New Mexico March 2019

Update

 

Back four months now, and one month living in  the PNW, December-January.  And a full moon.

What has clicked for me?  That I love living here more than I had imagined I would. That the beauty of the landscape is a joy to me every day.  The view from my writing desk, inspirational. That the isolation is only in one’s mind.  That loneliness is surmountable.  That home is in the heart.  

When I first returned, I took on a very physically challenging remodel, lifting and installing 2 x 8 x 12 rough sawn pine floor joists (that I bought from a local mile and hauled home, unloaded, stickered and stacked) as i readied to install the finish wood flooring..  I injured my back, pulled two ribs.  I had not worked into my physical body’s strength for the work.  I spent the next three months, nightly, sleeping in a hot water bathtub most of the night to ease the pain and catch some badly needed sleep.  I had developed plantar fasciitis in August and only upon returning in January was I able to finally begin running daily again.  My entire physical balance of strength, endurance, ease and integration of muscles needed realignment. It has taken until just a few weeks ago to begin to feel at home in my body again.  Working cutting wood, stacking rock, trimming orchards, hauling debris, walking inordinate distances on uneven land, etc. requires  well honed body fitness, I find.  

While I once was able to do this when I lived here prior, my last five years in an urban lifestyle that while I biked everywhere, walked and ran on the beach daily,  along with a dedicated daily yoga practice, working here, on the land, rurally,  requires a different sort of body muscle alignment and oneness with the work.  It has taken me much longer to find that than I would have realized.  However, I feel strong and healed today.  Some residual lower back issues, but I no longer rely upon a bathtub in the middle of the night.

I suppose I wondered if I could manage living so remotely and find a way to thrive.  And I have and I do.  And that is a joy.  I have found that whatever I set my sights at, I can achieve.  Which has been true all my life.  It is about realizing about intent, is it not?  As you pointed out.  And of course, I have always been aligned there.  What this opportunity allows me is to create my ideal life and live it.

As I sit typing, the wind is blowing up a snow storm.  My window to the outdoors reminds me of a large movie screen and my own personal viewing.  Nothing gets much better that what I set my eyes upon.  Nature holds me in its grip.  Stunning beauty.  And her force….well, nothing comparable.  I found that while living at the ocean and observing the Mother, daily.  Here the wind and rain storms,  and soon thunder and lightning will be thrilling me to no end.  Those 3,000 watt blips in the meadow and that roll over the heavens… my cup of tea.  smile

Of course in writing all of this, I spent enough time facing my fears of loneliness and fear not being able to thrive..  I have learned to become an observer of myself, and to stand solidly in the face of my challenges.  Being a Capricorn water dragon, I have a fair share of courage to bring to this experience.  And in that mix is a confidence that befuddles even my closest friends.  Yet comes in stride along with breath.  

With each challenge, I have figured out a solution, whether it was financial, around hauling tree limbs, fixing broken plumbing, finishing electrical—I find that with enough stillness and observation, an answer arrives.  And along with each answer, a bit more self empowerment and love of the sheer capacity within.

I melt into meditation every morning, awakening an hour later with the clarity and gratitude that refreshes me and upon which I begin my day.  

Kat

22 March 2019

Electricity is Out

The electricity is out today.  It is no more quiet than when it is on.  The mark of living so remotely. As I write this, I know folks are driving to Long Beach to convene to make music.  I note the community of musicians, fondly.  My mind gathers together all the experiences of my musician friends that I have met and shared music with over the past three years when living in Oregon at the ocean.  My heart swells as a sponge in water after being in a dry dish for too long just thinking about all the melodies that will rise up today from the passionate music-making in the gathering.

The landscape outside my window this morning moves toward me from black and white skies and distant snow covered conifers to yellow field grasses tipped in white across rock walls to red caliche exposed soils.  As if Technicolor had a distance to span before reaching my retina.  

The snow comes strongly and dotting my vision outside my window.  Then the sun begins to brighten the landscape.  Now my leaking gutters drip down in front of my window, showing me the nearing of the end of the snowstorm and the warming temperatures. That elongated dripping that slows to broken droplets to slower drips until none.  But until then, it is still dropping minute snowflakes sideways in a light breeze and the landscape continues to fill be with awe.  A view I will not tire of for my existence.

  

I am reading a book right now “Easy to Remember: the Great American Songwriters and Their Songs” by William Zinsser.   Nancy gave it to me for my birthday this year and I am glued to its pages.  Even I am finding my way to understanding the structure of song-writing without intending to do so.  I do love understanding the parts and pieces and how they all connect together in this glorious fabric of music that I am blessed to participate in these days.  

I have been asked about my plans for the future.  I have none right now.  My sense is that by May, when my six month sojourn in NM comes to an end, that I will still be here.  To have my own land, my own home, a well with clean water, gardens and greenhouses, fields and forests, chicken coop and beehives, open space and mountains….clean air and lots of room to be peaceful.  How can I leave such a place, when my heart and soul tie closely to all these gifts?  I must have been in crisis mode when I left five years ago.  And most certainly I was.  And to have come back full circle, I was obviously fed deeply by loving friends in my music and writing circles, to even entertain such a solitary existence I live today.  

I have come to accept that what is least considered possible, can become reality.  And that with an open heart and gratitude for each and every day, life unfolds and can be just as miraculously delightful as what I dream possible.  I know that I will sing and play with all my Pacific Northwest musician friends again.  Just have no inkling of when that might be.

Sending love and joy from my box canyon to my friends in the Pacific Northwest wetland.

Kat
13 March 2019

Reflections

It is a melancholic posture of the heart to know such diversity in climate, loving the extremes that draw and nourish. It is also an exciting awareness to live and appreciate these worlds so distinctly unique in their contrasts.

I am grateful to have experienced them fully.  And to delight in them deeply.  Those wild winter ocean gales and sideways rain. Already I anticipate the desert thunder and lightening that light up the llano as brightly for a second, as a 1,000 watt bulb.  And in awe, daily, in the vastness of the sky and its broad banks of cumulus clouds hanging eastward catching sunset washes, in pinks and blues.

To be alive is truly to witness, is it not?  What and how describes our uniqueness, as people.  And defines who we are through our reflections back into the world.  Not unlike that bank of clouds in the eastern sky, catching the colours of the fading sunlight.

 Kat

2 February 2019

This is Where I am Located

I am in northeastern New Mexico.  An hour east from Las Vegas, New Mexico.  An hour and a half south from Taos.  Two hours northeast from Santa Fe and three hours north of Albuquerque.  I am located in a box canyon outside of a hamlet called Ocate.  In a county of 1,944 square miles with a population of 5,200 people.  I have no sense of the number of mountain lion, bob cat, bear, badgers, racoon, porcupine, deer, and elk, let alone cattle or sheep.  But I do know that there still is wildlife, predators and prey, a mix out of balance, but lives that run freely and live off the land.

 The box canyon is called Los Hueros (the blonds, named after the Castilians).  It is about as remote as one can get in the United States, is my sense.  Rimmed by the Sangre de Cristo mountains and blessed with big sunrises washing the sandstone mesa, its sunsets tinge banks of white cumulous clouds in the east, sending god songs across its vastness. Blueness, true as Technicolor, lifts my eyes upwardly in awe of the colour-wash doming this canyon. 

When I returned for a short trip in October. I knew that I must return to live once again.   I am clearly a mountain woman seeking solitude, clear air, water, good soil, and a way-of-life that feeds my soul with nature’s bounty, pristine and intact.

I bought chickens as soon as I arrived, planted my subterranean greenhouse, which now provides my winter greens. 

It is here that I will write my books, feed my soul, and calm my inner fire.  It is a good place for humans to align in oneness with the universe.  Nature heals and can unite our disparate parts together into wholeness.  I have experienced that in the past and am relying upon it now. 

I awaken daily, with joy.  Fall asleep with gratitude, nightly.  A good prescription for this woman.   

This is where I am located.

Kat
25 January 2019

Ponderings on What Make a Community

In a whirlwind of time, my life has turned colour.  The shift of seasons from summer to fall caught me up in its kaleidoscope of inevitable change. And tripped me, tumbled me, as the winds tumble leaves and ocean waves loosen their rocks upon the shoreline, easing rough edges smooth or smoother.

Asked to ponder when and how does a gathering of people become a group, when and how does the group morph into a team or band, and when and at what point does it become a community, the answers slowly developed over a moon's cycle. To reveal the obvious through an achingly somatic experience that this cyclical process embodies a sacredness not only for myself, but for each and every person within the gathering who has become part of the group and in time, the community.

These questions, posed to me once I left my Seaside and Astoria communities and traveled northward this September to begin a new life, held me riveted day in, day out. Sensing that I could not rest until I understood the deeper meaning within this riddled set of ponderings, I came to realize that I was a part of the grand evolution bestowed upon those who come together into a group to share their passions, and ultimately morph into a community. And that I was mourning leaving behind community, connection, respect, nourishment and love for and from the people in my groups. I had no idea that leaving would would throw me into a depression.  Nor that my leaving would impact others.

To be the wayward wind, identifying with a disconnected alone sense no longer defined who I was. While I had not considered myself a group person, over time I found my writing group,  my music groups and other groups nourishing me, holding me connected, feeding my deepest passions.  Stories unexamined for too long, held in the subconscious, unexposed to the light of consciousness, can imprison us, keeping our pathologies alive rather than freeing us to live with an ease to explore maintaining continuity and connection to self and others.

 

Jill Liedloff in in her book “The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost,” writes about our need for continuity.  Comparing a stone age culture’s intact social structure and the impact upon the children, and ultimately the ease among the village, she shows us the suffering tribal members experience who leave their village to live elsewhere--their loss of connection, acceptance for whom they are, their place in the tribe and their importance as a tribal member. Ultimately, the impact upon their psyche.

True to her studies and postulating, leaving everyone and everything jolted me deeply.  There was little solace for my sadness.  The light that shone, went dim.  I withered along with the autumn leaves.  My voice grew still.  Briny tears fell in rivulets down to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, to the shoreline, commingled and became one with this tributary, taking sorrow out to the Mother herself. On down the coastal currents, into the waters across the estuaries making their way to the mouth of the Columbia, crossing the state line into Oregon, and to the shores of Astoria, and further down the coastline to Seaside and beyond.

It was through these tears and sadness that I understood the pondering riddle.  We morph from one shaggy individualistic bunch into a diversely connected passionate group and community when respect for one another, appreciation for our individual gifts and personalities, participation through our commitment to show up,  responsibility to share our creative process, and acceptance and honouring of others is maintained at the highest calibre.  The icing on the cake so-to-speak is the learning and teaching exchanged in the process.

The continuity of a group and ultimately a community is as dependable as the moon in her cycles, the tide in the oceans, the seasonal shifts from one year to the next—binding us together in a metaphorical sense of home and nourishment for the soul. Always evolving, shifting, as everything alive has a pulse, ultimately commingling into a richer gathering of people with each passing moment. As if nature’s commitment to show up, be present,  is guiding us in our own values, understanding that we, too, commit to the greater group and through that, thrive in our interconnectedness to self and others.

Kat 

12 October 2018

Ric's Poetry Mic

Hello fellow poets, inspired wordsmiths,

August nuzzles in closely to July’s foggy afternoons and evenings, well before summer has danced fully upon our ocean shores.

The relief from searing summer inland heat contrasts splendidly with sharp cool haze along the coastal band of salty brine-soaked air.  Plump ripening tomatoes, bulbous blood red beets with tops upright and glistening and bliss-sweet tasting carrots tell us that a season is maturing, waning, and that time passes in its perfect unfolding.  Sunflowers face towards the light unmistakably when the sun shines.  And when the fog holds it at bay, they stand still, waiting.

My bicycle’s chain and thinly plated metal parts rust beneath the grayed veil making what once was new and shiny, discoloured, textured with pits dislodging slivers of decaying metal.  Sheets dry slowly on the line in the misted foggy daytime-- the heavy cotton flannel that never made it to the cabinet to be replaced by smooth high thread count Egyptian cotton for those anticipated sweaty hot summer nights.

The seasons pass marked by wildlife birth and growth, garden plant's maturation and ultimate harvest.  Our need for sunshine and barefoot experiences on sandy beaches.  Everyone is changed in the presence of the seasons at the ocean. Her majesty winds into our pores, our nostrils, changing our physical composition. Our minds shift, our mitochondria register the messages she brings on a cellular level.  And those ripening scents of lavender blossom, honey-laden hives, maturing honeysuckle and browned tipped field grasses mix into her briny caldron casting spells upon us all.

To some, it registers joy. To others, sadness. And every possible variation between these extremes. The stories, brought to one another, determined by what we know, what we choose to see, feel and believe. The impact of a force great and encompassing as the ocean herself, promises transformation. This is the water's edge after all, and we precariously walk along her bounty with all her gifts before us.  Nestled in the continuum of the seasonal unfolding.

Kat
26 July 2018
Mercury retrograde

Ric's Poetry Mic

Hello fellow writers, inspired wordsmiths,

Tardiness is a curious word.  Brushing closely up against delinquency, which bears a heavy-handed connotation.  Both share a similar place at the table for the writer who dines on words from a wordsmith's perspective. Although the former, an adjective and the latter, a noun, they describe my behaviour of having missed my usual obligation of getting the timely call out to all of you regarding our upcoming writer's "Ric Poetry Mic."   I am trusting that regarding the delay, you will be able to attend even at this short notice, and accept that I have equally good reasons to have skipped a beat, as my heart is doing just that these past few months.  Falling in love can have profound impacts upon one's heart and responsibilities.  Sigh.  Smile.

The quality of writing, the camaraderie, the sheer magic of our gatherings with full-packed quarters at the enchanting setting Winecraft offers us perched on the old wooden pier outlooking the glory of the Columbia river add up to an experience, rich and satisfying.  While our gaze is fixed upon one another and the poet at the mic, I must admit, I peak a glance behind me now and again marvelling at the beauty of this provocative landscape.  Often the ocean-going barges overlap in a stream of backlit sunlight.  Creating an expansive image well beyond their normal massiveness.  Roll on Columbia.

I want to take this moment to thank fellow poet, Florence Sage, for making this venue possible. Not only is this location beautiful, but in my experience, it is in large part the reason the calibre of our presentations each month have risen exponentially.  There is beauty in poetry.  There is beauty that supports poetry.  The landscape around us can nourish the delivery and the substance of what is created.  Context matters, and the place we meet to share our stories and poems adds a supportive foundation to the words we creatively weave together.

With the forth of July soon upon us, we are about to begin summer with a blast again.  It is my pleasure to know that we will be gathering to read our writings to soften the world with our creative juices.  Let us again bring forward all we can muster in the delight knowing that words matter.

Come join us and share your creations at our 23rd "Ric's Poetry Mic".


Kat
26 June 2018