there is no end to the circle

I’m exhausted. This has been one tiring turning of the wheel. Here in San Francisco, the door that opens through which the dead pour in usually produces a wave of heat. That door swung open today and the temperature rose. In my office, every session seemed to involve the dead. Those who weren’t actively grieving were mulling and musing on their relationship to the afterlife. I could feel the city get a little denser, a bit more crowded, as the dead began their steady stream over Twin Peaks.

The power of the Spiral Dance, the Samhain ritual that Reclaiming has performed for well over two decades, also made it’s appearance. I’ve responded to two posts of Macha, that mighty priestess of the dead, on a Reclaiming e-mail list, about “community” dynamics and history regarding the Spiral Dance. It’s kind of great to be able to speak my mind, and not have expectation of result. What a difference it makes no longer being invested in things changing, or even being invested in being heard. What a difference it makes to accept the death of things! The heat, the door opening, and the e-mails have me thinking a lot about the Spiral Dance.

There was a time I couldn’t imagine not participating in that ritual. It’s been such a part of my history that it has a sense of timelessness in my memory. My son didn’t grow up clamoring for Raffi, or a Disney soundtrack. From his carseat behind me as I drove, he’d demand for me to play the tape of “let it begin now” just one more time. All the voices were familiar to him, part of his extended family. For years before his birth, I’d ask on the isle of apples to be given a child. I remember dancing it six months pregnant. I remember clearly his name being called after his birth., and when he was four and created his own ritual, The Spiraled Ants, involving all his stuffed animals and a trance led by Pooh. Reya and I once created a cartoon of us above the ritual, marveling at the fact that we now were the mighty dead. Recently we marveled at how it was possible our names might not even be called at the ritual, or even if called, we might be elsewhere. If I don’t feel comfortable attending in life, why the heck would I want to be there in death?

And yet. Yet, I know that anything can happen, and usually will. I think of Raven’s death, and how the years of him being outcast from the “community” faded away when it was time to cross over. Watching Macha take him thru the veils is a memory that still gives me a kundalini shiver. Maybe even though I don't feel welcomed there in life, I'll be happy to dance in dead. The last time I was at the Spiral Dance I had to fight to be there. Not allowed to priestess in any way, I’d been told I could do an altar. Even doing the altar was a struggle, and given how that night turned out, I wish I’d just stayed home.

Unfortunately I know more than I want to about the fights and conflicts of the last few years in the group that now puts on the Spiral Dance over whether to allow me to participate. I would unfailingly have bad dreams about my bones being chewed on after the nights they met, and find out later that there was some truth to those dreams. The usual wierd dynamics of humans trying to work together can get even wierder when those humans are openly psychic. This year, I've been dream free, and given that I've been asked to do an altar, I'm thinking the tide must have turned and my bones are no longer being chewed on. It's all a bit ironic, as the group is now more functional as the Spiral Dance is now truly a collective effort and no longer produced by one person, given the reason I became such a locus of controversy is I publicly stated that I didn't believe it was a great idea to have major community events, like the Spiral Dance, produced by one person. I've heard for the past few years how much better it feels to have it produced collectively, but has of yet not heard one word of acknowledgement for my part in this. My guess is that it's not safe to do so, as what comes next is me being right about the other major community event, California Camp. Many in the Spiral Dance cell teach or want to teach at that event, and so it's not politic to acknowledge me as worthy of any respect or given any credence. Better for me to serve as some kind of Cassandra on the edge of town.

I'm sick of that role, it's not gratifying in the least. I miss what the Spiral Dance once was to me, but am so fearful of attending again and having a repeat of the last time, which all in all felt like the worst kind of magic. When we sang "Let it begin now", all I could see was abuses of power, flagrant narcisssim, selfishness, and petty meaness. A great beginning for the Bush years, as it turned out. The goddess has been kind, giving me compelling magic to attend to each year I haven't gone. This year I’ll be in Minnesota, helping priestess my beloved Donald Engstrom’s wedding. My friend Nancy is doing an altar to New Orleans at the Spiral Dance, and I will be lending her my spirit bottles, which I’ve made with Mardi Gras beads, to sit on that altar. So strangely, I will have a presence this year in the form of my art.

I wonder if I ever will go to another Spiral Dance here in San Francisco. Whether or not I do, the past ones still resonate in me, in all their beauty and excess. If you do something annually for over two decades, it has the tendency to stay alive in memory, whether you participate actively in it or not. Maybe it will take seven years, the seven years it takes all the cells to be replaced in the body, to really let the ritual go as a body memory. Or maybe it goes beyond body memory by now. No wonder I’m so tired.

the weight of return

Over the weekend, I began to work on my garden here in the city. I'm clearing out what was planted by others that doesn’t suit me, and putting in plants that do. For my land in the country, I’ve ordered a battery operated ultrasonic rat repeller and bags of owl friendly rodent poison. I also bought a fig, avocado, and pomegranate tree at the farmer‘s market and have full instructions on their planting. Roots down, branches up!

As I invoke the work of inhabiting myself fully, the universe cooperates. I’m being reconnected to old friends and reminded of the array of things that make my spirit soar. The last two nights there's been a fantastic documentary on television on Bob Dylan, made by Scorcese. I love Bob Dylan. His music has been a steady contributor to this life's soundtrack. Full of interviews with incredible beings, I was particularly struck by the treasure of Allan Ginsberg. Both he and Bob have the trickster working thru them, both are natural shamans, both are nothing but fully themselves. But Ginsberg, his heart stayed open until the end. Dylan’s heart, that’s more elusive.

There are new plants both in the front and in the back of the house. I ate a copious amount of raw oysters in the last few days and spent two lovely evenings with friends who cooked delicious meals for me. Each day, I feel the weight of love and wonder. I am returning to the body where I was born.

Song - by Allan Ginsberg

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.
Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,
but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.
No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:
the weight is too heavy
--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.
The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--
yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living

Yesterday morning I was awoken with yet another phone call from an old friend. Lee-Ann and I hooked up on the Oregon coast in my early twenties. We started a crisis line together for women which dealt with both rape and domestic violence. I was fresh out of college, and she was a mother and housewife on the front lines of domestic violence. She’d walk into a bar, talk to guys she knew who had a history of wife-beating, and come out with enough money for us to pay the rent and phone bill at our small office. Over the years she’s gone in and out of her great love affair with her husband and the father of her children. Their battles have been the stuff of legend. In Lee-Ann, he surely found a worthy adversary. I woke to the news that he is now dying of pancreatic cancer.

Years ago Lee-Ann dropped her husband’s name and took up Jones for the woman she admired so much; Mother Jones. Like Mother Jones, she’s had more than her share of personal tragedy. She’s lost a child and her fortunes have gone up and down wildly. Thru it all, she’s been a constant agitator for social justice, an outspoken feminist, and she always can make me laugh. She’s another of those who was conceived at Beltane and born at Brigid, and I love her dearly. I told her I’d come to the small town in Idaho where she now lives when she needs me. There’s been years when we haven’t spoken at all, yet, when we do, the years fade away and the connection remains solid.

In the last few weeks, I’ve thought more than once of Mother Jone’s famous quote; “Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living”. Here at this equinox, I’m aware of the delicate balance of these two. Max will be dead soon, and I know I will pray for him. And I’ll be fighting for the living, and being there in any way I can for my friend, Lee-Ann. Oh, this may be a very hard winter.

connecting with the equinox

Today was a quintessential San Francisco fall day. The air was as crisp as a granny smith apple, the light had that honeyed hue I love so much, and there was the occasional gust of wind to picturesquely toss around leaves. The energies of the day turned out to be all about reconnection. Operators were standing by, and the calls came pouring in.

I called a friend on her cell phone and she just happened have just run into my old coven mate, Gwydion. Gwydion and I rarely see each other any more - but I trust him to show up in my life when I really need him. Today, by so called coincidence, I found out that he was about to embark on a trip to Iceland. I’m glad to know it, Iceland figured into some of our coven’s fantasies, spurred on by Reya and her desire for a puffin farm. It will be good to imagine Gwydion there in the coming weeks. So strange that at this juncture one of us is actually heading for Iceland!

A call from another friend prompted me to call someone I haven’t spoken to in months. I’m glad I did. This is one of my oldest friends. He’d just told the truth to his wife about something he’s been hiding for way too long. The power of the truth never ceases to amaze. His voice was so much fuller of life and spirit. In the past, he has been in incredible fear of what was going to happen if the truth came out. I know he’s still afraid, but it has such a different quality. It’s expansive and not constricted. He’s no longer afraid of what’s going to happen, he’s facing that many things could happen, and outside of staying truthful, he hasn’t much control. That’s scary, but oh so different from the fear involved in trying to keep a lie under control.

I got off the phone, and there was a message waiting. An old initiate of mine was about to fly back home from a visit here and wondered if we could get together this evening. We’d lost contact for many years, and her initiation was one which triggered an intense reaction afterwards. I’ve always wondered how it had all been processed, and if she still considered herself a priestess and/or witch. I met her over at some other friend’s house and there was instant re-engagement. She’s now a homeopath and clearly the name she got at that initiation and her identity as a witch is still strong. We had one of those rich conversations which affirms that more is going on between the worlds than we can ever know, that our connection has never been severed and even although we haven’t been in literal contact, our connection has still been cooking.

After visiting awhile, I went to dinner with another of my oldest friends and her partner. She and I were lovers years ago in college, and she just moved back here last early spring. Her partner is a delight, and our friendship is experienceing a renaissance. We ate an assortment of delicately flavored dishes of a Himalayan restaurant and made plans to spend time up at my land. After the meal, coming home, I felt full in a way that went far beyond taking in a good meal. The whole day was a dish to digest!

The fashion sense in the Craft sucks, all that faux medieval style I find rather dorky. But holding the seasons as sacred, that's a great part of being a witch! Observing the sabbats serves to remind me to tune into the energies of the wheel turning. This sabbat, this equinox, I’m aware how important it is right now to strengthen and honor my connections. What a fabulous day this was. I'm full to the brim with this feast!

hand me a flashlight

Today was the equinox. I saw nine clients today. Every one made me mindful of the door we were stepping thru into our descent into darkness. The couple who had recently delivered a stillborn child, the fifty seven year old who was breaking up a 17 year old relationship, the couple who were scheduled for a c-section who just found out the placenta had moved and they were free to deliver “naturally”, the client who was struggling to let go of the substances he’s used for over twenty years; every hour today I stood with clients who stood on some threshold.

And then I came home. My son’s father was scheduled to come over to work out our calendar for this fall’s perusal of possible high schools for our son. My housemate Ilyse was leaving for a 10 day trip to Canada. When she returns, she will no longer be inhabiting her flat, but will have moved up a floor into new space. Fern was recovering from an intense spate of cramps due to her struggles with endrometritis. In this mix, I’d invited my goddess daughter over, knowing that she’d just found out her parents are separating and she could use the stability of the chaos at my house.

So, I roasted some free range chickens, prepared salad and various savories, and baked an apple pie. My goddess daughter and my son set the table and, once everyone arrived, we sat down to eat.

My goddess daughter was direct and on target. She looked at my son’s father and said, “I guess you know my parents are separating”. I’d told him, ,moments before we sat down for dinner, but he equivocated. She was relentless, and he finally conceded that he’d just found out.

I’m amazed by the evening. My ex-husband and I attempted to comfort my beloved goddess daughter, while our own break-up loomed large in the room. Old patterns and energies flew around the room, some catching, some passing on thru. It's clear to me what I've totally let go of, and what remains firmly stuck. There is balance in this, and the evening revealed what I need to shine a flashlight on.

What an equinox this is! Tomorrow I will eat the last piece of the pie for breakfast and prepare to descend into the dark. And somewhere off the Gulf coast, the storm is dancing.

interesting times

Tomorrow is the equinox, that most unusual time of balance, where for one brief day, dark and light are in equal measure. Then darkness slowly claims it’s reign. Already, I can feel that pull downwards. I kept getting the image today of standing in front of a door that leads down to a basement. I’m savoring this moment before we step thru the door, loving the last of the summer’s light. Darkness will come, soon enough.

I’ve had five calls since Monday from old clients who want to come back to therapy. None of the calls involved tragedy or loss, all seem to be coming from an urgency to get back to work, a need to attend again to old patterns and demons that have been rearing their head. They are ready to go down to the basement. There's a big work bench down there, I just know it! It seems we are entering a time for attending to and dealing with what needs repair. And there’s a general sense right now to take care of business, that something is coming. Or perhaps it's already come and we''ve just begun to notice.

Somewhere off the coast of Texas, another powerful hurricane is gathering strength. My housemate Ilyse’s family in Houston have twelve people on the way to stay with them who are evacuating from Galveston. Here in San Francisco, it seems everyone is busy preparing for a possible earthquake.

This equinox I’m filled with an exquisite tenderness, noticing and appreciating life as it is now, knowing it will rapidly be changing in ways I can’t foresee or imagine. I’m sensing how this very moment in time we stand at some portal of balance between past and future. This moment, the present, is alive with portent. When I'm not feeling in awe, I’m alternately feeling blessed and cursed for living in such interesting times. And I'm breathing into the meditation of balance - of my exhale equaling my inhale, love equaling fear, giving equaling taking, and gentleness equaling fierceness. What an incredible place this is, this green earth!

inhabiting

This past weekend I spent up at my land in the Sonoma hills, within crow fly of the ocean. I haven’t spent any time there for a year and a half. Being there was all mixed up with memory of the great unraveling of my last relationship. It was just too painful. It was there, while I was celebrating the spring equinox, that my lover’s brother committed suicide. That suicide, an ending for David, turned out to be the beginning of incredible heartbreak for me. Going there this last weekend, as fall equinox approaches, was a ritual of closure. As all of those rituals are, it was also a ritual of beginning. The time of heartbreak is officially over. The healing has been well under way for awhile, and it’s clear what the remaining work is to do.

Being there, it became abundantly clear that if you don’t inhabit a space, somebody else will. The cookhouse and other dwellings have been taken over by the rodents. To get them back, I or others will have to once again inhabit them. I cleaned up the mess, tore out the nests, boiled mint to fill the space with a smell I like and they detest, and poured mint water and also essential oil over every surface. Traps will have to be set or poison left. My cats may need to get more mobile. I’m obsessed now with this pursuit, searching the net for a poison that won’t affect the owls, hawks, or crows who might prey on a weakened and
fleeing rat. What a deep meditation this is! To rid oneself of something without hurting something else down the line.

The garden too is becoming overgrown, brambles choking out fruit trees and thistles spreading. My legs and arms are considerably scratched, but now a lime and pear tree are liberated, free to grow unencumbered.

I’m back in the city, but committed to once again fully inhabiting all parts of myself, of staying conscious of what is in danger of strangling that which bears fruit, of staying vigilant of ridding myself of pests and vermin, of staying responsible once again to that rickety little cottage in the wild. It will take some work, and I may need to enlist some help, but I’m finally ready and willing. It’s time.

loving and losing

I’m in love with San Francisco. It was love at first sight. I was eight when I first lay eyes on her, flying overhead, preparing to land on my family‘s move to California. We were moving south of San Jose, but the imprint of looking down on the bridges and the hills is so much stronger than any first impression of that city to the south. As I grew up, San Francisco lay north, a shining jewel I treasured visiting. Carol Doda, beat poets, Victorian houses, cable cars, and of course, the lure of the love-ins in the Haight, all seized my imagination. As a teenager, I came to the city as much as I could, and in the summer, I baked in the heat of the Santa Clara valley and longed to be enveloped in San Francisco fog. I snuck away to the Fillmore to see Janis many nights my parents thought I was spending the night with a friend. As a city, San Francisco truly has always had my heart.

I’ve lived here now well over two decades, and I’m a San Franciscan thru and thru. I’m a witch, a psychotherapist, queer, an artist, and I live in a Victorian infused with spirits. I’m an archetypal San Franciscan, merged and wedded deeply to this city of hills. I’m pretty sure my love affair will continue until I die. As committed as my love for this city is, I am not monogamous. I have loved others.

This summer, traveling to teach witch camp in England, and then on to Amsterdam, I had an affair. Not with London (much too full of pain), and not even with Glastonbury. Glastonbury is in some way family to me, I feel at home there at the holy wells and at the Tor, it’s like a coven sister I depend on now to work with me between the worlds. Traveling over the channel, I looked down from the plane and felt another great love affair begin. Amsterdam and I have chemistry. For the time I was there, I let myself love her with abandon, soaking up all she had to offer, mesmerized and enchanted as only you can be when you first fall in love. Giddy with delight, intoxicated with the pleasure of giving myself over to fully experiencing everything she had to offer, I thought a lot about my love affairs with other cities. San Francisco is not a jealous lover, a true free spirit, she has encouraged every love affair I've had, and my love of other cities had never detracted from the love I feel for her.

There are two other cities in my lifetime that I’ve fallen for, that hold a piece of my heart, that I feel blessed for every moment I spent in their embrace. Walking out of the train station in Venice, I almost swooned at her golden beauty. As I got to know her more, that beauty only intensified. The other city I’ve loved is and was New Orleans. The music that seems to permeate everything, old bars that pirates have frequented, voodoo priestesses, oysters at the Acme restaurant, decaying cemeteries, chicory coffee and beignets, the Garden District, and the languid air and spirit of the place-I loved every facet of that city. Even the frat boys puking on Bourbon Street, and how you could cross a street and feel you had literally crossed the poverty line. New Orleans was sex, death, mystery, and magic.

I am mourning her loss, grieving that she is forever changed, drowned and damaged, still soaking in a stew of poisons and misery. I am bereft beyond words. Something precious and particular is lost to this world.

My great love, San Francisco, has been an incredible comfort to me at this time. There is tenderness in this city, and a profound kinship for that city in the south that was such heady soil for all the exotic varieties not welcomed in the gardens of Walmart America. I am grieving. And as always in grief, I am amazed at the power of love. My heart hurts, and is once again, stretched.

the art of travel

Occasional travel is good for the soul. To me, it’s like experiencing good art. Both assist me in reflecting on life -mine and at large - from vantage points outside my normal terrain. Good art can be literally framed or held within the container of it’s structure, travel is framed by time. Travel and art are also of one piece for me in that seeing art is a part of my art of travel. This last trip to Europe was a masterpiece I will savor the memory of for years.

As I write that, I was immediately blessed with the memory rising up of seeing Picasso’s Guernica in New York with my father when I was nineteen. The Vietnam war was just coming to it’s end. As wars tend to do, it had plagued our nation and our family. My father and I had battled over it for years. We stood together at MOMA and looked up at the huge disturbing piece. I looked over at my father, and to my wonder, saw tears in his eyes. This moment is inextricably woven into my understanding and experience of that terrible war. That trip, that piece, that moment, they all are part of what has forged me as a human being.

My summer travel was a gallery show on fire and water. One of my organizing principles as a witch is my strong relationship to the sacredness of the elements. That, along with holding the wheel of the year sacred, has been the backbone of my practice, it’s what I hold as essential to the craft. On my trip this summer, I experienced the alchemy of fire and water in a new and different way.

Earth and air, they are constants. In every breath, and constantly underfoot, earth and air are something we as humans work with, but they are always available. We may till the soil, or fan ourselves or build windmills, but we don’t have to work hard seeking earth and air.

Water and fire are a different matter. So much of human culture has been centered on easy access to these more elusive elements. Energy and water continue to be something we humans have to strive to have available to us. In my travels it struck me how special it is to find places on this earth where fire and water are plentiful, and live in balance. In Glastonbury and Bath the sacredness of the two are palpable and abundant. Glastonbury has the fire energy rising out of it’s spiral of the Tor, mixing energetically with the red and white ancient wells nearby. In Bath, the hot springs are a literal mix of fire and water. It’s these kind of places that humans find sacred, and devote themselves to being near.

At Avalon witch camp, we worked the story of Hades, Demeter, and Persephone. Somehow in the working of that story I came away with the revelation of how, like our seeking of fire and water, we also seek sex and love. Like fire and water, having both in balance is something to hold in reverence. This does not come easily to all.

I’m back now from my tour of fire and water, full of images, rich moments and ruminations. I love good art!