rumble of your foundation stones.  Sometimes the writing and the reading is like the ocean – immersive, deep, washing waves.  Sometimes the writing and the reading is like stirring and conjuring, pulling together ingredients from the ether to cast a new spell, an invocation, a prayer over you, in you. Sometimes the writing and the reading is like sitting at the chef’s table, watching the layering flavors and textures and ingredients to create a whole new something for you to taste, to smell, to see as it entices, comforts, brings a special sort of satisfied joy, pleasure.  Sometimes the writing and the reading is like a river, pulling and carrying and lifting you away to a new place or thought.  Sometimes the writing and the reading is like music, with beat and rhythm and repetition to make you feel something, let go of something, move something. 

Any of it requires of the recipient an openness and a willingness to stop and receive, interact and subject yourself, bring your body, your time, space, and attention to it, however long it may take. Allow a response. All of it requires a bit of respect for the Crafter - trusting that they, perhaps, know quite well how their tools and conjurings work and what’s called for in the moment of expression and gifting, to you, for you, a new thing. So I ask that people pause and receive. I ask that we consider, perhaps, in this age of sound bites and 30-second storytelling and emails that need to be stripped down to the very bones and then even further – that this brevity and stripped relationship with word and story and presence and then response is not our original state, this is not the original hunger of our souls for meaning, for story, for connection, for Creation, for invention, for healing, for growth, for presence, for becoming. If you take the time to meet with a writer on their chosen terms, you will more often than not walk on after with more of that essential confirmation that You are Seen, You are Known, You are Recognized, You are Filled, You are Met, You are Expanded, You are Challenged, You are Renewed, You are Lifted, You are Cheered, You are Empowered, You are Newly Seeing, You are Feeling….

Trains, Tides, and Time - Thoughts on the train from Seattle to Tacoma

Sitting on a train, facing backward so that the cities and countryside races by from behind on one side, the water of Puget Sound sometimes out the window on the other side.  I think of how life can be like that, how one can always face the past, staring at some pivotal moment as it shrinks into the distance, how the piece of you still tethered there stretches and draws your gaze to that point, that moment, for days, weeks, months, years even.  Then, suddenly you look around you one day and notice that you are in a new place and you aren’t at all sure how you got there or what passed you as you went.   You glance down, and, startled, see that you have your mother’s hands.  Time has passed over them, time has marked you. You realize that it is possible to sleep through the time you’ve been given and, finally Awake again, you start to crave the rest of your uneaten days in all their fullness. You look for ways to make them lie longer on your tongue as if you could memorize their complexity and flavor, filling up your mouth like wine – your glass is still half full. There is still time.

And so there comes a sudden urgency to look only as far as this day that is “here” for some hours, this emotion, this dream, this task, this thought, this beautiful food, this person - only at what is in front of you Now.  How fleeting Now always is, but try to have no fear in letting it go so quickly into the distance of dead days. The depths, colors, textures, bits of wisdom, flashes of memory, love, truth that the present has meant to leave with us will cling and travel with us – the rest washes away into the distance; gestures of Grace as we are left with only what we can embrace and what is necessary for our growth as we go forward.  Time trundles the rest away and we carry what we need as the future passes over us or we move through it – however it works.  Clutch at nothing as it goes by or you will be snatched away, backward, from the clarity and peace of presence and awareness, balance.

Your soul is a peculiar sort of net. And time is like a river – you will never have the same moment twice; but time is also like an ocean – with tides that come over and over.  Washing over and over relentlessly, the same truths, lessons, messages that were meant for you.  Passing over and over - the moments may change, but the lessons and messages do not.  And this is how there is no such thing as missing anything that is yours. What is meant for us to know, to experience, to abide with us will come for us over and over again until, through experience and gathered wisdom, having made peace, or gained confidence or humility, stepped into courage or need, finally healed or even having been wounded in just a certain way, the weave of the soul becomes just right to finally catch it.  Those moments are transcendence. Magic. You are never too old to change, to grow, to become stronger, bigger, deeper, wiser – and always more brilliantly You.

Trust your path, let your heart break wide open, abandon fear, and cast your net wide.

Odin's Own Goes Home

Early morning and I was getting out of my parked car at work when I heard a loud rustling in the tree just above me. A crow was hanging completely upside down from a branch, wings half-outstretched. Just as I moved closer to see if he was caught in something, he tumbled down through the branches and landed at my feet in a heap on the pavement. He was on his back, panting heavily, eyes closed. Maybe he was just stunned from the fall, I thought. Before I could think again, I'd gently scooped him up, cradling his curled back in my palm, surprised by the richness of purple-blue feathers – not exactly black, after all - along the white of my arm. He was the weight of a single heavy sigh. I carried him over to a safer, more shaded spot in the grass. He let out a small whimper as I gingerly turned him over and laid him on his stomach in the grass, trying to make sure his feet and wings were laying comfortably, then went into the office for some water to leave next to him in case he recovered himself. When I got back, he was still panting, more gently now. Clearly, he was dying. My heart reached toward him with a simple blessing for his life and his cross over - to wherever our energy goes. Gold-dusted sun filtered down through pine needles and small, bright yellow, oval leaves in the grass all around him stood out against his darkness. He blinked so slowly. I hoped it was a good place for him to take his leave.

Crows, I hear, live in all time at once, so maybe he always knew this part would look like this; a wild-maned woman - heart soft with her own grief, surrender, wonder, hope - dripping water from her finger-tips on his notched and scarred onyx beak.

I'm not sure if a crow falling out of a tree in front of a person in its final moments is an omen, but my sense is that opening a day with a startlingly peculiar, hallowed crossing can’t portend anything too terrible. Only, perhaps, tender acceptance and the reminder that every death is a transformation, a doorway, a page turn. So many strange things in my path lately and I look for meaning and signs everywhere.