Holding Court

I sit, and hold court for the citizens of my mind. The thoughts that come tonight are not the nobility of this land, dressed in the fine fabrics of idealism and philosophy. The thoughts that come to my court tonight are the peasantry. They are the farmers and craftsmen, the husbands and daughters, desperate to plead their case before me. Desperate to be heard.

So I let these thoughts track their muddy workboots through my hall, and voice their cases before me. I lend each of them my full attention, and hold them compassionately while they speak. I make them feel that they have been truly heard, assure them that their case will be addressed fully in the morning, and then graciously dismiss them from my hall.

I take a breath, and turn my attention to the next case before me. And so on until I have heard each one in turn, and dismissed each one with equal compassion and detachment. I watch quietly as the last thought turns on his worn heel and pushes his way out through the door.

My hall echoes with stillness. It is empty now, and I sit listening to nothing but my own breath. I briefly fiddle with a well-worn knob on the edge of my seat, pondering what I have heard here tonight. I let it pass and return to stillness. Looking out at the muddy footprints, I smile, sigh, and smell their earthiness.

I climb down from my seat, and begin to sweep my empty hall. These peasant thoughts with their unglamorous complaints are as much a part of this court as the nobility, and I am glad I have taken the time to hear them. I will address some of their pleas in the morning, but for now, the hall is blissfully empty, and I continue to sweep, quietly and happily humming a song as I work.

Desires

I want:

To dance
To live in the woods
To be around creative people
To travel
To wear clothes I make myself
To live in a community
To be barefoot
To use what I already have
To have less stuff (no computer!)
To make people around me happy
To foster a love affair between kids and nature
To be glowy!
To stop being a consumer
To be self-sufficient and self-contained
To be grateful for every minute I have here
To live enthusiastically!
To remember to be in Bliss!
To continue to being spiritual
To make new friends
To wear bells
To find people to dance and play with
To be around people who support my lust for life

Good Day

Eyes open
Heart beats
Breathe in
I am
Thank you

Learning to Fish

"We have to get a wiggly one"



Inheritance



Casting Out Together



Generations

Learning to Fish
Images of my Nephew and Father

Blue Hills Reservation
July 12, 2008

The Road of Beads

My finger travels the road of beads, each repetition of our song another bead, another step, another heartbeat, as I wander deeper and deeper into trance, into the magic of this particular place, with each of these particular people. This moment will never exist again. It is as fleeting as it is eternal. The drums have usurped my feet, which now step a heartbeat, each beat punctuated by
foot
resonating on earth,
bells
jingling on ankles.

I occasionally am drawn out a bit, lured back into the world to glance at friends, to reassure them in their pain. The wailing and sobbing of a friend is a hard thing to bear witness to, but I let it fade. More beads, more footsteps. I fade to black. My voice follows the song, it is as involuntary as the metronome my feet have become. In a moment, it stops. Everything. It all stops. The world drops away suddenly, as if I had just dunked my head into an icy stream, and
I am baptized by stillness.

Exhale.
I am here,
I am nowhere,
I am somewhere,
I am everywhere,
I am here.

Inhale.
I straighten,
Taller than I have thought to stand before.
I profoundly own my height,
my power.
I am here.
I have arrived.
I am here.
I am in my power.

I open my eyes and see these people. I see them. I see each of their glorious faces, lit orange by fire glow, ecstatic in song, lost in their own deepness. I see them, these glorious strangers who have bared themselves, revealed their wounds, shared their joys in the safety of this container of acceptance. I see them, and my heart erupts with compassion. I see each of them. They are each beautiful. I gaze at them one by one and stare in glorious amazement. I just look and look, awed by each of their divine beauties. There are some who meet my eyes, and I watch them register the intensity, the truth, their truth. They look away, and then return wide-eyed.
I smile.
I see you, and you are so beautiful.

I look again and again, face after face, I meet eyes and smile. They smile back. I love each of these faces unconditionally. I am so happy that each of them is here, and breathing, and smiling. I find myself holding a posture of pouring out. I remember to refill my vessel, and come to a place of holding that vessel upright. I pour it out, giving back this love, and then refill again.
There is no limit to the water in this stream.

I stand solid in my compassion. I embody it, and it embodies me. The drumming shifts and stops. The time for secrets is now. I gaze at the fire and see two perfect eyes, with a fire in each one, and seated yogis at the brow.
Fire and stillness.

I send compassion out into this world,
bolstered by the power and beauty of all of these glorious people.

I heal my mother.
I heal my earth.
I heal myself.
Thank you.

Mendocino California
July 5, 2008

Magnetic Words

Breathe Sacred Beauty
Caress the Luscious Whisper
Rain Exquisite Love

Noir
Her Floral Shadow
Slides Through Onyx Velvet Night
Light Post Goddess, I
Scene.

Drunk on Love and Grace
Delicious Sanctuary
Delirious Joy
Chant

Created on Henri and Ashley's Refrigerator
E. Palo Alto, CA
February and June, 2008

Shrouded

We healers live shrouded by who we are. We are hobbled by our sight, we drown in all the things we see so clearly. That love, the powerful, forceful river that enters us, and becomes part of our existence, that fills our hearts like the basin of a beautiful fountain, and overflows us, pouring out into the world, that beautiful light opens our trust to the world.
It only takes a couple times of having that trust utterly destroyed that we begin to secret ourselves away, only allowing in a select few, and tentatively at that. We bear our calloused trust as a shield, with the knowledge that we will either come home with that shield or on it.
We sing the song of Prometheus. We give ourselves to the task of bearing love into this world, and we are paralyzed and repeatedly picked apart by our own doubts. People are just humouring me. I'm over reacting. I can't possibly be beautiful. What if this person hurts me? Why is the goal so clear, but the next step so unknown? With every injury it gets so much harder to let the next one in.
I am so desperate to open my heart to the world, but in that heart lives a scared little girl that has seen too much, and been violated and hurt too many times, and too badly. She's built a no grown-ups-allowed fort, but desperately wants someone to discover her and give her a hug.

June 28, 2008

Buddha

Cantor Center, Stanford University, CA
June 26, 2008

Here. Now.

A flutter of anticipation races across my chest as I turn to face the expanse of woods before me. It lures me into its stillness, laying out a velvet carpet path spiraling downhill into the damp, living darkness. The leather binding of my journal presses into my palm. Its weight reminds me of his words, my task. "Go into the woods," he said, "find a place, and listen to it. Let it tell you its secrets."

My eyes close, and my feet lead me silently over the loam. The birds serenade the sky, and ignore my presence here. I begin to let myself wander. I know these woods like my grandmother's house. They are safe and familiar, yet are filled with countless corners, each one housing an ancient mystery awaiting rediscovery. The path I set out upon becomes merely a suggestion, and the soles of my feet, finally free from the confines of both shoes and mind, lead me around and through, over and under, weaving my thread into this place.

Toes grip soil, legs lift body, mind travels upward. I see it: my place, my destination. It calls to me like a siren to a lost sailor. I pull myself up onto this stone, my new place of meditation, this stone that has been here longer than an eternity. I will be a visitor to it, resting upon this stone for only the smallest part of of one inhale of one of its epic breaths. I settle in to sit, clearing away sticks and pine cones, suddenly conscious of my animal movements.

I begin to sit. A stillness descends that unsettles me to the core. I confront my stillness like a cat that has just noticed an unfamiliar creature in its territory. My mind prowls around the silence, circling it with chatter, deciding whether it can be trusted. Slowly, my mind begins to relent, to widen its circle, and I suddenly notice the stream that burbles below me. It chatters away, echoing with the chorus of voices that it has collected on its cyclical journey through the millennia.

As I settle into my own silence, I am filled by the orchestra of sounds around me. The birds continue their love song to the air, unseen things rustle and scurry, and carry. A rivulet of sound breaks off from the stream, and starts to forge new territory in my mind, recruiting my own long-forgotten sounds. The river-chatter sounds like the crowd in Grand Central Station, it sounds like children on a distant playground. A baritone note splashes against a rock, and suddenly it is my father's deep voice, accented by duet of mother and sister, as their late-night conversation echoes up through the floor into my not-quite-asleep upstairs ears. Now the sound is the subtle rhythm of palate knife on canvas, leaving autumn trees in its wake.

I am now fully immersed in the sound. My head has gone under, and the shock of cold water has passed. A new sound enters my head. It is a singular voice that I have since come to learn as my own. It gives me words that circle around the confines of my head, refusing to relent until they are released into writing. The creamy pages fall open, and I take my own hand, a utensil currently foreign to my body, and write words that resonate with truth:

I am.
I am here.
I am sitting here.
No matter where I am,
I can always say,
I am here. Now.

I exhale, and the words, satisfied, stand boldly on the page, strong in their simplicity. The forest releases me from the hold of its gentle spell. I walk uphill, sometimes on the path, sometimes not. The words swirl and echo in my head, forming eddies of sound and thought.
I am. I am. I am here.
I am here now.

May 19, 2008

This event took place at
High Meadows School in Roswell, Georgia
1997

Harmony

Brahms
Symphony #3 in F Major
Opus 90

The orchestra operates as an organism
Robust, full of life,
Existing as one consciousness,
One awareness.

The individuality is present,
But does not compete with itself.
They achieve both a fullness and a precision,
A breathtaking combination.

Their music brings to mind a rose in full bloom,
In all of its vital glory and lusty color,
With a single droplet of water on one of its petals,
Focusing that fullness and beauty into
One
Incredibly precise
Detail.


Waltham Symphony Orchestra
Mother's day Concert
May 10, 2008

Om Mata

Om Mata
Om Mata
Om Shri Mata
Jagate Mata

I sing to mama. I celebrate her.
I weave this mantra into my life and my work.
I welcome her into my life.
I have discovered
My center
My base
My core strength
And I have found it within myself.
It is that place that must be stable in order for me to branch out.
I have started to find it
And hone its power.

Om Mata
Om Mata
Om Shri Mata
Jagate Mata

Samba Sadashiva
Samba Sadashiva
Samba Sadashiva
Samba Shambho

Om Buvaneshwari
Shri Buvaneshwari
Hara Para Shakti
Devi Bhuvaneshwari

Om Mata
Om Mata
Om Shri Mata
Jagate Mata

April 30, 2008
Kirtan sung by Ragani

Dedication

What Art Means to Me

I feel within an impulse, perhaps that divine impulse which has moved all races in all ages and in all climes, to record in enduring form the emotions that stir within.

I may model these emotions in clay, carve them in wood, hew them in stone, or forge them in steel. I may weave them in textiles, paint them on canvas, or voice them in song; but whichever I do I must harken always to the song of the lark and the melody of the forest and stream and respond to the color of the rose and the structure of the lily, so that my creation may be in accord with God's laws and the universal laws of order, perfect fitness and harmony.

Moreover, I must make my creation good and honest and true, so that it may be a credit to me and live after I am dead, revealing to others something of the pleasure which I found in its making.

Then will my creation be Art whether I be poet or painter, blacksmith or cobbler, for I shall have labored honestly and lovingly in the realization of an ideal.
~~~ C. Valentine Kirby

I hereby dedicate this space as a chronicle of this divine creative impulse as it speaks through me. I wish to share the beauty and joy of my life with others, and work to serve as a resonating chamber for all of the small gifts of beauty I see every day.
I dedicate myself and my art to play and dance. I want to bring to this world a sense of awe and the jingling of bells. I wish to reveal to others something of the pleasure which I find in the making of this life. I hope that by sharing myself here, I can spread that light, and welcome others to dance with me.
~~~ Samantha

July 30, 2008