February 14, 2016 · 5:12 pm

Hawaiian Sunrise

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6:30 AM in Hawaii.
Birds in a giant tree to the left of the villa sing to greet the rising light …. another one – larger, louder- pipes up just to the east; I think he’s on the jetti below my lanai

but he is invisible to me except for his clear, determined voice.  I wonder if he will do this tomorrow.  If he did this yesterday.

Watching the cool morning light stretching up toward the last star shimmering in a periwinkle sky,

now sinking into a dusty pink, then to a sunrise-to-the-east yellow, like cream on clouds that rest on the horizon …

is healing, full of grace.

In the dark below, a small fishing boat pulls away from its dock, gliding silently along a jetti.

Sipping coffee, I watch as it moves toward the sea.

Jetti locataires- palm trees and flowering bushes – are watching, too.

We watch together.  The little boat reaches the ocean and shrinks away.

Inevitably the light pushes up, drowning the star and it’s periwinkle sky.  Boats appear in lit slips, now visible, and the sun appears, looking more majestic than I remember it.

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I must be in paradise.

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February 2, 2014 · 9:31 pm

Imbolg Wishes, 2014

Candle Garden

Imbolg, a fire festival marking the first stirrings of spring, is a long tradition in our family.  Every year we plant a candle garden filled with the desires we hold closest to our hearts, and share (if we want to) what we planted with each other.  These things we intend to cultivate during the coming growing season, while the days grow and stretch longer toward the summer solstice, the sun finally reaching its  longest stay in the night sky.

For myself, in a new house, my children growing and beautiful, there is the obvious desire to experience and express love.   And in 2014 I have a special wish for tranquility.  Tristan and Inga both chose to focus on endeavors they’re currently engaged in, growing personal improvement and mastery in their respective areas.  Perhaps at this time next year we’ll be able to reflect on what we decided to plant and feel satisfied with what we grew.

For now, though

time is a river, and every year we flow into new territories, finding ourselves changed and renewed, grown and altered by the ones we’ve left behind …

May the coming growing season bring a journey filled with love, happiness, and all good things for every one of us.

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January 11, 2014 · 3:25 am

Ghosts

Once upon a time there was a girl who had a smile that looked a lot like the sun. When we were together, so many years ago, we listened to a song that was popular then – La Isla Bonita. The pretty island. It was a song about happiness and love. The kind of thing young, bright, hopeful girls wish for. We would drive to school, singing along to that song, homework in our backpacks, smiles on our faces, sure of a future.

Then she died, leaving me alone with that song and my memory of her.

Tonight, in the car, I was channel surfing, and there it was. Just beginning. Our song.

I listened, and cried, the car empty without her there beside me singing. Hours later my eyes are still full of tears, my head is full of that song. I know that these things, these outcomes, are a mix of destiny and desire. Choice and fate, perfect in their precise execution of our deepest wishes mixed up and stirred into what must be.

And yet I wish with all my heart that Eva had been with me in the car tonight, singing. I wish for another chance to see her and touch her, and to smile and sing about the pretty island. A place we always said we would go together.

Someday I feel sure we will.

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October 29, 2013 · 12:06 am

9 years old

I was talking about my lifeplans with my friend Owen

Margot and I are going to have a penthouse in Paris.

After a couple of years we will split up and go to separate apartments next door and marry different boys.

Owen said “Who are you going to marry?”

I thought “I know where you’re going with this and I’m not going to answer that.”

-Inga

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October 20, 2013 · 1:48 am

Ever After

The nighttime sky is a bed of stars, luxuriant in repose, a birthplace for beginnings

and endings

Every thing of beauty, every blooming heart, comes from there

Every thing that is meant to be, every fated ending, goes there.

Most nights, the moment comes for the moon to rise over the trees and friends and lovers find each other in the diffuse light

know each other, embrace each other,

And live happily ever after.

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October 14, 2013 · 6:29 pm

Let it Be

I stumbled over this one in freshly pressed and wanted to share it. It’s haunting and brave.

flycuckoo's avatarHow To Fly Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Four days had passed and I still hadn’t left the flat.

I hadn’t washed or eaten and the only contact I’d had with the outside world was a 30 second phone call with my mum. I just lay under my duvet for hours at a time. No music, no TV, no fags, just my whirring thoughts and the polka dot sheets. Occasionally, I would get up to use the toilet and sip some water, but even that felt like a mountain to climb.

I was restless, something was crawling underneath my skin. I clawed at my neck and chest, leaving crimson scratches and bloody fingernails. I fell from the bed onto the bedroom floor, crying out for mercy, but no one was listening.

I couldn’t take it anymore, it was unbearable. I lay on my bed, pleading, crying out for some relief from the agonising pain that plagued my mind…

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October 14, 2013 · 3:49 am

The Appeal of Red

Proving that the apprehension of even the mundane is fluid – birds see color varieties that we don’t, seeking in each other the appeal of colors unknown to us.

And so the boy birds and the frogs – prey for birds – have adapted.  Boys become bright to attract feminine attention, frogs to warn that they are poisonous.  I once had a boyfriend like that.  So shiny and colorful I knew he must be dangerous.  And he was.

If the world is for each of us what we perceive, a subjective reality, then it must be an infinity of realities made sweet or sour by the tastes each of us give it, expect of it, believe to be real, and have the capacity to perceive.  And so a million realities exist around us but we see and create realities unique to ourselves.

We are dreamers diving into the swirl of our days, abandoning ourselves to the past, what we’re instructed to believe, what we can accept.   Endlessly dancing with these lovers, until something or someone trips us, jars us awake, rips us from the fabric of our diligently woven lives.  If we are lucky.

Waking from a dream of myself or perhaps nudged by some nascent desire, I have begun to weave red into a tapestry that has before been a kind of grotto of earth colors.  Here, indulged desire – oh, yes – where my careful heart would never have dared.  There the fiery red of a creative flame allowed to burn.  Consequences?  Perhaps, but you have to live.

This love-child could become a blaze, burning away old perceptions that have outlived their power to be potent; or a long, warm summer day of lovemaking in the forest, bent over a tree.   Or maybe it will become a garden, velvety flowers springing from alongside the path of my days, meandering through cool archways overgrown with trailing ivy.  No telling, yet.  But hopefully it will involve my share of red and an enhanced perception of color.

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October 8, 2013 · 1:45 am

Breathe

Letting go is best accomplished with breathing.

In.  Out.  In.  Out.  And continue.

Give space,  give time, to each breath.  Let each breath complete itself, become full, and rejoin the sky.  Smile, where possible.

It lubricates things.

 

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October 7, 2013 · 2:09 am

morning fog at Broadmoor

That morning the fog laid like a great ghost over grass and trees, shrouding the landscape with its wet breath, a kind of ageless voice faint in the air

Spiderwebs hung everywhere, between branches and railings; tiny droplets of water making them obvious, perfect in symmetry and form: waiting in a kind of glistening perfection of silence.

We walked out into the morning, the sun still asleep behind clouds, the air fragrant from night blooms, the small, pointed tracks of deer visible here and there along the path at our feet.  The change in the air quietly ominous; a faint whisper of the long, cold nights ahead.

leaves float gently through moist air,  the yellows and reds releasing their hold on branches that would soon be bare, naked, dark, against gray skies.

Ahead, the path stretched and disappeared into the woods, trees hanging in a canopy over the well-trodden ground, now littered with leaves like flames fallen from the sky

Tomorrow the sun will set a little earlier, and change will come to us, whether we ask for it or not.

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September 27, 2013 · 11:40 pm

Years ago in the spring I went walking at dusk in Boston; the gray sky behind tall buildings bore hints of yellow and pink that seemed suggestive –

A full life that can somehow never be full enough looks to the sky for signs of what’s to come, visions and impressions;  such feelings and thoughts are the currency of such a person … especially one who deals in the logical, rational world of computer science all day long.

That night I had a date with a Frenchman.   It was April.  Snow had become rain, the streets of downtown Boston seemed promising.

All optimism, I gave myself to the evening.

The Silvertone was alive with a million after-work revelers.  The air was dark and surprisingly cool for a basement; the air conditioning infusing fresh air over a crowd of too-close professionals, the bartender in endless motion; the room full of couples doing what couples do – coupling tentatively, determinedly, desirously, Individually.

As every good reveler knows, the party eventually ends.  At least until the next one can begin …  and in the morning after, who you find yourself with can be telling.

Twelve years later there is a house.  And there are children.  And there have been beautiful trips, small moments, shared love, pain and sorrow.  We have given what we have to each other, to our children, and yet, the skies have become Autumn skies …

Beautiful as winter sets in.

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