And then she stumbled into an enchanted garden where just ahead on the path sat a little wild rabbit, cute and captivating stone-still but unlike Alice she flew up into worlds with endless sunlight and fields of flowers for as far as she could see Her rabbit, being sometimes a stag or a dragon or a jaguar an angel or polaris itself, holds her hand and together they venture further out and beyond and further still into this garden into this deep well of light where all the paths converge, andwhere only love itself shines in the darkness
(this is something of a sequel to my last post, “rolling stone”)
*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.
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.
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
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.
all along i thought he was holding my hand, and walking me into the l i g h t but now it seems, rather my angel has been leading me on, and into the darkness deeper, and deeper still and across this river of no return and why i? i have all but disappeared from myself here… here where i am nowhere and my angel is everywhere in me and what then? when the last of twilight deepens into a moonless night will these eyes opened see? blinded no longer by l i g h t
this body in the soft folds of kimono also creases gently without resistance to earth and to drifting stars this body breathing, obi-bound, is a delicate dance like butterflies in the wind like waves of the ocean rising and falling weaving together all the days and all the nights into one endless strand step after step fold after fold crease after crease this body is singing and dreaming is birthing anew worlds of beautiful
dance is power and an enigma, born within this body primordial this body animal and human birthed in the flesh, blood and sinew sweat, and an exhale this body naked raw and real exhibits all that is its fragility and eloquence unveils all that is beautiful and terrible rich elegant and grotesque life’s fabric textured tight unravels stores spun by fate and by chance by the known and the unknown dancing this body suspends stories in the passing light of time eternal and transient this body dancing is poetics movement and stillness entwined and in the folds of love the present
i once differentiated between worlds… between something so-called normal, and something other like magical i knew the difference between the everyday world and the extraordinary world between fact and fiction between reality and fantasy but then… you came into my life you came dancing, spinning and singing, and yes… turning turning everything upside down, and inside out like the rabbit on the moon you made me see anew the extraordinary in the everyday the fiction in fact fantasy in reality and now… every day is magical with you in my life magical is everything, and is my one world and is my new normal with you
Michiru Adrienne 