Mom's Tree

Once again we've completed another circle of the sun and reached the point where the days gather light again propelling us forward into a new year. I had the opportunity to fly back to the northwest this year and visit with family and friends between the Thanksgiving and Christmas travel rush. What this meant is that while everyone else was rushing around preparing for a "big day" I was rushing around visiting with old friends and family trying grab at least a few hours of conversation in the real world and as many hugs as possible. It also meant that I time warped to a place where sunrise and sunset fell closer together a few hours skewed from what my body was used to at that point. So, when I returned the days already seemed longer even though they were still getting shorter and my internal clock wanted to stay up later into the dark. Being born during the longest night of the year a few decades ago has often been my excuse for being a true night owl. It also may be why I've always been a star gazer looking for things that light up in the dark. I thought I'd share a few photos of things that lit up in the dark for me this season as we celebrate the return of light.

Sunrise from Mom's next to Mt. Rainier

This time of year is also the point when I often find myself reflecting on the year that has passed and making wishes and plans for the year to come. Rather than ask Santa or Baby Jesus for toys, I found myself having real discussions with family about the tools needed to progress in the coming year.

Step-mom's Tree & Dad's Village

Sun break in Dad's yard

During the dark this year rather than seeking out malls, I found joy gathering with all my different "families" to share food and stories around the table.

Chanukah Dinner

I also found warmth around the fire sharing tunes with some of my musical "families." We even hooted with a real night owl in the woods gazing at the three wise guy stars in Orion's belt pointing to where the sun would return on the horizon a full minute earlier in the morning.

Solstice Bonfire

As the year turns, I now seek to build my own fire in my heart to fuel a new year of adventure and travel guided by love. I wish you & your kin peace and prosperity as well as a big bundle of joy in 2012. May it be brighter for us all.

Heart Prayer

In the past month I've juggled more jobs than ever to keep afloat and found more joyful surprises to cheer my soul. Ghosts of Halloweens past brought tears of sorrow and joy along with a glimpse of brighter tomorrows.

At the same time the Occupy Wall Street movement has swept the nation and continued to whisper ideas to change the world.

I've occupied a few hotels in towns recently touring with Poetry Alive! where I arrived a stranger and immediately found a community to share resources and make our stay more joyful. It's amazing how when we all share what we have, we all have what we need. It's easy to sit back, point the finger at someone else, and complain that life is unfair. However, when you honestly step forward and share your skills and talents there's really very little to complain about. As we enter the giving season please consider this and avoid wasting time at the malls and super box stores full of "cheap stuff." Consider what you have to offer your friends and family as gifts and when spending your hard earned dollars check out local handmade goods and services from local crafters, musicians, and merchants whose taxes pay for your local community services as well. Invest in your community and find ways for your local community to share it's bounty with nearby communities in need. Occupy your community this holiday season and watch it flourish.

On that note, there's some live jazz in front of me stealing my attention and calling me to participate in the real world once again. May you find such cozy company where ever you occupy.

I actually spent a lot of time talking to many new people this month and scrambled to spend conscious time with a few good friends when possible. I am thankful that I live in a household where three adults are able to share space respectfully and none of us seem to be going hungry in this economy. I am thankful to have a neighborhood that includes teachers, nurses, construction workers, mechanics, artists, musicians, and even a politician. There are no corporate moguls, bankers, or stock brokers that I'm aware of in the neighborhood. If there are, they don't talk to the rest of us. A year ago, when I moved into this house we had a small porch fire that our neighbors kept from being destructive by responding faster than any fire department could with extinguishers. My roommate fixed our neighbor's lawn mower when it broke. The neighborhood dog & kitten come hang on the porch when I'm playing music with my friends. We eat fresh organic produce grown in our own yards. The city councilman up the road has been organizing clean up crews through facebook showing the DOT that if they don't do their job and keep our sidewalks and roads clean we'll do the job for them. He is hands on and active in connecting with the community he represents.

However, once we send representatives to Raleigh and DC they start to become disconnected from the community they supposedly represent. It costs a lot of money to run for office these days and now the corporations with interests in patenting all the food Americans eat and selling them a lifetime of drugs to keep everyone "normal" have been granted unlimited spending to buy us some candidates and tell us to whom we should give our vote. The people paying for the ad campaigns care more about the dollars they can make selling people insurance that is mandatory by law (because they made sure everyone has to buy what they're selling). But, for all we pay them, they never cover the cost when a real crisis occurs because they don't care about people, they care about profit. I believe that if most people put the money they spend on insurance into a savings account they would have the money when it was needed and a strong community can help each other survive crisis.

Now these corporations are considered "people" by our government. They also control the media. They decide what "news" Americans will watch and for 13 days now have not even bothered to mention that there is a peaceful protest happening on Wall Street and spreading to other cities. Why? Because the people are protesting the corporations. Your television shows are brought to you by Monsanto, Pfizer, Geico, American Express and Capital One. Drug and insurance ads flash at you every five minutes between sound bites of "reality" shows where adults act like adolescents in front of the camera to win a cash prize. Our government bailed out Wall Street and the auto companies so they could spend more money selling you stuff that you don't need. The average American does not need to buy a new car every year, but they will do their best to convince you that what you have is not good enough. Turn your TV off now and start paying attention to the world where you actually live and work. Stop buying the lies that Time Warner and Disney wish to sell you for profit and spend your hard earned money in your own community.

I recently saw an exhibit by Connie Frisbee Houde at the Fine Arts Center of Kershaw County during a Poetry Alive! visit they funded for the local schools. One of the most striking images was flipping through her book The Forgotten: Images of Afghanistan & New Orleans and seeing on the left a image of emptied stone cave homes with nothing but a few pieces of beautiful wood furniture and on the right washed out piles of debris at a storage unit after Katrina. Americans have become so weighted down with collecting stuff that we sometimes fail to see what is truly of value.

Please get to know your neighbors before the winter sets in and prepare together. My grandparents didn't survive the dust bowl era in the mid-west because of any corporation or government help (They were true conservatives unlike today's Republicans). They worked with their neighbors to survive and helped each other weather the weather. The only way to stop the oppressors is to teach them how not to oppress. If American citizens get off their couches and start making their communities beautiful and joyful places to live, the media can't sell us an imaginary dream of something better. Vote with every dollar you spend for a better tomorrow instead of funding the status quo. We must be the change we seek.

I am from exploding mountains
& calm inter-coastal salt sea
From hidden driveways
& cedar trees

A garden box of love
Though the main geranium died
two others took root
& are better than one to have by my side

Autoslaloming home built race cars
Smokey bowling alleys & sunny amusement parks
Girl Scout camp, horse racing
dance, sing, dance, play

Rocky Mountain escapes
& choreographing lawn gymnastics
Collecting river rocks
to rattle in pockets like grandma's Yahtzee dice

I've heard "if you love some one set them free"
& we've never meant to be for each other
the miles stretch further
from one generation to another

I am from raging garage band grunge
& flapper jazz
Give me that back beat boogie
cause it's all rock & roll to me

I am from cool mountain air
& honeysuckle tickles my nose
while puppies & kitties tickle my toes
Ride my bike cause I don't own a car

I hear good old mountain music
teaching my ear to understand rather than fear
Though bluegrass wasn't ever my style
I've learned to appreciate it after a while

I've collected scars & bruises
& dirt under my nails
City girl in the country
Country girl in the city

I've been stargazing
ever since I was born
& seek out light
to help it shine bright.

I've spent a lot of time recently playing music with new people always searching for the synergy that allows for a truly balanced sound. I'm loud. I've met people who have beautiful sweet voices, but find myself holding back in order to balance and blend. I love the feeling when singing with someone who has enough vocal strength that we can open up and sing from the soul together.

I also find a magic in the moment when an audience opens up and sings out loud. "Play another campfire song that we can all sing along," as the woman said on a porch the other night. I've been building a random repertoire of such songs to play on the ukulele that speak to me, through me, and to others allowing us all to sing together. I know the music industry pressures us into believing we have to make and buy new music, but to me every live performance of a song is a new story. The more people who sing along, the bigger the story. Yesterday Andrew Fletcher and I shared some traditional jazz standards at LaurelHurst Retirement Community and it was fun to realize that not only did they recognize the songs, but often they were singing along. We all had smiles on our faces by the time we were done.

My mom never stopped me from singing, so apologies to those musicians who are annoyed when the audience begins to sing along, but I wasn't raised that way. How can we ever have harmony if we don't sing together?

From August 2000:

This is the story...

It begins somewhere & someplace else
writing itself out of time.
A boy and a girl,
like most stories have,
are the center of the tale.
But what is the magic in this particular combination?
A difference of opinion or the development of trust?

A lucky break under a lucky star,
with just enough difficulty for romance.
A meeting of strangers
mistaken about meeting before.
The blind meeting the blind
finally realizing they can see.
A heartbreak,
a rebound,
ten thousand songs whirling the night till dawn.

Chances are this never happened,
but that's what tales are made of,
a circumstance that could never be believed.
They say that truth is stranger than fiction.
So who can say?

He was going to kiss her,
but he left the chance untaken,
left her pouting to herself.
There are plenty of other things they could have done,
but this is what they chose.
An opportunity missed
or disaster side-stepped?

But that is not what the story is about.
This is a chance taken and a flame ignited
because that's what stories are made of...

She liked to be alone in public.
He liked to be in public alone.
Both were happy with their arrangement.
A butterfly's moment of conversation between notebooks & games.
One day she told him he was beautiful.
Without hesitation he replied that she was too.
That's how it started or ended or was about to begin.
He could play music that would make her dance.
She could write songs that would open his soul.
A tentative exchange begun balancing on the edge of a knife.
This left her alone in public not wanting to be alone.
He held a phone number in his hand that burned with a fire
he wasn't sure he wanted to play with.

And that's where the story ends
or begins again.

This year I started at Doo-Nanny in my little nook above the main stage until the typewriter was rained out while helping save Resistance Force and the other electronic equipment and instruments on stage from the storm. I gave away the few poems I managed to type before the storm without mass producing them for all on the interwebs. Some sayings are too powerful to simply drop them into the general pool of thought anyway.

I didn't have much time to be sad about the typewriter malfunction anyway since the Screaming Js joined me on the upper deck to dance the night away and sing the sun up instead. When I got the typewriter home, my roommate gave it some TLC and it's back in working order again, but it's a bit awkward to carry everywhere I go.

However, I found time last weekend to sneak in a poem the old fashioned way with pen and ink. In fact, I reminded myself that my favorite place to write really is sitting at the bar while conversation is bubbling and the band is setting up. This past Saturday I discovered that strange pocket of calm while the storm danced on the horizon right before it all began.

Here are the couple of "doo-dads" (as Dorothy Parker liked to call them) from the book so far this month:

Note to self

Many hands to lift you
Will you continue to soar
touching down so lightly
so as to barely make a sound?
There is nothing you can't do now,
but what will you choose?

Flow

Spinning circles
Dropping into now
Among many other nows
All the rapid fire river
Splashing over rough spots
Washing it all away.
What was it that snagged the movement?
Eddying stagnant pools
Eventually wash on past the sediment
Sentimentally left behind
Rushing on to merge as one
Until the heat of a star
Calls the individual molecules
Skyward.

I don't know many "normal" people very well. It seems they have little to say to me and rarely understand what I'm talking about anyway. I always attract the storied characters. Perhaps I just have that look that says, "Tell me your story because this inane gossip I've been listening to is boring me to tears." Take for instance the girl in the parking lot trying to find her boyfriend when I was dropping off a friend. Somehow she decided I was "safe" to tell her predicament to even though she'd never seen me before and probably would never see me again. Or even deeper, the boy in juvie who found the need to open up to me about the death of a friend while he was locked up. Even though I'm not emotionally attached to these people they instantly feel safe sharing what they haven't dared say to another person.

On the flip side, I find myself unable to begin to express what I think and feel about the recent experiences. My tour partner and I can talk about it to some extent, but as soon as we're done with the work he has a wife and friends from home who need his attention. Most people are too busy with their own agendas to care about the state of human existence. Many people fain interest in what the media shoves down our throats as "news," but most are too caught up in their little tread mills of existence to ponder doing anything about making the world around them a better place. Oddly, the one person who did show interest this week was a child. While waiting on his dad to finish the business of talking to fans he turned to me and started asking real questions that most adults make a false assumption of knowing the answers to already. I left him with more questions.

It was also pointed out to me in the past week that I'm "in the prime of your life and wasting yourself by keeping a travel schedule that prevents having a boyfriend." Granted this came from a group of guys who were travelling for work and playing the game of flirtation with me between sets. If it's normal that no matter how well I sing or play with the band the men will always focus on how I look and dance, then I'll gladly continue to steer clear of normal.

For eight years there was someone in my life that I could communicate with on an intimate level until we finally grew apart. Not all relationships last forever and before we damaged each other any further it became time to move on to the next phase of our lives. I must admit, I had held out hope that we would grow together and spend the rest of our lives travelling the world, but that wasn't meant to be and it's been eight months now since we've exchanged words.

A friend once gave me a laminated card with the quote "Longing itself is proof that what we long for exists." It's that longing that one day I will travel to explore the rest of this planet through music and poetry with an intimate companion that keeps me climbing up out of the dark hole of despair. Some days though, when I've had not a dollar to my name for weeks and the government decides to demand more taxes from my empty account, there's not much I can do but sit in silence to try to regain my focus.

My friend Deborah Edler Brown has a line in one of her poems about unzipping your skin to walk naked in the space between relationships. I must admit I'm a bit jaded and tired and have hid my vulnerability beneath false bravado and a big black leather coat this winter. Spring is coming though and soon I'll have to shed those layers to allow the sunlight to reach my skin.

I'm sure Muslims have done horrible things in the name of Allah the same way Pope Urban II in 1095 convinced Christians to wage a "holy war against the infidels" starting the crusades.

I believe through my life experience and the teachings I have read so far that God infuses all life and through the prophets Jesus, Muhammad, Bahá'u'lláh, the Buddha, and others sent his message of love to the various human cultures around the world. The political leaders who wrote down and translated the teachings of Jesus & Muhammad wanted to control population more than teach God's love. Greed and pride twist words into laws that have nothing to do with God.

I believe it is our individual duty to find our personal connection with God through the teachings we are given, but in order to be world citizens we must also learn to find the common ground between the different teachings. I don't believe we can truly love our neighbors until we stop negating their belief systems and start finding the common ground that brings us back to love.

So, none of us may be "right," but between us we can find a truth to agree upon that allows us to coexist peacefully.

As far as I can tell from research, Muhammad did not write or use the Koran to control people himself. Much like Jesus he shared the divine revelations he received by preaching "one god" to the common people. His followers wrote down the revelations much like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul did for Jesus.

Then, governments like the Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire used the texts of these prophets to control their population. Much like Judaism divides between Ashkenazi or Sephardi and Orthodox or Reform, Christianity has a split first between Orthodox and Roman Catholics and later between Protestant and Catholic. Islam, the youngest of these religions, already has a split in belief between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. These splits have more to do with government policy and fundamentalist extremism than what the prophet had to say about spirituality. (Read Hama Rules for a bit of journalism from Thomas L. Friedman about how our buddies the secular Syrian government dealt with fundamentalist Muslims in Hama in 1982 and the repercussions of that event.)

I reread a version of the Hopi Prophecy last night and was struck by this quote:

"It is only materialistic people who seek to make shelters. Those who are at peace in their hearts already are in the great shelter of life. There is no shelter for evil. Those who take no part in the making of world division by ideology are ready to resume life in another world, be they Black, White, Red, or Yellow race. They are all one, brothers."

When we are born into this world we have no control over what laws and spiritual teachings will guide us into maturity, but we do have a choice about whether we will battle our neighbor over which of us worships the "correct" way. No one wants to be told they were raised "wrong" but we have a chance of bridging cultural gaps if we continue to look for and share God's truths hiding in each of these texts that have been watered down with Man's greed & desire to control.

For a little further reading, if you're interested, here's a link to the basic teachings of a nineteenth century prophet who appeared in the middle east. Baha'u'llah is the first prophet to have written down his own revelations as well as lay out a democratic form of world government that does not include an elite or "divine" clergy, but puts the burden of spiritual and societal development on the believers themselves. He also has quite a bit to say about the oneness of religion validating the prophets who came before him and how each of them has appeared to aid in the evolution of mankind.

I'm curious to know your thoughts and wish peace to all.

Walk naked through the dark
Let go of doubt & fear
Step bravely into this moment
Trust that there will be
a hand to hold
food to eat
shelter from the storm
Waste no energy worrying whether what your hands create
is beautiful enough
strong enough
or will last long enough
Rather do and continue to do the best able
Welcome all to the feast at the table
Love

Before you go, here's another fledgling poem which emerged from the dark as the days finally gathered another few moments of light.

Healing a broken bird
Requires strong articulate gentle hands
That tell the story of a quick mind
Which can flip a clever trick
With a voice that whispers serenity
To light tired eyes
Relax the constricted larynx to song
Breathing new flight into wings longing to soar