Poem 1

Intent, as a silver wisp of light,
woven into this body,
with its origins in the technicolor fabric
of a grandfather's loving presence,
was gobbled by honey bees,
whose salivation gave the world its sweet golden glow.
Such a light met with many musty,
earthen rows of ancestral tombs,
echoing
"Beware of holding onto what never happened.
Remember to stop remembering
and reside in the unknown."

Oscar Wilde

I have read his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol and wept. It broke my heart. I wonder at my dream and if it was leading me to this, some healing. These verses seem most poignant...

"I never saw sad men who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

We prisoners called the sky,

And at every careless cloud that passed

In happy freedom by."

and

"I know not whether Laws be right,

Or whether Laws be wrong;

All that we know who lie in gaol

Is that the wall is strong;

And that each day is like a year,

A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law

That men have made for Man,

Since first Man took his brother's life,

And the sad world began,

But straws the wheat and saves the chaff

With a most evil fan.

This too I know—and wise it were

If each could know the same—

That every prison that men build

Is built with bricks of shame,

And bound with bars lest Christ should see

How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,

And blind the goodly sun:

And they do well to hide their Hell,

For in it things are done

That Son of God nor son of Man

Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds

Bloom well in prison-air:

It is only what is good in Man

That wastes and withers there:

Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,

And the Warder is Despair.

For they starve the little frightened child

Till it weeps both night and day:

And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,

And gibe the old and gray,

And some grow mad, and all grow bad,

And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell

Is a foul and dark latrine,

And the fetid breath of living Death

Chokes up each grated screen,

And all, but Lust, is turned to dust

In Humanity's machine."

(weeping here)

"The brackish water that we drink

Creeps with a loathsome slime,

And the bitter bread they weigh in scales

Is full of chalk and lime,

And Sleep will not lie down, but walks

Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.

But though lean Hunger and green Thirst

Like asp with adder fight,

We have little care of prison fare,

For what chills and kills outright

Is that every stone one lifts by day

Becomes one's heart by night.

With midnight always in one's heart,

And twilight in one's cell,

We turn the crank, or tear the rope,

Each in his separate Hell,

And the silence is more awful far

Than the sound of a brazen bell.

And never a human voice comes near

To speak a gentle word:

And the eye that watches through the door

Is pitiless and hard:

And by all forgot, we rot and rot,

With soul and body marred.

And thus we rust Life's iron chain

Degraded and alone:

And some men curse, and some men weep,

And some men make no moan:

But God's eternal Laws are kind

And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,

In prison-cell or yard,

Is as that broken box that gave

Its treasure to the Lord,

And filled the unclean leper's house

With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy they whose hearts can break

And peace of pardon win!

How else may man make straight his plan

And cleanse his soul from Sin?

How else but through a broken heart

May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat,

And the stark and staring eyes,

Waits for the holy hands that took

The Thief to Paradise;

And a broken and a contrite heart

The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law

Gave him three weeks of life,

Three little weeks in which to heal

His soul of his soul's strife,

And cleanse from every blot of blood

The hand that held the knife.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,

The hand that held the steel:

For only blood can wipe out blood,

And only tears can heal:

And the crimson stain that was of Cain

Became Christ's snow-white seal.

VI

In Reading gaol by Reading town

There is a pit of shame,

And in it lies a wretched man

Eaten by teeth of flame,

In a burning winding-sheet he lies,

And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,

In silence let him lie:

No need to waste the foolish tear,

Or heave the windy sigh:

The man had killed the thing he loved,

And so he had to die.

And all men kill the thing they love,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword."

I am grateful for these beautiful words.

Being in Transformation

My dream last night had beings in it that, for all intents and purposes, were human. They looked human, they lived human lives, and interacted as humans. But they had been through some kind of transformation that either set them apart from other humans, or made them somehow not human. I was contacted by a man and woman who had been through the transformation. They led my partner and me to a remote setting in the woods and were offering to perform a kind of ritual that would complete my transformation. My partner, as I learned, had been through the ritual already. The process had happened at night, in a small wooden yurt. As it was explained to me, I visualized a purplish, white light radiating from Andrew, and hearing a poem recited. Apparently, in the moment of transformation, each person had their own poem that would evoke an intense emotional response and bring to light all the pain they had been blind to in their life. The way to transform was to stay with the pain, to hold it. The woman told me that my ritual was to take place the coming evening, but I woke up before it came about.

A new one

It's UNcomfortable.

This new precipice from which

my feet are dangling.

There's a sea

of manowars down below

watching my every twitch

and squirgle.

What would happen were I

to fall from it?

Perhaps the manowars

would be naught but seaweed,

harmless,

though a bit tangly.

Perhaps I would be dashed

against the jagged rocks,

or slip into a sea cave

full of fabulous gems

and mermen.

But here I still sit, on the edge,

belly leaping into my chest,

heart expanding into my belly.

Naught to do but surrender.

Growing Pains

I have been in Portland about a month now. Moving. I had forgotten what a whirl of looping it can be... Pick up and go. Settle in. Adjust. Shift. Rebox and unbox expectations. Fall down. Squirm. Struggle. Go limp. Float.

This is the frantic dance of a growing seed. Wisdom of the sister says, "flowers have to push through soil and manure before they get to bloom in the sun. Remember you are a flower!"

Ok sister. I'll try.

Contemplating leprechauns

A year that is new. Still sitting by the big screen TV window.

I have a sticky, stinky urge to plop a new thing into the world. Yes. Like a baby. But not a baby. The kind of spawn that is of a more figurative nature.

If I were a leprechaun, I would be a rainbow-gold-guardian-in-training. I would have to wear one of those embarrassing trainee badges, and all of the qualified leprechauns would chuckle a bit at the sight of me: hat on a sideways, coat-tails tucked into my knee-highs, half of my mustache left unshaven. Oh the leprechaun world, it’s not for the faint of heart.

A year that is new. Still sitting by the window. Relieved I’m a Dana and not a leprechaun.

Days of miracle and wonder

I’m falling up.

My day was full of momentum. As easeful as drifting downstream on an inner tube. As dizzying as a gut-busting joke.

This morning I watched schoolchildren pour off a ferry into Sausalito. A group of girls peered over the railing at the dock, fixated on crabs that were crawling between the rocks below. A group of boys oo-ed and aw-ed at pelicans dive-bombing for fish in the bay. Their instantaneous fascination with the surrounding world brought a huge grin to my face. The adults, scurrying to move the kids along and rather oblivious to their surroundings, made me chuckle.

Next on the agenda was some self-pampering with a good friend: steam room, sauna, tasty sandwich, coffee… yes! At lunch, my friend handed me a piece of paper, the workings of an idea she’d come up with for a solo performance. The contents of this tiny slip of paper were hilarious, incredibly brave and so JULIA. I haven’t yet found the words to express what an impact her art making is having on me, maybe soon… I so often walk away from our interactions feeling giddy, reminded that I’m still a child in many ways, and happy to be so. The fact that a pigeon shat on her arm greatly contributed to my giddiness on this particular occasion.

Both of these encounters this morning left me with a good taste in my mouth. Having a nice start to the day transformed my normally dreaded Thursday work routine into a much more enjoyable experience. Funny how that works.

Falling up is kind of like waterslides without gravity. I hope others get to feel this.