rolling stone

.Reading time 1 minute.

*photo credit: Kanenori on Pixabay
(I slightly altered photo color and light.)

i am
a rolling stone
mossy
messy
and
deep emerald green

Have you ever tried writing the story of your life in six to ten words? I tried this recently with some of my students, and came up with the following:
a rolling stone, mossy, messy, deep emerald green
After reflecting on it for a bit, I was pleasantly surprised by how much of me unpacked within just eight words! What story do you read in these words? To me they describe a character who is a little unconventional, even a bit rebellious at times, possibly hard-headed and stubborn, but on the other hand original and unique. She has a deep love and reverence for nature. Like a rolling stone, she is adventurous and has lived in many different places—not however, resulting in loss but in an ever deepening and enriching, moss-gathering journey through life. The journey is sometimes messy and most certainly not without many a mishap, but it is also all together magical, enchanting, and beautiful.

What is your life story in ten words?

ground

.Reading time 1 minute.

i want to break open
my heart
at dawn, and
at dusk
with the flight of a thousand birds
rising
wind streaming over my body—skin bare, like bones,
i feel the shadows trailing wingtips
of ravens
and their silent caress across the bleached stones below

i want to dissolve
the day
into these rushing waves as they run
up onto this sandy shore
kissing my toes and
pulling earth from underneath my feet
i fall into their sea
sinking and drowning
all the heaviness of my heart

and in the glimmering darkness of night
i want to dance
here in the secret garden of wild roses
together
with my love
with sweetness and with honey, and with
a belly full of dreams
i want to plant each one in this soil
in this soft sacred ground
growing worlds

of beauty

Seréin

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

here
and
now
sailing this river
with you
silence is serene
like
the warm sun traveling over my skin
like silk
and the darkness is sanctuary
is peace
is free from every day cataclysm
from the deluge of chaos and turmoil
here
with you
this river is wide and deep and gold
and sailing underneath a canopy of sparkling stars
i find myself
home
in your enveloping arms
home
in your everywhere love

now
the sun is rising
in your eyes

sacré

.Reading time 1 minute.

i want to worship here
in this temple
of the body
where love is the altar
and where dance is the prayer

All life is sacred. Every-body is an embodiment of the divine. We are how the divine knows itself. We are divinity realizing itself. And what is “the divine”? What is the “divinity” of which we speak? Why, it is love—nothing less and nothing more.

Maybe this is it… This is the awakening… to know this not as conjecture, conviction, philosophy or belief… but to experience this as reality—the same way in which we experience the rain, sunshine, wind and soil. The same way in which we know who we are and in which we know our own names.

So… let us dance, you & i, together.

a cup of coffee

.Reading time 1 minute.

steaming bright and bold
i am black bitter coffee
with the sun, rising

In this crazy world of ours… I want to be peace and to be love—and a little bit of whimsy. Anything else simply hurts too much. Aren’t we all beyond tired of the violence by now? Exhausted, really. We’ve seen world wars traumatize generations and we’ve watched empires rise and fall like storm systems shifting across the globe.
Where does it all come from? I do not understand its fuel nor this pathology of self-destruction. I am not sold on a superficial history defined by battles between so-called heroes and villains, saviors and sinners, the haves and the have-nots, and the blessed and the damned. All life is sacred. We are all worthy and beautiful.

I sit in the morning. Groggy, with recalled terrors from yesterday’s news—these persistent, ongoing nightmares of abductions, starvation, theft, genocide… and the suffering of children. Mania of distorted powers. And i try to just breathe and sip my hot, black coffee. We are steaming. With the sun, we rise again for a new day.

an invitation

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

somewhere
there is an ocean of beyond
an ocean beyond good & bad
beyond light & dark and love & hate
and black & white
beyond, there is an ocean of rising and falling
breathing
in and out
an inhale and an exhale threaded, soft, and
connected
together
inseparable actually, and
one

this ocean of beyond is beautiful—wide and deep and infinite
will you meet me there?

Whoever you are and wherever you are, I hope that your path and your days are grounded in peace. I hope you find in the outer world around you, beauty that brings solace to your heart… and in your heart, an inexhaustible wellspring of joy.

Six Suns

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

walking along the seashore
i heard my dragon
breathing
wave after wave after endless wave
of love
timeless and boundless
infinite
like every sun in the dancing blue
dazzling its light
and there too i saw him
in a threaded flight of swans
homebound, and, one thousand strong
singing all his ballads
to me
and just waiting for my soul to fly
together
hand in hand with his
all throughout this numinous sky

flow

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

like water
i want to know all life
to seep into the soil and soften stones
and under even scorching suns
rise
into a sky where
i billow
buoyant all throughout the light blue

and like water
i will fall, steadfast, and
surrendered to gravity
give in to fate
to this unknown yet inevitable destiny

streaming and rushing
i will run, i will run like the water
to my sea
to my beautiful dragon
calling me
calling me to come home



The Flower of Forever Love 🌸

.Reading time 1 minute.

in this garden where
you and i meet
one mysterious flower grows
quietly, and unseen in bright broad daylight
more fragrant and far sweeter, more velvet than
all these colorful
flowers
pink and yellow
that come and go with a cyclical sun

this flower is a rarity
it is the sun’s flower, and it is called—
The Flower of Forever Love
it blossoms
in this garden where
storm clouds dance and calm seas steep
the light, where
rain, busy in the skies, forgets to fall and
fires sometimes fail to spark…..

this one mysteriously flowering forever love
grows
in this garden where
rainbows are red, and
white roses scatter upon the beach
while dolphins swim along my shore side strolls
even hawks gift their feathers to me
and hearts write themselves into a vivid blue sky…..
all because, and, just because
here in this garden
you are together with me

…p.s.
it is said that
the sun, the moon, Saturn, and every single star aligns
whenever and wherever
The Flower of Forever Love
blossoms
Have you ever seen the flower of forever love?

SakuLA

.Reading time 3 minutes.

transplanted in LA
i discover delicate sakura and tall palm trees
blossoming together

It is now sakura season in Kyoto, Japan. And unexpectedly, to me, sakura are blossoming at the same time here, far away across the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles, where the tall palm trees are emblematic. Am I right to say that sakura will be the last thing to come to mind when thinking of LA? This city conjures three things: Hollywood, beaches, and palm tree lined boulevards. But quietly, sakura are here too, pink and light in this sprawling City of Angels.

When writing Japanese words in romaji, the Roman alphabet, we use the letter R to spell words that include the syllables: ra-ri-ru-re-ro (らりるれろ). For example, cherry blossom or sakura. But the sound is not a straight R-sound, like rah, ree, roo, reh, roe. It’s closer to something of an LR-sound, like lrah, lree, lroo, lreh, lroe… So it would be better to write sakulra, but then it would be mispronounced as sa-kul-ra. So maybe it is actually better to write sakula, and specifically for cherry blossoms in LA, sakuLA! Saku means to blossom. So sakula or sakuLA could have a double meaning: LA cherry blossom, or blossom LA—a unique variety of sakura only to be found in LA!

We are transplanted… in flowers, as peoples and languages, as ever changing and creative expressions of culture brought together by chance or by fate. Perhaps by love. It is something beautiful in the soil and it is something beautiful in the sky. SakuLA and palm trees blossoming together. Holding hands, we dance in the wind, pink and light.

Below is a flower-photo montage created by my phone, magically just on the day I started writing on the theme of being transplanted in LA and blossoming like sakura/sakuLA together with the LA-local palm tree. I did not choose any of the photos nor their sequence, yet the last photo is the same as the featured one above, which I had already selected earlier. Maybe it’s accidental coincidence. Or maybe it’s all the work of an angel—here in LA, in this sprawling city of angels.