for real

Things are feeling hard.....

but there is always hope, right?  RIGHT?  I hope so.

My horoscope for this week, reads as follows:
The sport of ferret legging is an endurance contest. Participants vie to determine who can last longest as a live ferret runs loose inside their pants. The current record is five hours and 26 minutes, held by a retired British miner. But I predict that a Virgo will soon break that mark. Could it be you? APRIL FOOL! I misled you. I don't really think you should put a ferret in your pants, not even to win a contest. It is possible, however, that there will soon be a pleasurable commotion happening in the area below your waist. And I suspect that you will handle it pretty well.

Looks like I better go out this weekend!

A Coal Fire In Winter

Something old and tyrannical burning there.

(Not like a wood fire which is only

The end of a summer, or a life)

But Something of darkness: heat

From the time before there was fire.

And I have come here

To warm that blackness into forms of light,

To set free a captive prince

From the sunken kingdom of father coal.

A warming company of the cold-blooded-

There carbon serpents of bituminous gardens,

These inflammable tunnels of dead song from the black pit,
This sparkling end of the great beasts, these blazing

Stone flowers diamond fire incandescent fruit.

And out of all that death, now, 

At midnight, my love and I are riding

Down the old high roads of inexhaustible light.

-Thomas McGrath

ShAkE WhaT YouR MAma GaVE Ya!

thanks for sharing Melanie!

A not so gentle reminder....

to myself and anyone else who needs it.

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

~ David Whyte ~

The last lines especially!

Descend into the Loving Arms of the Night

Tender are the hunters

Tender is the night

-Jackson Browne

I have been having some wonderfully inspiring conversations over the last few days and a conversation I had last night got me thinking about one of my favorite subjects, that of descent and darkness.  The darkness is something that I have had a fear of for my whole life.  I always felt hunted in the darkness.

In my way of thinking, fears are not something to be conquered.  The language shouldn't be so aggressive.  Fears exist to illustrate something we cannot see in ourselves, which is why I believe the darkness is such a common fear and fitting symbol.  It takes a lot of bravery to look into the dark places within ourselves but these are often the most rewarding places to look.

I have worked to make an ally of the darkness and feel like I have made some progress.  In the western way of thinking, we are taught to strive for ascension.  To look outside the warm animal bodies we possess to some place in the sky where everything will be safe.  We were never meant to be safe and it is important to learn to accept this.  The only way to feel safe is to give yourself over to the wildness that is life.  If you need to feel comforted, take off your shoes, find a patch of nice unpaved ground and wiggle your toes around a bit.  Find both the physical (feet touching soil) and soulful connection to the truly bigger story that is life on Earth.  Descend into the depths and don't be afraid to look.  What you find, just may save your life.


You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The descent beckons
              as the ascent beckoned.                 
                               Memory is a kind      
of accomplishment,                          
              a sort of renewal
                               even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new places
              inhabited by hordes
                               heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds—
              since their movements
                               are toward new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned).

No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since
the world it opens is always a place
              formerly
                               unsuspected. A
world lost,
              a world unsuspected,
                               beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness     .

With evening, love wakens
              though its shadows
                               which are alive by reason
of the sun shining—
              grow sleepy now and drop away
                               from desire     .

Love without shadows stirs now
              beginning to awaken
                               as night
advances.

The descent 
              made up of despairs
                               and without accomplishment
realizes a new awakening:
                               which is a reversal
of despair.
              For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
              what we have lost in the anticipation—
                               a descent follows,
endless and indestructible     .

William Carlos Williams