Happy Holidays

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in this Tree of Life
each of us a twinkling light
for one another

Dear Reader,

From my heart to yours, thank you for reading my blog or wherever it is that you find these weekly ramblings of mine. I truly appreciate every comment, like, or follow because it makes me feel like my voice has meaning and value to others—even if it’s just one other person in our galaxy of spinning stars. It is connection and community. This inspires me to write. This inspires me to give, to share, to love, and to continue no matter how hard things can be at times. I hope I can be a twinkling light in your tree of life.
🎄😁😇

As this year comes to a close, I will be taking a winter break and going mostly offline to rest and reset, and will resume my weekly posts in the first week of January. I wish everyone wonderful winter holidays! Thanks again, and see you next year!

Yours truly,
Michiru Adrienne

sequel

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when we dance
the mountains sing inside us
and we bloom
a riot of wild flowers

When writing the above several years ago, I was inspired by a specific experience of dancing outdoors in the countryside with a view of the mountains in the distance. It was an attempt to put into a few words, the sensation and experiential totality of dancing that encompasses body, music and song, place, culture, and heritage. We do in fact, give birth to worlds through the dancing body.

Last night I was thinking about what to share for this week’s blog post, and this passage came to me as apropos sequel to last week’s, “shall we dance?” What happens when we do dance? Particularly, when we dance together? Maybe we do indeed bring new and gentle worlds into being… we bloom, like wild flowers, a beautiful riot all over the sacred mountains.

shall we dance

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An angel picked me off the floor
and whispered, 
softly into my ears:
Here is the flower of gratitude, my love, 
it is the most potent medicine
for healing
the body—with its particular heart and mind—
no matter how truly weary. 
Never mind fighting battles because
—there are no enemies—
healing is not a call to arms
healing is an embrace
with the light
with love
a dance beyond duality
into oneness 
where heaven is earth and earth is heaven

Opening my eyes
i saw 
this light
singing
And gave thanks
with love in my heart
and healing in my hands
I looked my angel in the eyes
and made a vow 
right then and right there
Arigato, Angel
i replied.
Shall we dance?

金継ぎ kintsugi

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       This heart 
       longing for you,
       breaks
       into a thousand pieces—
       I wouldn't lose one. 

       ~Izumi Shikibu (974-1034)

Recently, the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with a mixture of lacquer and powdered gold has become quite well known in the internetosphere. We can even buy inexpensive kintsugi-kits online, making what was once rarefied, readily accessible to anyone. Of course authentic Japanese kintsugi with the use of real lacquer and gold does remain quite a rarefied art, but the spirit of kintsugi can be applied broadly through the use of other materials. So when my cat’s bowl—which I bought at a small shop on Kawaramachi street in Kyoto—was broken, I was grateful to have instant access to inexpensive kintsugi-kits!

But why kintsugi? Why not throw away the broken? What is the merit of holding onto broken pieces when there are plenty of new and beautiful replacements? Why fuss with the inconvenience of sticky glue and uncontrollable gold powder, and waiting 24 hours for it all to dry? The well known answer is the aesthetic quality and value which emerges when the totality of loss, brokenness, and healing is embraced fully. An object, rather than defective, is seen to deepen in qualitative beauty. The fractured lines are not faulty nor hidden—they emerge as new elements of design and expressiveness.

Perhaps that is why Izumi Shikibu’s poetry written some one thousand years ago remains with us still. She treasures every single one of the one thousand pieces of her broken heart, conveying the depth of her love and longing. In a few lines, Shikibu invokes the timeless and transcendent spirit of kintsugi.

If we likewise treasure one another and our relationships, indeed, if we truly cherish our own hearts, we may find within ourselves the rarefied and priceless beauty of kintsugi. We may discover that in the end, we are the gold.

Matriarch

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four generations, and counting
they come and they go
but they always return, home
to this place of beauty

a door to the east opens with dawn
and she feeds all the hungry children
the cats and dogs, the sheep, cows, horses and chickens
and on the stove, boiling tea and fry bread
for the strays who visit
hungry for stories, ritual, medicine, and ceremony

she laughs easily and cries easily
sharing her heartful with tenderness and pain
the stories of the people
the land and the ancient ones
her memories strong in the bright arch of blue day

and into the quiet glow of dusk
all the busy sandpink footprints are swept
and the table cleared
while her shy, slightly awkward, and more or less vegetarian daughter
prepares salad, fried vegetables, and rice
her daughter
from that small floating island country far to the west
smiles softly for shimá

in the dark nighttime of dreams
and in the firelight of a winter ceremony
her daughter was called home
to heal and be healed, together
long centuries of a battered land
scarred and broken under the crushing weight of greed
and the submerged continent of the massacred

but she stands firmly
on the ground of her mothers
and her mothers' mothers
with offerings of pollen and song
a door to the east opens with dawn
and she feeds all the hungry children

who like me
return
again and time again
to shimá


In trying to write about the background and inspiration for the poem above, I found that it cannot really be done. It would be to contain the ocean in a tea cup, or to capture the sky in a butterfly net. There is no encyclopedic text which could adequately describe or explain the entirety of what shimá, a Navajo word translated as “my mother” means… and what shimá means to me. But I can tell you that I am eternally grateful to the woman who I am standing next to in the photo above, who is shimá. And although shimá “walked on” a couple years ago, she guides me still—in my heart and in all that I have become. It is for her and because of her, that I wrote Matriarch.

As I was struggling to write about Matriarch, however, another poetic passage emerged. Apropos, Matriarch birthed a new poem! I wonder how this one, like a little child, will still grow?

On this land, we walk the path of beauty. 
The sacred breathes through our bodies, and breathes throughout all that there is. 
We are beings of fire and coral sand, of summer rain storms and the unfurling green... 
we fly on the wings of song and through endless skies of blue light. 
We dance. 
We are diamonds in the night. 
And together with the land, we are hózhó. 
We are home.

wild

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                          the beautiful roses in my garden
                                                                                 will always be
                                                                                                                    wild .

When you stop and smell the roses, what do you hear?

edge

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          perhaps
          it is at the edge 
          of this world
          where
          in one another
          we find home
          and together 
          with the wild birds
          run free

公案 kōan

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dancing
i step into this
the stream of forever emerging
and of forever vanishing
what remains?

Kōan is a type of riddle or story used in Zen Buddhism designed to steer the practitioner out of and beyond the mind into direct realization. A famous example is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” So I submit for your pleasure, a poem-koan. 🤓🖤
There is no right or wrong answer… What is yours? Mine is, um, hiding in plain sight?

pockets

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hell in one pocket
and heaven in the other
the choice is all mine
i claim love and golden light
This here today is heaven!

(tanka 5-7-5-7-7)

A wise, old, loincloth-donning and cave-dwelling yogi in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, India once told a little girl a secret. “Heaven and hell” he explained, “are in my pockets!” Perhaps the eleven-year-old girl didn’t quite understand. I imagine she must have looked at him with a quizzical expression on her face. “Here!” he exclaimed. He had a very dynamic way of speaking and of being. Occasionally while walking on a hiking trail, he’d suddenly jump up in the air and yell, “Boom! Life is great!” and resume along the path light-footed and seemingly as light-hearted as can be.
Looking seriously at the little girl, her sister and her parents, Yogi continued. “Look, I want heaven? I take it out of my left pocket. I want hell? I take it out of my right pocket. I can have both! Anytime, I just take heaven or I just take hell out of my pockets!”

My eleven-year-old self did not understand Yogi’s story back then. But like a lucky charm or talisman in my pocket, it has given my life depth and texture—a sense of nuanced calm and komorebi*.
What do you carry in your pockets?

*komorebi: a Japanese word for sunlight shining through the trees; scattered or dappled sunlight; light filtering through the trees

surrender

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A little poem for autumn-lovers, and lovers of autumn leaves and love🍁🍂❤️ 

                                             
                                                      this dance on the horizons
                                                                                   of time
                                                                     of all beginnings and endings
                                                                                                is aflame
                                                     in crimson windblown waves
                                                                       and i 
                                                       i surrender  deep
                                    into the dark and soft soil
                                                                of 
                                                                                  love