mind the gap

Posted on August 2, 2011 by lbk

August cracked open on the very first day and breathed through to me, made me stop and look, made me lift my face and listen.

What is it? What’s different? Something broke that was pressing, something opened, something suddenly seems possible that was closed, impenetrable.

See how the air gets out of the way of the light? See how the heat gets out of the way of the sky?

It’s not a gap I can step into, yet. But I can slip my fingers in. I can put my face up close and breathe the cool fresh other-side air that streams through and over me.

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the shape of who you are

Posted on July 31, 2011 by lbk

I hesitated to join the jostling fray, preferring the calm of seclusion.

The Ferryman said to me, “Wear the shape of who you are on the surface so that when the world flows over you it receives your song.”

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river dragon

Posted on July 26, 2011 by lbk

My love is a river dragon, with scales of gold and red. He doesn’t know I know. Every morning he slips out to walk along the creak. Some days I go with him.

Sometimes his words are dragon teeth. Sometimes his words are fire. Sometimes he speaks in moss and duckweed, small swirling funnels of desire.

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shadow of a whisper

Posted on July 26, 2011 by lbk

Some days have holes in them. I know, but I forget.

I stood at yesterday’s threshold feeling buoyant and prepared, liquid with the night’s pooled pleasures. Easy. Ready.

But then, right at the beginning of the day’s High Council Meeting, just in that settling into our seats moment of shuffling and small talk, I turned to face the shadow of a whisper and it was gorgon and I turned to stone.

All my fine readiness fell to sand. My breath left me. My hands were empty and I had no words to answer the One Awful Question.

In self-defense I drew a veil of graciousness over me. I let it do my speaking for me, cupping the faces of all the little questions, scratching them under the chin and untangling their leashes when they got snarled. The One Awful Question never came. It might have been a triumph actually, but that all afternoon the paralysis held and the graciousness thinned. In some dark corner somewhere the One Awful Question was sucking down everything that moved me. I stared blankly and saw nothing.

When night came and I still hadn’t returned to myself I could only hope that sleep would draw me back home. I climbed up onto my high bed under the hush of the sympathetic fan. I pulled my sheet, the rich, sweet color of earth, up over my shoulder. I said my prayer. I closed my eyes. I let it be done.

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July whistles

Posted on July 24, 2011 by lbk

July plays a whistling tune over the planes of my face.
I haven’t learned the rules of his game yet.

The morning’s hesitation opened into a hot light that quickly folded into itself, brought wind to the leaves, and a dimming, and a running grumble that promised relief to the thirst that plagues all things, but it never did. It never did.

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every day there are knots to untangle

Posted on July 24, 2011 by lbk

Today my teacher said: Imagine a long line of suitors each bringing you some version of your heart’s desire. Let them present their offerings to you, one after another. See what you discover.

I didn’t want to play this game. My heart’s desire is not something one person might offer another, not something you can hold in your hand, not something that comes in versions.

But maybe that was the point. Maybe I need to begin dreaming up tangibles. Maybe I wouldn’t get so stuck in the clouds if I did, so riddle me this you infinite eager suitors: Show me what I will make. Of all the writing projects swimming in my pool just now, which should I pursue and how will it turn out?

I lit my candle, said my prayers, tucked my feet up under me and began to dream. And this is what I dreamed…

The Wellspring takes my face in her hands and kisses me. Her kiss is like a drink of cool water. I reside in the Wellspring and she resides in me. I could stay here, resting in her golden light, but there is something that needs doing, there are people waiting. Not suitors of course but wise women, all sitting patiently in the grass, all wearing saris, a rainbow queue snaking over the hill and into the trees.

The bright silks make my heart glad. This is so much better than suitors. The wellspring drapes me in a sari too, the color of sunshine, with undertones of orange and red, but in the main, bright yellow. She touches open the pin-prick star in my forehead and the other one in my chest. She touches open a new star at my throat, the palest aqua blue, and two more dangling from my ears, to remind me that good telling is suspended in listening.

I take my seat. I am ready.

The first woman in the queue comes forward and hands me a glossy covered hardback book, dark blues and blacks. The book falls open in my hands and an elaborate cardboard confection rises out of it. “A popup book? Seriously?”

The woman is grinning and nodding her head. “Sacred Geometry,” she beams. She thinks it’s wonderful. I think it’s ridiculous.

The next in line hands me a small gumball machine capsule filled with shredded paper and a small gemstone. I reject this one as well, and remind everyone that we are looking for writing projects. WRITING projects please.

Next up hands me a small paperback book. It is my manuscript “Asking Directions”. It has a compass on the cover, circled by a snake. The next version of the book shows a girl leaning up against the shoulder of a big brown bear. The next shows a hint of wing, the trace of a face, a star shining through it all and below in the bottom right corner, a splayed-leg frog with delicate wet feet.

Next in line isn’t a sari’d woman, it is the Buffalo Man. He hands me a version of the book that has removable cards. I pull one out and tuck it in under my silks. I realize how badly I want people to be able to take what I write and wear it close to their skin, like a tattoo, an ointment, a fragrance.

A very small very old creature steps up next. She has no version of anything to show me. She reaches up and lays her hand on my chest and my heart blooms out into a flower, long thin white petals surrounding a yellow core.

And that’s it, my heart’s desire, everything I wanted. I drop everything I’d held in my hands. “Has it nothing to do with writing at all then?” I ask.

The old one turns the question back on me asking, “What part does writing play in your journey to this blooming?”

“It is the path, the map, the disentanglement. Writing is the practice.”

The old one rests her hands on me in blessing. She says, “Every day there are knots to untangle. Every day you learn to see newly. Every day you learn to speak true.”

And then it was done.

Sometimes you get what you want even when you think it’s a secret.

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from now on

Posted on July 24, 2011 by lbk

This is not the beginning. Some beginnings pass without note and it’s not until you are well on your way that you think to begin to tell it. This is like that, begun where I am, somewhere down the road, begun now, as is fitting.

It is July, and hot. The trees full of the rattle of insects, thirsty with insect noise. I live these days in the dim interior.

My teacher is a butterfly, secret colors flash in impossible light, every glimmer a gift. On Thursday she said to me: Stop trying. And so I did, turned the key, stopped the engine, and by Friday I was so weak I couldn’t lift my head. In the evening I did as she bade me and soaked in a tub of salt water and the terrible ache subsided though I continued weak and tired. I slept 3 hours that afternoon then 10 more that night. I guess I’ve had my engine running a long time.

When I woke this morning, before I rose, I thought I might walk out by the creek again today. But I was mistaken. Enough to sit. Enough to walk across the honey wood floor without losing my way. I did not go out. I brewed my tea. I took myself to my quiet room and tucked my feet up under me. I said my prayers and then I dreamed. And this is what I dreamed.

I stepped into a pale green forest with flickering leaves, sparse grass and hard scrabble ground. I stood in front of the Wellspring, a golden fountain, the source of all goodness in me. I stepped forward but my body would not hold, each step melting up my bones until I was but a dampness in the dirt, sinking down to the calm of bedrock. The fountain music played overhead and I rested in the dark. But something was not right, something worried at me, like ants under my shirt. I reared up out of the ground in a snarling frenzy. “Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!” I cried, suffering from some stricture I could not name that bound and weighted me.

The bear answered my call. He faced me with his great brown muzzle, breathed a wash of fire over me so that all that was solid was burned away and all that remained was a wisp, a breath. I rose up into the flickering leaves and tucked myself into them and was comforted by their chatter. I condensed in the coolness there, dripped like last night’s rain down through the leaves and onto the ground, a momentary spot of darkness, and then nothing.

Clearly I wasn’t done yet. There was some hurt to be resolved. I would have to go and find the injured party and make amends.

I walked at the bear’s shoulder up the road, headed north. We came to a tunnel, a cave, and moved down into it. The way got darker and narrower until we reached a place where the cave ended. There was no way forward, just black rock, sharp edged and cold. The bear sat behind me, blocking my retreat. Clearly there was some option I wasn’t seeing. I pressed myself against the rock wall, thinking I might dissolve into it or discover an unseen crevice that I might slip through. And then I realized we weren’t alone. A small body in the dark, making its way toward me, full of sorrow and joy. I turned toward it, opened my mouth to speak and it jumped straight in. I knew who it was then. It was my little frog heart. I held him there moment, warming him and then spat him into the palm of my hand. “Hello darling.” I said, “It’s good to see you.”

“Why did you send me down here all alone?” he wailed at me. “Why did you send me on this impossible mission without reinforcements?”

“Oh! Did I do that?”

“Why did you leave me here?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and I meant it.

“I’m not a miner,” he said. “This is not a job for me.”

“No,” patting the cold hard rock, “No I can see that.”

He hopped onto my shoulder and up through my hair to perch on the top of my head. “Now that you’re here it’s going to be alright.”

“Yes, I promise we will stick together from now on. A girl and her little frog heart.”

The bear lead us back up the tunnel and we came to the cave of the three sisters. We walked to the lip of the cave but the light outside was too bright. The sisters made us up a bed near enough to the entrance to feel the cool sea breeze, but deep enough to be cradled by the cave darkness. I lay down with the frog cradled to my chest and the bear cradled against my back and I slept.

And when I woke again, everything was as it should be.

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a life or death place

Posted on May 30, 2011 by lbk

I am walking along a rocky rutted dirt road. My shoes are broken.

I am wearing completely inappropriate shoes, fancy and delicate with narrow sharp heels. I have to take them off. Ridiculous shoes. I am carrying a lot of baggage. I am angry with myself. Why am I carrying so much? I need someplace gentle to put my feet.

Maybe there are snakes in the grass, I don’t know, but the idea makes me nervous. The ground in the grass will be no kinder to my feet than the road, but I have to try something. I set down all the bags and boxes I’ve been carrying. One small cardboard box tips over and a flock of black birds flies out of it.

(Another, which I won’t even mention, releases a very small man with sharp knees and dirty fingernails who skitters away cackling.)

I go off the road, down the green and tangled bank to a spring, the river’s watershed. Moss is what my feet want. The moss is soothing and kind. It works like a key in all my locks. I am undone.

This is a life or death place, a place of utmost importance, a source place, a life place to get to when not getting here means death.

I rest on the bank with my feet in the water. I soak my feet and I drink. It is dark under the trees and very quiet.

In a little while I know I will get onto a boat or raft and let myself drift on the slow dark water, but for now this is what I need. This dappled dark, this fragrant damp. The cool quenching water. The kindness of moss.

Someone leans in, out of the blue, and asks: “Why don’t you write a book? Why do you keep telling yourself you can’t? All this personal story exploration is fine but, eeh. What you want to put yourself into is a book. A good full story. Nothing quite so safe and soothing as a strong story structure.”

There is something in my pocket. I spread the top to let my little frog heart climb out on long cautious legs.

The frog and I get on a raft. We untie the rope and let ourselves drift down stream. I lie on my back and watch the sky through the leaves. I’m almost asleep when I become aware of a chest at the other end of the raft. A small chest that wants to be opened. And so I do.

A creature unfurls out of the impossibly confined space. He has broad sloping shoulders and a broad face and a heavy head of hair, tendrilled in dreads. It seems the heaviness of his hair behind leans his head slightly forward. His arms hang loose at his sides.

There is a wild cool smell about him, like frog maybe. I’ve never met anyone like him. He is so strong I take a step back to the edge of the raft. He looks straight at me. I cannot read anything in his face. He says, “I’ve come for you. Are you ready?”

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