branches up, roots down

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...

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...

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 ha...

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 mo...

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...

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 c...

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 m...

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 psychotherap...

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....