“None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.”
~ Christopher Walken
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It is 2:15am. I feel tired, but my mind’s awake. It’s not a full moon, so who knows why. I got out of bed to write this, because I know I won’t want to in the morning.
It’s dark in the big open space. Kitchen to my right, living room in front. The only light from the five candlestick bulbs under small parchment shades on the cleanly scrolled chandelier above my table. It’s finished to look like aged metal. The bulbs are dimmed. Papers, notes for the book I’m writing, stack and hug my computer. I won’t make the deadline I initially promised for this book. But I trust it will be okay. I did finally send the full copy for the new website today. Third iteration. Hours that swiped away days. Last I’ll mention it ’til it launches my new face to the world. Feels so hugehugehuge.
I love the place where I’m at now. I’m sure one reason is I’m so close to town. But it’s more than that. The zen garden with koi pond and small waterfall out my bedroom door. The big table where I can stretch out and work. I’ve been lucky that way here. The bathroom that looks and feels like a comforting spa room. The raccoon I saw tip-toe along the edge of the flat roof across the way one early, early morning. And downstairs, opening the blinds to a large cooper’s hawk flying into the garden, turning to fly straight toward me. How I watched it sit high in a young aspen in the garden for three or four minutes before it took off. A messenger, the Native Americans say.
Then two days later I stopped in for 15 min. to see an artist friend, get one of her small pottery bowls for my salt. She was planning a quilt. The strips of cloth laid out sparking in me a creative money-making idea I know she’d enjoy doing. And we talked, and it dawned on me I’d just done this very thing with another artist friend. And as she exclaimed others needed this thing I do, I saw how the pictures come to me like a web of links. Not just the product, but where it goes, who wants it. Gave me something to ruminate. I love that I was there 2-1/2 hrs., and we both felt fine about it.
I read this week the word for soil in Lakota means ‘Who we used to be.’ And thought perhaps it explains my inexplicable Love of this planet. But sitting here, seems it’s what I feel in this land I’m in now. Being a Pisces, a water person, it may seem strange that too much drowns me. When it saturates the air, or is the main feature. I need land. This high desert where you see the pattern and color of earth, plant and life upon its surface, the stretch of it forever to meet a forever sky, it’s home to my Soul. Thinking more on it. I am not alone. There’s an inordinate number of Pisces and Scorpios here. And we used to say many years ago we held the water energy for the desert.
I love that on another gorgeous drive to Chimayo with a friend for a late lunch at a fav classic New Mexico place, we sat so long we arrived to the Santuario at 5pm. When a gal came in, said they were closed, she surprised us. It was a Catholic church. Our memory for decades was it never closed. But it’s an even bigger tourist destination now, we reasoned. They have to do that. The prize of that visit, though, was the last rose still blooming on the bush inside the church courtyard walls, beside the tombstones. I held the bloom forward and we took turns breathing its pure rose fragrance. Over and over. So heavenly. And then it pulled away, ripped from it’s limb, held on by threads. I rested it amongst the leaves. Like a broken bird. I was devastated. The last rose of the season. But the gal closing up said no worries, happens all the time. Kids rip them off, toss them about, she said. If you don’t take it, my friend said, I will. I felt it was a gift from Our Lady Guadalupe. It’s still on my desk, now dried tho I haven’t pitched the water it sits in. You can see it, in front of the card by a fav Abiquiu artist that I always travel with.
At least a half dozen times in the less than three weeks I’ve been in Santa Fe I’ve thought ‘I am so happy.‘ Felt it despite the five layers of huge changes I’m in the midst of. And that when someone said ‘Tell me one true thing,’ the one true thing I know clearly is Kindness expands a life. And that includes kindness to myself.
Today after a guided Vision Board class, different than others I’ve done, I looked at the images I’d gathered, put together. Chosen for how they made me feel and the values they represent, not for what they specifically portray. One picture didn’t fit. A home. I chose one over another I really was drawn to because it had open sky around it. Sky out my windows so vital to me. And the one I was drawn to didn’t. Plus it had a wide portal, which would block the sky. But when I got back to my place, that house with open sky just wasn’t right. I pulled out the picture I’d put aside. My thought, I’m manifesting here. I can have both home and sky. And from the same magazine with same-sized pics, I found three pieces of sky that went together and fit the 1-1/2 inch square space where I needed it. Patched them right in. Like magic, alchemically seamless. I believe that’s a message, too. I’m taking it!
Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
Tell me. . .one true thing.
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I miss having a best friend for a neighbor.
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