Sedona Ramble II

Heading into the full moon in Libra one year later now. The human world strangely paused–not our minds and spirits, but our outward activities severely circumscribed. Pandemic.

I knew something was coming. Knew it back in 2002, after having a breakthrough experience. I felt something big was coming that would change everything, possibly even wipe out human life as we know it, but it mostly felt hopeful. Back then it felt joyous, like humans were on the brink of a revolution in consciousness. The times were dangerous for sure, but we would wake up. We would turn on a dime.

In early April 2016 I sat on my side stoop in Glens Falls, NY, and had another kind of experience. It was the cooling evening of a kissing-warm day. The trees were budding and the birds were singing, and the sun was setting in glorious yellow-orange and blue. Sitting there on those steps, witnessing all that glory, I suddenly felt I was one of the last humans to behold spring unfolding. It wasn’t a thought, it wasn’t an abstract musing. It was real, and terrifying, and humbling, and sad.

That was a bad year. We lost a lot of our culture keepers that year. Prince and Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Harper Lee, Alan Rickman, Elie Wiesel, Gene Wilder, Carrie Fisher. The list goes on. The Western world lost a lot of culture keepers, and the United States publicly lost its moral compass. Despite his drawing huge crowds and running a strong campaign funded by The People of the United States–through multitudinous small donations–the media ignored Bernie Sanders and focused on DJTrump. And despite the overwhelming public support for Bernie Sanders, the DNC gave us Hilary Clinton. And despite his delusionary campaign promises and openly demeaning, even disgusting, behavior toward disabled people, women, and give him time anyone you could possibly put in front of him, Donald (he tells it like it is) Trump became the 45th president of the United States.

It was a surreal year, 2016, and all that summer I couldn’t shake the sense of being on the Titanic when all the rich people were still asking for hot toddys and complaining about putting on life jackets. Except it wasn’t only rich people, it was most people.

Since then the feeling of something impending has grown stronger and stronger. I don’t fly as a rule–the last time I’d been on a flight was 2011 for my brother-in-law’s wedding, and before that 2001 for my grandmother’s funeral. It never made a lot of sense to me for people to fly all the time, for a whim, but as the years went by it got so that any venture that put me more than an easy drive from my family felt like I was taking a chance late in a game of musical chairs. When the music stopped, I wanted to be home.

However, last winter found me by chance with a bunch of Delta miles I had not purchased but were redeemable only by me, and my mother kept telling me her house in Arizona was open as home base. I planned a solo trip for April, during the full moon, and booked Air BnB for some camping equipment and an inside scoop on where to primitive camp in Sedona, where I was led on that lovely, healing morning ramble.

The point of all this is to say that I’m a sensitive. There are subtle subtexts that play along with the more apparent energies of this world, and people do not usually speak about them. It drives me crazy sometimes, because I know I’m not the only one who sees or feels these subtexts, but the dominant mode is to ignore them. Out of politeness or a sense of how inconvenient and inefficient it would be to address their existence. But now that the game of musical chairs has stopped I’ve been feeling a lot of fear and intensity, and I know it’s not all my own. The past few years have been incredibly wild, pushing the envelope of our ability to swallow one more inconceivable thing over and over again–but people have always had their busyness, their distractions, their vacations to keep reality at bay, and now we have been grounded with ourselves and the crazy news.

So I’m feeling all this intensely and my mother, who is a lifelong Republican, emailed me to inquire about my health. I responded:

…the whole thing is very heavy and it wears on me. I think it’s the not knowing what is going to happen, and seeing every person in my life as possibly gone all of a sudden. Seeing everything really, as possibly gone. It isn’t just the virus, it’s the whole world and the changing weather, the earthquakes and fires and floods. Humanity has tipped things too far, and nature needs to find balance again.


When you asked me to go to London with you, even if I did have a passport I didn’t want to go because I’ve been feeling this coming for a long time. I didn’t know what or when, but I knew something was coming that would likely shut down the world–and any chance of return.

And she wrote back:

You have such an innate sense of oneness with this world and such a sense of responsibility that I am not surprised you had strong feelings about what was to come. I am not a biblical scholar by any means but there is the prediction of a catastrophic end to the world as we know it. I choose to believe it is a major event that will bring us all to a place of true beginning – a reset button – if you will – that allows us all to make the changes we need to in order to move forward in a different and more positive direction.


I hear sadness and some fear in your words and I guess I have a more positive take on this – as horrible as it is. I think of this as it is – it is an opportunity to come together and restructure our lives and the world we live in. At 78 years young I am not afraid of dying, just very sad at what I will miss in my loved ones’ lives. My world (life) will definitely end but you have so many years ahead to work toward the changes that need to happen for us to continue to live in this world.


You and I are at opposite sides of the political spectrum but share common core values – but we can all come together through this. This isn’t political – this is changing the world.

When I read my mother’s words, I thought of my experience in the desert, under the April full moon, and knew it was for sharing, not for keeping. These experiences of the subtleties of life, the subtexts, the undercurrents, have been scoffed at by the mainstream and kept hidden too long. If even one person reads my account and understands they are not alone, are never alone in this beautiful, magical world, then my purpose has been served. But make no mistake–my love for people has its roots in loving this Earth. I write to express my re-learning how to live in harmony with all of life. As part of remembering who we are.

It’s come to the time when we see what is essential–we recognize what is essential. We may have varying needs based on personal proclivities (to be honest, I’d been hoarding notebooks and shampoo for months before this happened), but certain things I think we can agree that everyone needs. Clean water and clean (not poisoned) food. A safe place to live and develop meaningful relationships. We also need natural, unspoiled places, because the balance of life depends on these. Trees, animals, water, the insects, the fungi. The hard truth is, humans could become extinct just as easily as humans have wiped out many brothers and sisters with our uncontrolled “I, me, mine” and “I want.”

We have spent too long chained to an agenda that does not serve the Earth and its future generations. We may disagree on many things, but the essential truth is before us.

It is time to fight for this Earth.

Boynton Canyon Trail, Sedona, Arizona, 2019

Sedona Ramble

I am moved to share an experience that happened in April 2019, during the full moon, while I was camping alone in the desert just outside of Sedona, Arizona. It isn’t something I thought to share until now–as the opening line of the account says, “This was for me.” But a lot has happened between then and now. Humanity has been stopped in it’s ceaseless outward activity and forced to wait, and wonder. Will this virus kill my loved ones? Will this virus kill me? What is going to happen in the fallout?

I want to share this account for many reasons, but the primary reason is to offer it, the way a wild strawberry offers itself to you as you pass by on the trail.

∞∞∞

This was for me.

Yesterday I awoke just as dawn was glowing in the east–still dark but, with the full moon, light enough to walk. I put my sandals on and stepped outside the tent, which had been wide open all night on both sides. I thought I’d go pee then come back to the tent and figure out what I was doing, but instead of peeing I kept walking slowly along a trail I’d found the previous morning. Rounding a bend I came face to face with the moon. She was right there, large and bright before me, and I thought of all the pain I had caused in my life through my own bad choices. I cried a little, strong but brief, cleansing, and asked to release and be released. I have been over this ground many times. We make bad choices based on bad options and faulty knowledge. I took responsibility as best I could, did the best I could, trying to be what I thought everyone wanted me to be until I just couldn’t anymore.

I stood there facing Grandmother Moon and let her see these choices, and I asked for forgiveness and to let them go. I cried, grieving for the pain and confusion I had caused others and myself. Tears streamed down my face and in my hair, but I did not wipe them away. When the tears stopped flowing I walked on and soon came to a place where bouquets of white flowers had come up in profusion overnight. They were all over the trail and up a little hill to my left. I felt certain they were telling me to go that way, so I followed the flowers up the hill to a small campsite, unused for a very long time, where someone had built one of those cairns you see all over Sedona. This one had fallen, and I stopped and rebuilt it before realizing this wasn’t what the flowers were leading me to.

I stood up and saw the “Weathertop” hill I’d climbed the previous morning, and thought maybe that was what Spirit intended–for me to climb that hill again to witness the sun rise. I was wearing sandals and this didn’t sound good to me, but trusting I was being led I started walking toward it, down the other side of the knoll I was on. Soon I came to a blasted juniper–very old and its trunk split in two. It reminded me of Bob and I, our marriage split apart. I stopped to talk with it. I touched its green fronds and told it I brought greetings from the north, from my tree friends the maple and my new tree friends in New Paltz, though I didn’t know what kind they were.

The juniper and I did not really connect. I felt no hostility, but no friendly warmth. During the time I was visiting the moon went behind a cloud and I looked around and saw that there weren’t any white flower bouquets nearby–I had left them when I came down the slope. I had gone off course.

So up I went again and there were my guides, showing me the way. Left again, and straightaway I came upon another very old juniper–this one was also split, but not in two. It was split into four and all were growing individually, intact. It was a clear message to me that ending my marriage did not have to destroy my family. We could grow as individuals, together. It also reminded me that codependency is not healthy. Togetherness at the cost of my own being, my true nature, is not something that Life asks of me, or of anyone.

I greeted this juniper, thanked and blessed it for its message, and followed the flowers again, farther to the left and down another slope, where I saw a large, round boulder. It made my heart leap and tears come to my eyes again. Tears of joy. I immediately walked toward it, and just as I reached it and realized it was a large mother “keystone” of a semicircle of smaller stones, coyotes began howling and yipping all around. At first I thought to be afraid, but then I touched the boulder and let their voices move my spirit in gratitude. When they stopped, I looked at the boulder. Near my face, where my hand was touching, was a heart. A very clear heart, in red stone, in an otherwise light composite.

Shows the size and orientation of the heart on the boulder. Just about that big, in that orientation.

I touched the heart and set my intention. It was automatic, like I knew exactly what to do. I asked to live my life with intent. Conscious, clear, from my heart. I said it in more words and images than that, but the essence was–I wish to live the remainder of my life from my heart, with clear intention. I wish to give to the world what I have to give, from my true self. Then I was crying again, cleansing tears of joy. I pressed my forehead to the heart and gave thanks, then pressed my body against the boulder, hugging her and thanking her, allowing my tears to enter her body. She smelled good, and I told her so. I pulled back and gently stroked the heart with my fingertips, kissed it, then continued on around her, into the semicircle of stones and beyond, giving thanks as I went. The white flowers led me up again to the old campsite, and on back down to my own camp, where I finally squatted and peed, feeling that I was releasing much more than yesterday’s water.

*One last thing about my dawn walk:

It was Magic. I was sure of this, certain of this. And the Moon told me: do not lose this. Do not forget.

Magic is real. Life is Magic.

Don’t let this go.

White flowers that led me on a ramble.
Lovely spirit guides. Sedona, Arizona, in April 2019.

8:27pm

The phone rings and I’m crying at the immensity of life and the losses losses losses.

I answer, thinking I must, and it’s a guy from Spectrum. He says good afternoon. I say good evening. He says this phone call may be recorded. I say, I can tell. He says he’s from Spectrum calling to offer me a new deal. I say I’m not interested, but I am sorry that you must sell your time like this for money, something you can’t eat or build a house out of. He says well you have a good night ma’am, and I say you too.

Times Square After To Kill a Mockingbird, August 2019

The Will to Work

Lucy and I were out walking on the farm at dusk, seeking the moon despite cloudy skies, and I was musing about work. I am a librarian to “earn my keep” in this society, and because of my IT experience pre-library-school–hardware, networks, imaging, and caring for a cadre of public and staff PCs at my local library–my career path has naturally flowed along this vein of library work despite my attempts to move into other aspects of library work.

This new year, January 2, 2020, I started a new job, with people I really respect and admire and like. I was happy and still am happy, but this week, one week after start date, was an all-day meeting for everyone on the team–we are spread out all over the state, so people don’t see one another in person very often–and all staff were to present for 5 minutes or so on their current work. I figured I would have to get up there but didn’t have anything to say yet, so I began to prepare something that was meaningful and also, slowly, then faster, spinning out of control in a maelstrom of anxiety. Couldn’t sleep one night, then two nights, and formed a headache three days ago that still hasn’t completely gone away today, a day after the event (which went just fine, even well, and my new boss totally did not expect me to get up there and speak).

So Lucy and I were walking along and I was musing about work and how to deal with this job. In most of my other jobs I’ve felt to varying degrees depleted by them and very much in need of drawing strict boundaries between home and “my time,” work and “their time.” (I once worked in the Preservation Unit at New York State Library as a student assistant for three glorious years, loved my job dearly, and even then there was a pretty clear demarcation between work and “life.”) But this job feels different. I’ve stepped into a rarified environment where creativity is not only valued but encouraged, and our common goal is lofty and righteous.

Scary. Daunting. And so the shadow self comes up and starts heaving me around, showing me all the shit I still haven’t cleaned up, all the things I’ve left undone and how are you ever going to do anything? Dicing my already distracted mind into a fine mess, which, given reign, pulls me into a death spiral. I spent most of this week indulging like a sonofabitch, as don Juan Matus would say to Carlos often in those books. It’s not like I can help it, once I get going, but still…I see it happening and let it go off the rails at some level.

Walking on the farm under the hidden moon, I realized that the approach I’ve taken to work until now will not work anymore. Instead of boundaries I need to integrate. Instead of compartmentalizing my life into work and life I need to find a way to fit work into my life, allow it to permeate my life, allow it to wake me in the middle of the night with great ideas I need to write down before I can possibly sleep again. Embrace work as part of my life, not separate from it.

When I came home, I found this article waiting for me in the “Pocket” offerings every new tab on Google presents. It is a very good article and confirms me in my musings in a way only the Universe can, as it riffs off of and echoes my own inner landscape. Happy New Year.

The Way You Think About Willpower Is Hurting You

Love life. ~ Love, Life

They Gave the Indians Blankets Laced with Smallpox.

I found two of these plates at the Goodwill years ago. They hold an electric, magnetic charge. They were the Amherst College dining hall plates into the 1970s. Into the 1970s. It is a dark, rueful pleasure to use them. Memento mori.

Photo from: Peter d’Errico, “Jeffery Amherst and Smallpox Blankets: Lord Jeffery Amherst’s letters discussing germ warfare against American Indians,” 2001, 2019. Accessed on October 19, 2019, at https://people.umass.edu/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html

Just After Twilight

There is no end to the blame
Or the depths of pain.

We all bear not only our own history
But our ancestry.

There’s no way to even the score.

We must, like children, cry,

Olly olly all come free!

Olly olly oxen free is a catchphrase used in children's games such as hide and seek, capture the flag, and kick the can, to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that position of the sides has changed, or, alternatively, that the game is entirely over.
Olly olly oxen free is a catchphrase used in children’s games such as hide and seek, capture the flag, and kick the can, to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that position of the sides has changed, or, alternatively, that the game is entirely over.

Back to the Garden

Not one more word.
I will go back to gardening,
Which is really all I ever do anyway.

I don’t know why these moods come upon me–
Why I cannot stay.

I know. I do know.
Seasons change.
I am an annual blown by the wind
Visiting established gardens.

They don’t know who I am
And I am gone again.


“Not to love is a failure of the imagination.”
I know someone said this to me once or I read it but I can’t remember who or where.
It came into my head this morning,
Watching rainbow prisms upon the wall.

I will care for my garden.


(Where my garden meets your garden is also my garden.)

Blessed Are the Trodden

Blessed are the trodden, with their faces in the dirt,
Who process what the rest refuse to see.

The thing most do not know
Is that without exception each must deal with their own shit–
Ain’t no way another can take your load.

Neither cash nor coercion can contract that labor out.