Personification of Trust

Leaping over field fences, running along side babbling creeks in the sun speckled coolness of summer canopy under-story, this child nymph whistles and plays music in concert with her soul.  Lightly clad in loose cloth, she lives one foot in the aether, balancing firmly, yet tenderly rooted with the other on moss-drenched earthiness.  A leader, a piper, a cheerer, a lighthouse, a champion, a warrior, a sentinel, a star, Trust shines, attracts and comforts, boosts and nudges worn-torn travelers on their paths whose exhaustion and hunger dims ever-so-little—back to their brightness.

 Kat

14 November 2016

Love Changes Us

and when he left

and I held the balance

of living in my hands alone

in a box canyon

where the meadow met the forest

at the base of the mesa

miles from nowhere

where mountain lion screamed

elk bugling while

hawk soared

coyote howled in the llano

and the wind blew with certainty

in forests, on mountains

and in thick creek understory

I stood at night

beneath the starlit dome

and held onto the moon

for her constancy, until

I found my own

while all before me

shape-shifted and transformed

salt tears aligned me

with my truth, fearsome

courage held me fast

to face myself as ruthless

honesty and authenticity

arose like cream to the top of the milk

thick and rich

fattening my starved wild woman’s soul

this new journey as certain as I knew –

the moon waxes and wanes,

the stars hang in the heavens,

the seasons come and go.

Kat

27 February 2017

Storytelling and its Intimacies

Pondering the gift of storytelling and its meaning, like fine art and its visual capacity to move the viewer, stories pass from one person to another striking deep connections. 

I contemplated the intimacy in storytelling, grasping a depth well beyond my previous considerations.  Only to realize that storytelling, which had been as abundant and fluid as a well-fed stream from high mountain glaciers fed my young girl’s imagination spilling well into adult life and subsequently nourishing Crone-time with fertile flow.   Today it pushes at me to pull stories together to share verbally with others.

How else, I wonder, could entire cultures for thousands of years survive intact, where storytelling brought the people’s history forward through voice.   Entire culture’s survival thrived in ceremonial reverence, sharing stories in kivas, roundhouses, humble churches and grand cathedrals, circled around fire, and on sacred mountains.  People listening and holding their knowledge of their ancestors and therefore, themselves, silently, sacredly.  Bringing forward, in time, through storytelling for their people, their purpose, their relationship to themselves, to one another, to the earth, to the universe. Knowing that their greatness, and the universe’s greatness, was one.  One love, one breath. A story of harmony, unification and exaltation.

Storytelling honours humanness in ourselves and in the other.  There is an intimacy when the storyteller opens herself creatively, in the moment, in heart and thought, preparing an immediate communion of her journey with her listener.  And the listener, who receives with trust and openness–the deepest most feminine expression of vulnerability—one human to another. 

Cerebral as I am, I find this exchange equal in sacredness and beauty to physical sexual intimacy.  The sensual components of voice—timbre, cadence, intonations, breath, and the proximity to the teller, combined with the storytelling gifts of spinning tales opens connections in the brain, primal and instinctual. 

Whether sung or spoken, the intimacy of human voice initiates relationship. And when revered, unfolds with a unstoppable majesty.  Respect between people builds trust and intimacy.  Trust and intimacy binds.  Building stronger unions, stronger bridges, stronger individuals who, when individuated, come together with greater brightness to bring greater light into the universe. 

I fell in love with a storyteller once whose stories he told in great repetition.  Being a person abhorring repetition, I found myself in awe that his stories could grace me over and over with equal pleasure, time and again.  He knew intimately, that repetition was the key to stories being remembered.  And the gift of a storyteller is his stories and their value.  There is a charisma to a storyteller who holds his listener in close proximity.   I felt as if I was the only person on the face of the earth in his presence.  That magnetism he shared with the world— the gift he brought as a storyteller.

Storytellers own the whole world in their minds, weaving tales of beauty and love, terror and history, birth and death, love and hate—the dualities, myths, teachings, and above all, the truths we must learn one day or another. 

We are all storytellers when we look into another’s eyes, into their soul, and share our stories.  How deeply we delve is determined by our courage to live freely, and our love of life and relationship.  Our paths as unique as snowflakes—accessing truths and stories through our personal perspectives and sharing with those whose receptivity and intimacies reaches out to meet ours.

Kat

20 February 2017

Cellular Destabilization

Hello Fellow writers,

The sun shines warmly today. My bones feel the heat and my heart is beating more closely towards the light—stronger against the wall of flesh and skeletal frame holding it contained. A winter of cold grey wet darkness slowly, albeit very slowly, is shifting and my entire being hungrily tracks the sunshine and warmth. 

Our human body and the environment must track each other continually or life  would long ago have become extinct, said Richard Lewontin, American biologist, evolutionary geneticist. I know this inside on a core level and understand how sensitive I am to all incoming data--electronic, environmental, emotional,  physical and spiritual--minute shifts in light, warmth, and sound—all these energies. "Because anything that touches it might destabilize it," says herbalist, author, poet, Stephen Buhner.

This deep sort of communication—words, phrasing, posture, and physical  relationship to the environment and oneself all matter and impact our internal dialogue on a cellular level. Which ultimately determines what we create and how we generate a  response outwardly to the world. 

Let the sun shine, the skies open to their blueness, and the warmth penetrate  into our souls.  May your inspirations for creating beauty and richness, word-by-word, be forever happening for you on this sunny blue-sky day.  And just in time for the Fisher Poet Gathering 2017 in Astoria this Friday Saturday and Sunday.

be well and inspired
Kat
23 February 2017