branches up, roots down

Biting Back By Patricia Smith Children do not grow up As much as they grow away. My son’s eyes are stones, flat, brown, fireless, with no visible openings in or out. His voice, when he cares to try it on, hovers one-note in that killing place where even the blues fidget. Tight syllables, half spoken, half spat, greet me with the warmth of glint-tipped arrows. The air around him hurts my chest, grows too cold to nourish, and he stares past me to the open door of his room, anxious for my patented stumbled restreat. My fingers used to brush bit of the world From his kinked hair, but he moved beyond that mother shine to whispered “fucks” on the telephone, to the sweet mysteries of scalloped buttons dotting the maps of young girls, to the warped, frustrating truths of algebra, to anything but me. Ancient, annoying apparatus, I have unfortunately retained the ability to warm meat, to open cans, to clean clothing t...

As Brigid approaches, I take the poetry books off the bookshelves and strew them around the house. The house altar gets its fair share, and there’s a stack of books in arm’s reach from every vantage point in the living room. On my bedside table I keep my current favorites. As Reya points out, poetry IS that place between forge and well, the exhale and the inhale, giving word to the exquisite and horrifying beauty that is life. At my office, I always have a stack of poetry books next to my chair, with Mary Oliver and Rumi being the constants. Sometimes, the best therapeutic intervention is a poem. For the past year or so, I’ve found myself returning again and again to Mary Oliver’s Blackwater Woods. Yesterday, I returned for another visit. In Blackwater Woods Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails a...

I often find myself teaching clients how to use their breath as a fundamental meditational/magical tool. Bringing attention to their breath, I ask them to let what they need to take in and what they need to let go of come into focus. I then guide them to feel as they breathe how we are constantly taking in and constantly letting go, noticing how the place between can often equal the breathes themselves. I’m acutely aware that I’m in a time where what I’m letting go of seems to directly equal what’s coming in, and thankfully, there’s times when that place between the letting go and taking in comes sharply into focus as well. Brigid (or Imbolc or Candlemas) is a cross-quarter pagan holiday, the place between winter solstice and the equinox. This Brigid, between the sharp grief of what’s been lost, and the almost dizzying gifts flowing in, I’m taking some time to celebrate that place between....and marveling once again on the power of three....the inhale, the exhale, the place betwee...

Yesterday evening I came home from my son’s basketball game to find one of my goddess daughters (I’m rich in goddess daughters!) and her friend up in my ritual room. The ritual room is up in the attic, adjacent to my art studio. It was in the stepping into these rooms some 12 years ago that I knew I had to buy this house. Many psychically attuned cohorts have felt the ritual room to be a magical portal, and I’ve gotten accustomed to my role as some kind of psychic bouncer, having learned the hard way that the room needs to be cleaned and cleared out on a regular basis. Spirits seem to like to party down in the room, and left unchecked, the energy can be quite rave like. Plenty of initiations, both Reclaiming and Feri, have been done in this room, and the last four have been a blend of both, which the spirits seem to be particularly amenable to. If not amenable, they speak up, most notably with fire. This room has taught me a lot about asking permission, and listening to seemingly inani...

This weekend was devoted to the magic of linking. It’s been close to a year that I’ve been blogging. On Friday I set the intention to come thru the weekend with my blog having links to other blogs. As I worked towards it (and it was work!) I pondered on the power of it, the complexity of the interconnectiveness. How incredible that out here in cyberspace old friends and cohorts are finding each other and building another kind of intimacy and connection! With every old connection, new ones are made as well. This blogging is creating its own ecosystem between the worlds, full of stories, with new pages nurtured by their connections to older ones, with each link creating a new pattern. Hiking with Naomi on Saturday, we marveled at the infinite variety in nature, the variety even in the color green. This time period, when you can sense the spring straining to be sprung, elicits such a feeling of possibility. Walking thru the San Anselmo watershed, we trained our eyes to look for ...

I walked out of my office tonight to a downfall of rain. I turned my face up to it, relishing the freshness of it, the feel of it. Seconds later, a young woman with a huge umbrella came up to me and said something I couldn’t quite understand. My guess is she was saying it clearly, but it was so surprising, I couldn’t quickly comprehend it. She was offering to share her umbrella with me, to walk me down the street. When my brain started working, and I could take this all in, she told me she wasn’t crazy, just waiting for the bus, and as long as she was waiting, she figured she’d be of service. Plus, she said, she needed some good karma coming her way. I was loving the rain, remembering my life as an Oregonian, where rain was such a fact of life that umbrellas were eschewed and wetness embraced. Nevertheless, I joined her under the umbrella, knowing that such kindness shouldn’t be refused. We came to the end of the block just as the bus appeared a few blocks down, rounding the hi...

It’s Martin Luther King’s birthday. I spent the evening at a Youth Speaks Poetry Slam. Youth Speaks is a remarkable organization that’s mobilized young people to write poetry. My goddess daughter Hazel is in it, and my young friend Susanna, who in 9 th grade took an elements of magic class from me and rapidly became extended family. It’s an amazing group of kids from both privilege and poverty, bonded in their belief in the power of the spoken word, and you can feel the magic as soon as the first kid gets up. Poems about MLK, about first love, about striving to be “cool”, about being of mixed race, about being queer, about purely being, all had a place here. “Clap it up!” was yelled after each poet, all getting a loud round of applause, all praised for their bravery and their story. The guy who started this is one of those heroes of the Aquarian age, not taking center stage, but passing the power and glory all around. I was in tears less than a minute into it. It was a...

Tonight I will be going to a friend’s house for dinner. He’s a fabulous cook, so I know that every dish will be exquisite, every bite a pleasure. The conversation and view of the city will be as rich as the food, I’m sure. Last night Naomi drove me over to the Chabot observatory and we looked at the full moon thru the powerful telescope, being able to see up close the patterns and craters that tattoo the surface, then we laughed our way thru a swank cocktail party of L Word celebrities and ended up in her scrumptious living room discussing the mystic qualities of the alphabet. I’ve jettisoned the role of Lucifer. Reya has put another Pluto in my astrological chart, in the hopes of bringing more balance to a personality more accustomed to giving than to receiving. If the last 24 hours are indicative, this really is a new year, a new era. I’m for it.

Today I was released from a role in a story that’s been being played out for well over a decade. Why I’ve played this role, how it came about, why this particular story was invoked and who had a part in the invocation, this remains a mystery. Perhaps more will be revealed, but right now I’m reveling in the sense of freedom, the liberation from the trappings and duties of a role I never auditioned for. Writing this tonight, with the full moon glimmering in the sky, I attempt to draw back and look at this story with a new distance, and explore my own spin. Everything feels different. For many years I was a favored cohort of the famous witch Starhawk, the one who wrote what so many of us have called the bible of modern (is there any other?) witchcraft. I was there thru the early years when the Craft was growing by leaps and bounds. Close to two decades later, the “community” which gave birth to the now international “tradition” has become energetically codified into ceding one per...

WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2006 WHERE: Your blog WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Bridgid, aka Groundhog Day HOW: Select a poem you like - by a favorite poet or one of your own - to post February 2. I don't imagine zillions of bloggers will partake of this online celebration of midwinter, but I am curious to see who is called to join this project, and especially curious to read the poetry that gets published. RSVP: If you plan to publish, will you either leave your blog address as a comment on this post, or send me an email? I'd like to collect the poems. Goldpoppy.blogspot.com Whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow, there will still be many more weeks of winter following February 2. I think it would be nice to have a bunch of bloggers' choice poetry to read until the spring thaw. Feel free to pass this invitation on to any and all bloggers.

It’s raining today. Since the last time I’ve written there have been mighty storms, and heart swelling bright days full of the portent of spring. A leaky roof has been repaired, a housemate’s leg has been broken, relationships have shifted and been re-aligned, and the days have increasingly gotten longer. Light is returning. In the Craft, there’s the saying “as above, so below”. The longer I’ve been a witch, the more the sense resonates that what’s going on externally is a mirror to what is happening internally and visa versa. The wheel of the year, the tug of the seasons and the vagaries of the weather, all interact with and punctuate the narrative of this novel life. This solstice packed some punch. I’m still recovering, but relishing what the return of the light is choosing to shine it’s brilliance on. This is going to be some wild new year.