Month: February 2016

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Fog

For a random interlude …
You know, I love fog. It is my favorite weather phenomenon. Is that weird? It just seems utterly magical to me. Being in fog is like being in another dimension. It always seems to me like the literal veil between the worlds. 

Fog on a river is one of the many special subtypes of fog. These are some photos of the fog’s changing patterns over the Monongahela River valley near near where my mom and grandma live, in the tiny village of Isabella in southwestern Pennsylvania. It’s amazing to me that this wild foggy river is like three blocks from my grandma’s house. I used to lie in bed when I spent the night there as a kid, thinking about the river down there, out the window,   at the end of a long slope that spans several back and front yards. Then there’s a wide, muddy, uneven patch of brambles that discourages walking all the way to the actual water’s edge. It’s difficult to get through, but to me, so worth it, just to be down there, in that energy.

Being in the fog is like being in a temple. This is one of the sacred places in the area where I grew up, that is still my family home. 

 

The Divine Mother watches, at the bottom of the frame; fog hangs low in the river valley

 
 

The colors in the waves. The coal bin. The sunlight.

 
 

Through the kitchen window

 
 

The fog lifts and spreads across the hillside. This view is what we would call in SWPA, “down around.” 🙂

 

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Sacred Sciences

I’m like
Do you see how beautiful that is?
Yeah that, over there, that old
electrical tower, so tall,
so graceful, so simple,
a thin black outline
against the pink-orange sky.
Look at those angles,
how they keep their shape,
their straight lines,
even as the whole thing
maybe leans
a little to the south,
those triangles and trapezoids
still distribute physical forces,
still hold up wires
that connect
power source to power use,
origin
to purpose.

I’m like
Wow
That’s some hard stuff
you’re going through,
sister, brother. That’s some
down-deep hard trial, that’s
really gonna take you
into the shadow,
gonna test you, gonna take
all the grit you can muster,
man, I see that discouraged
look on your face and I
understand. That is a pile,
that is a wagonload of the smelly stuff
they’re heaping on you, oh yes,
I see it, I don’t think you’re
making it up, you got
a real challenge right here,
it’s gonna take exactly
as much
as you have
but no more, trust me,
no more.

I’m not like
everything’s fine.
I’m not like
force yourself
to see how this is actually good.
I’m not like
it’s all what you make it.
I mean, it is.
But that’s someone else’s
line, not mine.
Not always.
Prevailing taste?
I’m here to show
whatever’s outside.

I’m like
This life is hard
when you go heart-to-the-wall,
no overcoat into
the hurricane of egos
crashing into each other
like thunderclouds,
throwing electricity in moments of passion
and flooding all the earth with tears.
When the hail hits
your soft unprotected parts
that bruise will hurt like hell.
But you’re tough – you
can take it. There’s this
secret chamber,
a heart inside your heart
where the raw storm energy
collects – only if the door is open.
And one day
when there’s something
you need to do
and there’s a wall or an army
or the Devil himself in your way,
you’ll go to this reservoir,
you’ll cast down your dipper,
and up will rise in you
like liquid starlight
the power that comes
from living life, only.
Your courage in facing
whatever tried to hold you down
becomes brilliance,
becomes boldness,
becomes beauty.