Part 3 in my process of alphabetizing my Fall 2024 journal. This is November, and in this month I wrote a little about the birth of Erik and Andraya’s daughter Althea Marie.
November 2024
A color. A flower. AI can do this too, but it won’t make me blaze. A is for Aquarius, which means a lot of different things to people, but to me it means my mother Valerie. A is for astrology. All the way to death, our shared soul when we become the ancestors. All the way to you. All the ways the web reaches to catch the pieces.
Also I want to write with this pen in a copy of Grimoire Girl and then send it to MacKenzie. Althea Marie. Although the list of people I’ve had sexual connection with includes women. A moment sung like this. And babies do it better. And right after the conversation, Skip on the photo screen. And you honored they who fed you when your working day was done.
Archetypal astrology at California Institute of Integral Studies. A plant growing where you don’t want it to grow. Art. Art and song, we belong to the waters of our birth. Art is always a collaboration. Art is a passion. Art is a pleasure. Art is a presence. Art is not a performance. Art is not a product.
A song, one song, out of all the dozens and hundreds and thousands of songs sung right now, the unknown number of songs, a secret music keeps to itself.
Avocado buttons by Erik. Awareness practice: grounding, seasonal, cyclical.
Beach moment. Be here now. Being Mortal. Being obsessed with self (in movement spaces). B is for belonging. Beyond my breaking, there’s something new emerging, something rising, something wanting to be born. Birth is a scary transformation mystery. Book of Hours.
“Calliope wailed like a seaside zoo,” is from “Cosmic Charlie.” Can we sit together with our pain and grief? Centering praise. Chain of lifetimes, reaching back into the place where we took our rest on the shoreline. Change. Chaya and Jerry broke up. Chicken rice soup. Chip and baby Jasper, 1989. Chip and Tracy. Cleaned out bathtub including drain. Clearing the clearing the clearing. Community organizing in west. Connections archive. Cosmic autobiography. Cosmic Education.
Dana. Dave’s lightbulb metaphor for Sue. Dependent co-arising. Did I hear it on the mountain, or in urban white noise? Do you hear the violence of that?
Elegy. Earth, before I was named, I belonged to you.[1] Eastern spiritual Buddhist teachings.
Family photos. First four lines. First hedge confetti of 2024. Follow Hafez. Follow Rilke. Follow the bud. Funny how that can also mean the memories. Fun times this morning with Sticks & Stones Press.
Go tell it on the mountain. Go tell it on the shoreline, over the dunes to the edge of sea. Grace Hall. Gratitude, grace, blessing, magic, help. Groomed Sadie.
Happy birthday, Albert Reda. Haunted Houses. Healing. He can build it. Her self-respect for her appetite for showing up for the world. History is learning about our lives 10,000 years ago—but your body knows this as a fact.
I am a chain. I believe in all. I called Sticks & Stones Press our quiet calliope. I can’t tell you my secrets, but I can poem them. I do it for the blaze in my body.
I feel a wee bit sabotaged to come back with intent to write, to discover that the tv is still on, though muted. If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine.[2] I keep dreaming my journal is full. I know I sometimes felt shame, when the grass got tall and the gone-to-seed dandelions fluffed the neighbors’ more pristine lawns. I know it’s time to reread The Golden Notebook and learn “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Inking myself into music again. Insta chat with Dana. In the face of uncertainty, I am a commitment to my body. In the solace of our beloved’s face. I open my life to widening circles. It relies on my surrender to the collective power. It’s okay to observe small and let the big go for a while.
Jas, Carly, MacKenzie, 1998 or so. Jo and Noah do Halloween with us. Joanna Macy’s translation. Joanna was 79 when she and Lydia met. Just him, on a weeknight, a grandmother casting a spell calling Carly Amber and MacKenzie Marie in her daughter’s waiting womb. Just Milo.
Keep sweeping.
Leaf walk with Virginia, Dave and Milo. Letter to Laura. Let the calliope play. Louisa Calliope. Loving.
Mack and Carly. Maybe Quiet Calliope is the name of the poetry anthology. Mimi gave Chip an amber ale, the first dinner at Sharon and Carl’s. M is for mushrooms. My friends. My kin. My love. My quiet calliope.
Names, songs, photo streams, astrology, poetry. Nana Rising. Nanorimo. Neighborhood Color. Nick and Virginia. No matter what happens, I am a commitment to Dave, Milo, Virginia, Jo.
No matter what, that’s holy truth. No private salvation. Nothing tracks my writing, only my phone, which is also Insta, camera, audiobook, Chani.
November 1. November 2. November 3. November 4. November 5. November 11th. November 16th. November 24th.
Now.
Oak and berry confetti for Paula. Ocean me down clean. One hour leaf walk. On the corner of the collaboratory table. Open journal hours. Our little Joey, 1999.
Penny and grandchildren both came up in the same Facebook post today on a gardening group. People I am learning from / with about being in movement spaces. Piano played against the wave of my pen. Picking beans the day after the election. Poetry is the paint of our language. Presence.
Rain. Rain or shine. Real becomes complete. Rearranged living room chair, Milo’s chair by bookshelf, put shelf on desk…Reiki for the heart. Repressed feminine power. Resistance to the earth working with us, working through us. Rewilding is, in part, a journey into one’s own indigeneity. Rilke’s Book of Hours.
Sadie. Sand and sages, quilts and pages, all are made by earth. School for the Great Turning. Seasons. She never gave any of the previous beaus a beer. She who reconciles. Something is making me marry myself to the movement right now.[3] Snuggling in our drafty old house. So much good color and music and release and language and kin this weekend. Song chain letter. Soul sister. Spilled seed, sometimes, but always sacred. Such pearly potential in Nana Beanstalk’s garden. Sunshine. Sue.
Talking to Paula. Teardrop each, raindrop all. Thank god it doesn’t rely on my personal power. That day, no if. That’s not how I approach anything else in my life.
The ancestors, poetry, music. The appetite for learning. The cognitive fire. The hour is striking. The last time I talked to MacKenzie, we discussed the 10th house. The guys. The list of people I’ve fucked. The making that keeps happening. The men, really. The narcissism of self-doubt. The portals. There are things you can replace and others you cannot.[4] The simplicity of together. The song you are singing together. The sunflowers. The time has come to weigh those things.[5] The way the more-than-human world organizes life. The windows. The years. The years between portals. They glowed. This little light of mine. This space is getting hot.[6]
To be eradicated. To be exterminated. To be sprayed with Round-Up, poisoning all in proximity. Trauma Doll.
Trust rain to tell us when it’s time to come in, time to go out. Trust the flow of ink and tears and time. Trust the in-laws. Trust the poetry that breathes between the lines of our stories. Twining with the Mingles. Two bowls by 11:39 but not high on the call.
Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space…[7]
Under the neighbor’s tree.
Wait a minute Mr. Postman. We are always moving through this together, might as well acknowledge that. We are made in god’s image means that we are holy now. We grew butternut squash and there’s no going back. We need each other. We are pollen proof, all of us fathered. We will get by.[8]
What is a stick? What is a weed? When fireside and river’s edge were part of every son. When I first gardened as an adult, weeds in the yard—the clover, the dreaded, villainized dandelion, the bluebells and wood hyacinths—were often scorned, and the people who let them persist—because they were pretty, because they didn’t have time, because they didn’t care—were sometimes shamed. When we return to bone, to ash. Who are you talking to?
Your own co-op. Your relationship with Joanna and Joanna’s legacy is a huge part of why I am here, Lydia. You take the oak leaves, I’ll take the beans.
[1] Rilke
[2] Ripple.
[3] Lydia Violet
[4] Grateful Dead, Althea
[5] Grateful Dead, Althea
[6] Grateful Dead, Althea
[7] Joanna Macy’s translation of Rilke.
[8] Grateful Dead, Touch of Grey
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