branches up, roots down

Unbelievably, it's raining. I leave my bedroom window open just enough for my cat to come in and out. Sometime past midnight I felt him curl up next to me, his fur wet and cold. I thought I was dreaming, but woke later and realized different. Steadily, softly, it's been raining all day. The grey is pervasive. A rainy grey June day. Our world and weather are changing. My son leaves for New Mexico on the 13th and we are still aiming to close on the house business by the 15th. We have a fantastic loan agent working for us, but there are several balls still in the air. The only person who can release an important document is out sick, and we're waiting to hear back from two other people on other stuff before we can go forward. It's all nerve wracking and stressful, Patti and Karl's new house deal contingent on this one being done by the 15th. I've been living with uncertainty regarding the house for more than a year. It's all now down to the wire, and that wir...

Strangely, this allowing myself to be depressed has opened up my dream life. My good friend Anne Hill is a dreammeister....she gives workshops in dream incubation and helps people explore their dreams. I work with people too on their dreams, but my own rarely seem to warrant much exploration. I've tended to have dreams about showing up to my favorite restaurant and my reservation being lost, or finding myself at an elegant gala wearing purple hot pants. Epic dreams are rare. Epics seem to be the stuff of my waking life. I'm still immersed in paper work and the stress of house transition. Things have not been going well. I've learned lots by letting myself sink down into grey. There has been moments of respite, but right now, things are grim. And my dreams are haunting me, in a way that truly is new for me. Last night I had two dreams I can't shake. The first: I'm traversing thru a huge construction that seems to be underground. It's a concentration camp that ha...

What goes up, must come down. Last weekend was a festival of the senses, a decadent dip into the most intoxicating currents of the life force. There is a kickback to running the Feri current, or at least there is for me. I returned to work on Tuesday and found myself traversing the rivers of loss and grief. Two clients lost parents this week. One had to make the decision to pull the plug/ cut the cord of life support for her father. Once removed, he died in a few hours. The other sat with her father as he lay dying. She sobbed as she told me that he spent his last words on telling her that he loved her. In the midst of this, 48 hours before papers were to be signed on Ilyse buying out Patti and Karl and becoming a co-owner of our three-flat building, we found out our loan had not been approved. It’s been a painful week. Already we are in process of getting a new loan. The deal will eventually go thru. I’m familiar with the rivers of loss and grief; I’ll be a good guide for my clients. ...

Some time on Monday Fern somewhat groaned “I don’t know if I can take any more of this lust for life”. It's been that kind of weekend. On Saturday she had her initiation. This was an initiation into “Reclaiming Feri”, tying together what I see as the best of the two traditions, a rite where the initiate is wed to the life force, and vows to serve as priestess of it, working within the Wiccan Rede, to use the power of magic to heal, not hurt. It’s a lusty, intoxicating rite, and this one was especially so. This was the weekend we tipped over into summer. In San Francisco, summer sometimes lies just outside the fog, revealing itself in brief interludes. We know it’s out there; we need only cross one of our bridges, or drive south to feel it on our skin. We experience summer thru the swirling veils of this city’s ocean mists, savoring it when the sun beats down on us directly, relieved when several days of summer sun are overcast once again by incoming fog. By midday Saturday, as the...

Love After Love The time will come When, with elation, You will greet yourself arriving At your own door, in your own mirror, And each will smile at the other’s welcome, And say, sit here, Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart To itself, to the stranger who has loved you All your life, whom you ignored For another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, The photographs, the desperate notes, Peel your image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. Derek Walcott I turned fifty in February. Since that time, it’s occurred to me more than once how this time period parallels my twenties. In talking to friends, I think this may be especially true for those of us who made major life changes in our forties. The last part of that decade I began to seriously take stock of my life and jettison what no longer nourished or challenged me to grow. I broke up a twenty year marriage, faced the fact that the s...

Gosh, I love therapy. I like being a therapist, and I really enjoy being back in therapy. Having an engaged and attentive witness is proving to be incredibly valuable at the moment. What dots I can’t seem to connect, my therapist can. Right now several intense dramas are unfolding around me. I’m not the protagonist in any of them. Even in the ones that I am a part of, I play a supporting character, I’m not in leading role. There’s some grief attached to not being able to control some of the developing storylines of those I love. In the past, I would have tried to intervene, and felt responsible; believing I should be able to say the perfect thing, in the perfect way, at the perfect time to shift things for everybody. As I mulled all this, my therapist said the perfect thing, in the perfect way, at the perfect time. Sometimes therapists can do that. “Time to make popcorn”. Time to make popcorn. Comedy and tragedy are interwoven this week. Sometimes I’ve played a part, but as far as the...

AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18): You Aquarians have been getting ready for a big change and now it feels much closer, but you'll need to watch for the signals. Everything that happens is a sign. Don't, however, confuse the signs with reality. You still must connect the dots for things to make sense. Keep your eyes wide open and be ready to rock and roll. This is my horoscope for today. I’m printing it up and putting it on my altar. “Everything that happens is a sign. Don’t however, confuse the signs with reality” is damn good advice for me. As a child I loved being presented with the exercise of connecting the dots, trying to guess well before my crayon had completed the task what picture was going to appear. For some time I’ve described myself as a “connect the dots” kind of witch, good at making connections between things and ferreting out possible general storylines. Over the years, I’ve worried less and less about what is truly spelled out by all the dots connecting, knowing th...