A pulse of despair

swept me off my feet just now.  Cleaning the "Oh My God!" basement back room, I'm running into all sorts of Gil byproducts.  It's so hard to find the energy to slog through the crap mixed in with the occasional crucial part of something which had been lost amidst the dietris of our lives these last years.  I can't just shovel it out, so to speak, since who knows what important long lost something I may find? How long has it been since the basement was clean?  Why should I bother?  The weather is gorgeous, the goats are contained (albeit eating my burning bush and balsams to a nub, opps) friends are coming for a Chinese dumpling dinner and I just want to go to sleep and not wake up again.  ever.
Despair, one more layer of the hell called grieving.  I've got to believe there is an other side to this and I will be in it, energized and hopeful a year or so from now.  But it's hard to believe.

Storm

There's a string of thunder storms passing through.  I took my tea up to the rock outcropping by the house (where we will be burying Gil's ashes and planting a Maple tree for him next Spring) .  I'd set up a "club house" shelter  for the 3 billy goats gruff but they hadn't quite gotten it that it was a great place to wile away a storm out of the rain.   They finally joined me and snuggled up toasty warm as the wind and rain, thunder and lightning flailed away.    
I needed that      I am soooo tired
Tired of cleaning and refinancing and  keeping track of things.
Perhaps all I need to do is find some shelter and hang out chewing my cud (or drinking tea as the case may be)  til I find the energy to move on.   Perhaps I'm trying to get on with my life too soon.  I'm having a hard time finding the thread of it right now.  I wonder if I'll ever be excited, inspired again?
Enough.
Midwest storms humble me, make me feel small in the good way that mountains and oceans do.
I found a poem this morning which spoke to me.

War Some of the Time by Charles Bukowski when you write a poem it needn't be intense it can be nice and easy and you shouldn't necessarily be concerned only with things like anger or love or need; at any moment the greatest accomplishment might be to simply get up and tap the handle on that leaking toilet; I've done that twice now while typing this and now the toilet is quiet. to solve simple problems: that's the most satisfying thing, it gives you a chance and it gives everything else a chance too. we were made to accomplish the easy things and made to live through the things hard.

Poems from the Pacific

I've just finished a week of body awareness work on the Pacific coast, which involved a lot of journaling.  Here are some poems from the week. They're not great poems, but they release a little more of who I am becoming.

Harvesting Moisture
from the Fog Bank that ebbs and flows in a dance with
the solidity of the rock cliffs.
My rocks no longer bear weight
They slip out from under me with no notice.
I seep moisture from my deep making them
even more slippery.
From where comes the moisture?
Saved up in a piggy bank of the soul from a long dry life?
Is it clear plasma from a deep wound that is healing,
no longer leaking life feeding blood?
No mind.
It is My Fog Bank wrapping me in it's no man land
of directionless free fall.

I am one fissure of multitudes,  here to release
the yearning,
keening,
despairing
pain
that washes us all into the next life.


The reverberations
in the bowl of my pelvis, ringing it, ringing it
with different harmonics.
This is my base,
in pain or pleasure it holds me.
What shall I fill it with?
sand? feathers? milk weed fluff?
It used to hold eggs-
time to fill it with cool nourishment, with joy.
"Weebles wobble but they don't fall down"
My breath breathes me, rather than me breathing my breath.
Ring it.


Melange of Seaweed salad
kelly green and umber brown
burgundy and moss
wispy waves, bubbles, baubles
veil dancing starfish purple, blue.
Anemones in attendance,
large open mouthed turds and clusters of shell encrusted young ens
amplify the stars.
Jamie's hat immerses me in
Seaweed vision.
My eyelashes sweep me into a kaleidoscope  of wispy color.
I swim my body electric
pulsing with the waves,
discovering my star amongst my weeds.


Listening
to the feel in the knee, the hip,
as I shift weight onto them,
are they fluid, aligned, able to bear me?
Am I?
Listening
to my appetite
Is it scarcity or abundance calling me?
Is it treats or Life I'm hungry for?
Listening
to the meaning behind the words,
to the action within the action,
the current within the channel pulling me   where???
Listening
to the whale songs within me
Whooooo are you?
Whyyiyyy are you?
Whaaaaaaaateee do you want?

I want   to hear.


REDWOODS
ARE
deeply rooted in time and place.
A fairy ring of young ens rise
around the dead.
I will be that empty center
someday
grateful for those who eat my residue
and reverberate with my good intentions,
as they grow into their own
sacred space.


The Fog Bank seeps
as layers within layers within layers,
as am I.
The ocean currents carry me deeper
"than soul can hope or mind can hide".
I dream I am releasing my particleness into the waves,
breaking, swelling, holding, frittering away energy on the shore,
awash with oceanic abundance.
There is no going back (longing, aching, exhaustion)
only forward,
diving into the Great WHAT IS
emerging to dance once more
in a new form of this thing called LIFE.
"I am not done with my changes"