100 years

I asked her to tell me, the secret.
I asked her to tell me, how I too could live in this way
joyful. a life
sprouting seeds to spread for love of others
of moments
of breathe.

And she told me.
For to not compare oneself to others.
Not to count the ways
in which another face
another voice
a different name
could possibly
be more.
She told me.
To know what you have
you can be thankful.

She told me.
And I remembered.

Not for granted are the toes
of my bending steps,
and the orange and red autumn trees
that walk me home,
perhaps in the hand of a new friend
with shared laughs,
the tear that I may drop from my eye,
when she soars back to dance among old friends,
and the push of water in my ocean swim,
where the reflection of my sister resides.

She told me.
And I listen.

Resting in peace. Isabelle Elias. 100 years and 4 months.

I write

I watch and
I eat
I play and make
I draw
I eat
I play and walk
I eat
I read
I listen
I drink
I write of the bore that
is a day of today
where the cycle is of this
cycle of doldrums
and destitute
meaning in a walk, a draw, an eat, a read, and a write.

what I've got

a stomach of gnarled fibers
runs its way around

picking fine details of encrypted
old sounds

all six legs
striding for the
final
let go

an end.
we find it.
to slow-ly

beating the sounds

breaking teeth

with a soothing smoothing.

We are settled here.
we settle all where
we settle in our pattern of

footsteppings.

random raindrops

Random Raindrops

travel slowly into unchosen puddles
streaming along a path provided
by something set
before.
and then
they cross other larger streams
of raindrops losing their own
way and loosening
to the pull.

Maybe we will pass through the pond of drops.
Or maybe we will look for another
and miss.
Or the footsteps will find the same ground, untimely.

Or the ocean will flood into the feet of those who are strongly planted
and
the fruits
will then gloriously swallow the sun.

another night of my daunting dreams

It seems these days I can't go a night without having one of those troubling troubling dreams. Someone trying to kill me, someone telling me that everyone hates me. I'm lost, I'm running, I'm crying, I'm hitting. It seems so sad that in my "restful" state it is the sadness of my days, my doubts and stress that take over. I may be jumping to the ceiling with delight but am being watched with hateful eyes. I may be flying to a beautiful place but there is the scare that I may fall to my death at any moment. I don't believe that these are the dreams I had as a child. I remember the rarity of scares or running or crying. But dreams were of something I looked forward to. That I truly believed in my young spiritual life told me a story worth holding on to, worth looking into, the meaning, the use of the nightly sleeping experiences. And perhaps, that is the lesson into these dreams as well. I am doubting, I am saddened, I am worried and hurt and crying and feeling no love from any direction. And this is in my slumber!!! and this is in my daily life. And so, I will try to take away, and regain my spiritual attentiveness, that indeed my daily life and the way in which I'm living is negatively impacting my sleep and in my understanding of dreams, my spirit.

How To Be Alone

estoy aqui, estoy contenda

I am here and I am glad and the days have passed now with only two more to sink into my skin. After the moments that your yearn to remember in the future, I prepare to write. I gaze at the computer screen and hesitate, and then I walk outside to see the morning skies and practice my Spanish. To enjoy the day before it rains in the evening! as it does every evening. We take off our shoes and we count, and we say ready and then go to run on our bare tippy toes through the rivered streets. whaling, whaling! are we waking those who sleep? I watched the rain fall through the small open door as I watched Mozart's "Magic Flute" in a long theatre under what looks like an old part of an aqueduct. walking under the arch to find Bryce and Chucho under an umbrella. We go eat our corn I had prepared for! cheesey, mayonaise, boiled ear with chili pepper and lime. yumm yumm as all the specialties. spicy beer, spicy, spicy (which I would've enjoyed more if a drunken man wasn't yelling "Oaxaca city! you like, my queen?"
We walk to see posters littered the walls of graffiti. a paint splotted multicolored of eyes. Later to meet the artist at the Oaxacan Painters Museum. He explains the "process" of his creations as to connect the young people of the city, like us walking the streets with the exhibitions simultaneously walking in the neatly laid museum walls.
Today. warm chocolate with dipped fresh sugar bread. and to a graphic arts museum and for tacos and warm rice spice milk. To listen to jazz perhaps and tomorrow a fresh, organic market and much dancing dancing to catch up on before my departure.
we hope we can reach the airport as election for city governor has initiated street blockades by protesters. we will know if I make it home on the 3rd of July, 2010. Like 2006, there is much to protest, and many people who join.
still enjoying the vibrancy and newness and difference. To attempt a recoiling of it all in the keepings for later stories.