Happy Holidays

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

skin

the river's soft skin   
slows wild rapids of my heart                    
running to the sea                                                                      

beauty

if today i die
may beauty be my only
footprints in the sand

Ikigai, raison d’être, purpose, legacy… What is it, ultimately, that propels you forward in life? That keeps your fires burning at night and wakens you from your morning slumber? That enables you to rise again and once again, after each and every stumble or fall? That heals your grieving heart after loss? That brings you to your feet when life has brought you to your knees? That causes you to smile, once again?

Now and then life brings these questions to me, and inevitably, in one way or the other, I always come back to hózhó. Hózhó is the Navajo word for “beauty,” however, it is not limited to notions of aesthetic beauty but encapsulates a profound paradigmatic lens of beauty as composite expression of harmony, peace, balance, and reciprocity. Hózhó is my north star and my raison d’être.

And what is yours?

They say that each of us has come here for a reason, to fulfill some particular longing of the soul. Perhaps it is to experience joy, or love. Perhaps it is to be joy, or love, or beauty. Perhaps it is to learn how to rise again and smile, against all odds. Perhaps it is to acquire a soft heart after hardship. Or to discover light at the end of the tunnel, or to become that light. And it could simply be to discover whatever it actually is—that, that seemingly eternal chimera.

Whatever yours is, may it propel you ever forward on your path. May you walk in beauty. May you journey well. May your dreams be fulfilled.

belong

you and i belong
like flowers and warm sunshine
always together

diamonds

bewitched by the light
on this long road of diamond dust
i dream endlessly

rainbows

warm sunlight kisses
all my tears and hurt away
levitating rainbows

smile

your smile just for me
more precious than all the stars
in darkest of nights 

さくらさくら sakura sakura

singing in pink light
this crown of floating petals
carries my heart home

What is it for you, which carries your heart back to your faraway home? Be it geographical or temporal distance? Have you ever felt that? That twinge? That pang in your heart when the great distance announces itself abruptly, with such eloquence? Suddenly, in a moment, you are both here and there. Or rather, simultaneously there and not there.

For me, it is sakura*—the cherry blossoms. Their delicate lightness acquiring a new sense of gravity in a home away from home. Bittersweetness, in full bloom. And so still, i dance under the trees of pink reverie; drunk with beauty. Here and There. Everywhere.

*While the chrysanthemum may be the national flower of Japan and the seal of the imperial family, sakura—the cherry blossom—is without doubt, the national “people’s flower” of Japan. When sakura blossom in spring, many people enjoy walks or picnics and parties under the soft canopies of pink petals. Many years ago (before the date which it was published), I wrote another blog post which illuminates the significance of sakura in Japan: https://michiruadrienne.com/2021/06/02/grace/

airspace

i dream skies clear blue
an airspace of love and peace
encircling one world

“You may say I’m a dreamer”, but in fact, what comes first: the dream or the day? Imagination or reality? Perhaps the difference between the two (dream and day, imagination and reality) is not so distinct after all—one bleeding into the other as our dreaming and waking worlds are nothing more than a continuum of one consciousness, of one stream in time and space navigating terrains all at once sublime, spellbinding, and atrocious.

“You may say I’m a dreamer”, but is it not the dream that gives rise to words articulated and actions initiated? And ultimately to that concept which we call “reality”—which is indeed precisely that, a concept, a conceptualization of the mind. It is the mind which dreams and thinks and creates. It is the mind, consciousness itself, which is the ultimate “reality”. We all dream; we are all dreamers—inevitably. So direct your dreams and your desires beyond what you have been taught is possible, beyond the visible horizon and into skies of clear blue.

“I see no conflict between reality and imagination. They are not in fact separate. Our real lives hold within them our royal lives; the inspiration to be more than we are, to find new solutions, to live beyond the moment. Art helps us to do this because it fuses together temporal and perpetual realities.”

~Jeanette Winterson

pinxit

under this new sky
pink is the only color 
alight in my heart