Making a note

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,

I just want to make a note that I feel things are possible now, not so hopeless with my health situation. There's nothing else I need to say about that right now.  Just feeling happy, hopeful and in Her hands and there are so many other times I feel so many other things that it seemed like a really good thing to make a note of this.

It is just past the zenith of Winter and we are in the Deep. I have been despairing about various sundry of things.  Today I have been thinking of the rose, our rose that blooms in May and how that will be to see it again this coming 200013th year.  I feel happy imagining that, looking towards that lovely first blossom that you send back to me from the grave.

My love,
Me

Good Solstice morning to my sweet Phoenix on the WEb,

I woke early to watch the live stream of the Newgrange sunrise, but the cloud cover prevented being able to see anything.  However, of course, I know it happened...the energy of the light moved through the passageway and lit up the triple spiral, beginning another beloved Earth cycle of Winter Solstice to Winter Solstice!  And...perhaps, as many have prophesized, the beginning of a new era.

It was a long night.  Technically, the longest one of the year.  And, internally it was long, though certainly not the longest in my internal year.  There have certainly been longer ones.  Last night after circle I was saying goodbye to someone and she mentioned she was going to be traveling to a place in New Mexico where I had been years ago on Summer Solstice.  Actually it was a place J. and I traveled to to meet other close friends for a celebration of women; J. and I were an active part of the celebration weekend.  Women from all over the world came to be a part of this, women who I have respected as feminists for years, women who were leaders of the second wave of feminism and women who are now part of another wave.  It was a big deal, and a big deal to be an included part of it.  As this person was talking about going to the town where J. and I stayed with our dear friends S. and J. who owned a women's lodge, I was flooded with WuWu excitement in connecting to that time and space.  I quickly responded and told her where the lodge was in relation to where she would be and as I began to speak, my body cracked and my voice fisted the words as they squeaked through my throat.  I didn't want to tell her the whole story of this place and what it meant to me, in fact I hadn't totally seen what it has meant to me now, here from this place in my life.  After all, as our lives change, so do our relationships with the memories of the past.

So, I noticed the change in my voice as I spoke, found an easy way to leave the conversation and later cried about it.  Still the meaning hadn't arrived until early this morning when I couldn't watch the live streaming of the sunrise in Newgrange and I went back to bed in the dark.  Then, I got it, Phoenix.  I got what that memory is to me and why my throat responded with a clutch to the the words, the sharing of it in such a superficially social way.  You see, yes, it was literally on the weekend of Summer Solstice of 2007 and it was metaphorically the Summer Solstice of Ph. and Sc., our time together as Feminists, as Goddess Wimmin, as Shamans, as Partners in this tradition.  It is where we were not only partners of life, we were Shaman partners.  I remember hiking up into the hills the morning of the opening ceremonies and we found an area on the side of a mountain that overlooked the town and the mesa.  There we got very clear what we were doing and why we were doing it...for women, for the women who have come before.  It was awesome to have that focused comraderie with J.  And later at the ceremony, it was beyond words what it felt like to do what I do and witness what she does and be Together in that.  I still remember the feeling of the tears of joy flooding down my face as I watched the room and J.; I was in Awe.  The only way I can articulate it is this: it was the Summer Solstice of our Beingnesses, our Essences, our Quintessence together.

And so, here on the dawn of a new Era, a new Cycle on the Wheel, I hold this precious Light to my weary Heart.  You see, Phoenix, I am grateful for this piece because I have been taught the language of The Wheel and now I live it, so I take great comfort in being able to locate things in their natural cycle.  It takes away some of the shame of things/relationships etc not lasting forever.  J. and I had an incredible Summer Solstice.  Now we are in the void.  No one knows what comes from the void at any time.  And...I have seeded some peace there now.  Or, perhaps, some peace has seeded herself there now with this memory, this meaning, this illuminating that has happened inside me, even though I cannot see it, per se.

Thank you, Phoenix, for this venue to come speak Heart to you.  Maybe new worlds happen quietly like this....

Your beloved Companion,
Me

Giving Thanks

Dear Beloved Phoenix on the WEb,

On this day, Thanksgiving of 2012, I remember you and give great thanks for your love continued from across the veils.  I miss your sweet body and love incarnate.

Always and all ways, my love,
Me

Many Miles

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
It's been many miles now since you were taken. Today in my heart,  I've been in those last days with you because I taught that class on Women Who Run With the Wolves again today for the fifth time since then. That was the last class I taught before that night, in fact, it was the night before you were shot when I taught this material. This evening, after class, I've been shedding many tears, missing you, wishing I knew what was going to happen before it did so I could stop it. Wondering in looking back at the 'signs' or what seems like they may have been signs, why I couldn't stop it, why the signs didn't tell me exactly what was going to happen. Why being on the WEb didn't serve me enough to stop it, save you, interrupt the violence.  Why my last goodbye was not more focused.  Why the week before I was so bereft without true understanding that perhaps that was because I may have sensed what was coming.  I mean I was feeling crazed; I have it all recorded on my calendar for some reason.  It was that unusual.  I don't understand.  And all I am left with tonight are the tears and the words to a song called "Many Miles Before I Go": "I will try but I will stumble, I will fly, you told me so. Proud and high or low and humble, many miles before I go".   Plus today in class one of my students talked about a dream she had with her beloved dog who recently died this year.  She was with him in the dream like he was alive just like it was real.  She didn't want to wake up and come back to this reality and cried all the way 'back' awake.  I wanted to drop and curl up and remember those kinds of dreams with you and not come back either.

Later as I was able to quiet and be with myself more exclusively, all of this has surfaced, all this reliving.  The chaos and meaninglessness of it all then and for all these many miles since.  I've let myself just go wherever with it all: the guilt, the powerlessness, the victimization, the collapse all over again.  I wrote about it in my journal, spilled out all the self-doubt and the complete madness of it all.  Then something else happened.  I am not even sure I can articulate the felt sense of the 'it' of it. There wasn't even a sequence, I don't recall.  Suddenly, though, if there were a timelessness to 'suddenly', another awareness/consciousness came.  She was not in the middle of things, she stood on the edges.  She didn't shame the repeating.  She didn't comment at all on that. It was simply an eye that sees from many miles away, that has lived these many miles since you were killed. She has a keen knowing of this pain still and isn't dislocated from it at all.  She also carries the many miles since you've gone. It's like maybe how the stars feel sometimes to me.  They blink at me so I know they register my presence but/and it is not important to them that everything make sense, even that I make sense.  They are there regardless, steady and present moving in their cycles across the sky. 

J. sent me a card this week that simply said on the back of the photo of a heron: Be Happy.  While I wish it were enough for someone to say that to make it so, I have to admit that in a way it translated inside me as "Be Free" of guilt.  Go on with your life.  I set you free.  Maybe even, but not likely, but close enough: I forgive you.  How does one thank the one person who can gift you such a thing? Whether it's right or not, she IS the one person who could gift me that.  And she did.  I think, Phoenix, she freed me to turn a corner, to experience this new consciousness of She of Many Miles Who Stands at the Edges.  She who holds all of it in the senselessness of it.   She who lets go of the need to understand.  And yet, still understands deeply so very much.  Mostly though, she wears the many miles.

So, that line: "I will try, but I will stumble" seems to resonate after feeling set free, released from something of the pain of the past.  All of this has come together inside me tonight after this fifth anniversary class. "I will fly, you told me so" I sing to you, Phoenix and to J. 

I hope you hear the love and gratitude for you, Phoenix. I will never not want to feel you close and am grateful for the opportunity to remember those dreams of you.  I am grateful for you, for our many miles together while you were alive and now, after you have gone. 

My love to you many miles more,
Me

Duck, Death and the Tulip

Dear my beloved Phoenix on the WEb,

There is a children's book by Wolf Earbruch (2011) called Duck, Death and the Tulip.  Duck feels a presence near by, has for a while, but one day she notices how close this figure has become. It is Death.  At first, Duck is frightened and befuddled then she relaxes and they become friends.  They romp together and rest together quietly.  One day, the inevitable happens and Duck dies.  Her friend Death takes her to a stream, places her gently into the currents with a tulip on her chest and nudges her on her way.  This has significance again in my life, more so than ever, it seems, in the last several days.  I think I see where I'm going a bit more clearly.  Strangely enough.

Thursday of last week I walked into the kitchen at work and there in the large sink was a dead pig, skinned and pale, legs straight up, gut exposed ready for some sort of extraction.  I gasped and almost threw up then I cried.  I cried, Phoenix, for what humans do.  I cried for liking bacon (which I will never eat again).   I cried for the life that was that pig and her tribe.  I cried for you, Phoenix, for the shell that was left for me to find that night you were shot.  That shell that had been brutally murdered then dragged to a spot for me to get.  I cried right there at work amidst coworkers who were uncomfortable with the emotion.  Later that same day, I went to see a friend who was dying of cancer in hospice care.  When I walked into the room, I think I gasped quietly so as not to alarm anyone.  I've not seen anyone so close to death, skeletal and drawn.  I spoke to her, sang to her and gradually adjusted to this living life in front of me.  The next day when I saw her, she had just died.  I was there for 4 hours with her and her sisters and as time passed, I watched her face change, let go, relax into the death.  I too relaxed into her death.  And, something else.

My grandmother died this year.  She was 103 and I sat with her in April.  We sat and stared out the window, watching the wind blow leaves, flowers, branches and an American flag.  I have never felt such peace with anyone like that outside of circle.  She remarked to me how much she appreciated just the quiet and not talking.  When I left her that visit, I knew it was the last time I'd see her and I knew it was time for me to follow through on a long time interest in hospice work.  In fact she died two months later and I began hospice care work shortly after that.  It was time.

Phoenix, I am aware of this current carrying me.  I have felt this with me for many years, much like Duck: this presence and knowing of something lingering nearby.  I've had glimpses. And then long stretches of not knowing, feeling lost.  Now I feel like Death has laid me down into a stream of life, handed me a tulip and nudged/pushed me on my way.  I feel the flow and see how maybe all the trauma, death and divorce have some how woven this stream/current for me.  I am beholden to Death in this way.  I do not know how else to speak of it.  Beholden to Death and Life in this way.

And what must I let die in order to let go?  Guilt.  Not responsibility. No, I will never not feel responsible for the devastation I have caused another.  I see now, though, I cannot hold myself back from living a life I chose.  Death has showed me something of the way in Life.  I am truly grateful. 

Love,
Me 

YOU!?

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,

Ok, what is the deal?  On my way home from work today, I took the long way home, a scenic route through the mountains so I could feel the elevated air, see the leaves beginning to change and feel some change inside me in response.  And, I did. I had the sunroof open, the windows open and I looked down at your sweet face on my dashboard and remembered you so dearly: how it felt as a "We" together that is most unique, the energy that was exchanged, the settled joy of us, the love that was you and I.  All of that was gently and powerfully blowing around and through me as I sped along.

Then, the blue lights and I am pulled over for speeding.  I can hardly believe it; I mean how could this happen tangentially to being in such a state of connection and peace with you.  Aren't these bonds supposed to be practical? preventative of anything bad happening?  Where was your influence here?  Why a speeding ticket when feeling you and your presence?  Really. Why?

While I waited for the verdict of how much I would be charged for speeding (I really did believe you could influence this), I calmed myself down again by swimming through more connection with you as I looked at the photograph.  I remembered the times when I wanted to take you for a walk with your backpack on and you did not want that.  You would leap off the porch and into the yard barking at me to come chase you, daring me to.  I would grow more and more impatient but/and you would always make me laugh because of your persistent rascal-like playfullness.  I would try to be serious and say: "Phoenix, I am serious, come here. Hurry up!"  And you would trot towards me only to leap again into the air off the porch just out of my reach!

So, there I was languishing in those memories when the officer returned to tell me that my ticket would not be reduced because my speed far exceeded the limit.  I was bereft, how could you not affect change in this situation, pull some strings, make something wuwu happen to reduce this ticket that I got because I was communing with YOU!  Then I heard it: "Ma'am you were speeding 22 miles/hr over the limit."  Oh, there it is.  22.  Two twos.  Sigh.  Ok,  Phoenix, there you went again, leaping off the porch laughing at me like you do.  Ok, I accept, I was speeding. I'll pay the fine and slow down.  But, you owe me 100 bucks.

I love you, Phoenix.  We are a match forever.
Yours,
Me
PS....When I went to locate this photo above that is the one I keep in my car, I had to search thru all my photos by date in my file folder on line. There are thousands and I had no idea what date it was.  After looking at three other random dates, I found this one.  The date?  3/22/08  Yes, 22.  Ha, ha.

Back to back cranes

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,

Thank you!!!  You are here.  In my despair, I could not see the language, our language, you send me.  It's amazing that I just don't see what's right there...

These last few days have been rough again.  Someone close to me has a dog who we think had a stroke because this weekend he couldn't walk properly.  It was a scary thing as the vet was trying to figure out what was happening and it seemed like he was getting worse quickly.   I stayed close to her as she plunged into her nightmare of losing such a close companion suddenly.  I held the line.  Finally, things began to shift and her beloved companion turned some corner and mostly has come back.

I was fine throughout, felt ok like I was totally present with what was happening inside me and still present for her and her process.  I am so glad I was there to understand the level of fear that was happening for her and to hold some line of groundedness.  As things settled for her, I began to plunge into my own depths.  Both today and yesterday, I came home from work, put my pj's on and went head first into bed.  I've been weeping the last couple of days sporadically and then today it was full force again.  I called you, Phoenix, called you to come to me.  Come back!  I need you.  Where have you gone!  You've not been in my dreams, I don't have any reported sign of you...you have vanished!!  Then I went back to this web log we have written together and began to re-read our journey.  I could feel myself both drop deeper into the grief and then something else met me there.  It was a line, maybe, that you hold for me.  I begged you to show me a sign, show me you still are there, something undeniable.

Nothing.  Silence and your photographs and our story.  But nothing current.

Later, I went to the living room, feeling a bit more grounded, but still discouraged that I must have made all of those other signs up because the magic has run amuck.  Then, as I was talking on the phone, Heron flew up towards my window and over the top of my house!  Oh, yes, is that you???  Then that reminded me of something from earlier today: a resident was wearing the most lovely shirt of two cranes standing back to back with one another so that it looked like it was a two headed bird!  It was so unusual, I thought then, but hadn't connected it consciously to you until later after I saw Heron fly towards me.  That was you and me at one another's back.  How sweet and just like you.

Thank you, dear beloved friend/guardian/companion.  Thank you for being there even when I am not seeing you.  Thank you for flying towards me to get my attention.  Thank you for not leaving me, especially now.  Thank you for being at my back.  I need you there with me.

I love you so.
Me

PS...I just read that cranes take this position of back to back as a protective posture.  Of course.  This is the kind of Wuwu I so needed and called you back for.  Thank you, dear one.

Next Day

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

Good morning.  Woke up wanting to write some more to you.  The labyrinth has been overtaken by weeds this summer.  My neighbor has totally neglected the path.  I've been trying to stay detached and not get involved with her about it as our relationship is tenuous at best.  I've not been walking it at all because of all the weeds and such.  It's been so hard to watch the path be consumed.

Then last week something different happened.  One of the lawn care workers began to weed eat in the labyrinth.  I was so relieved! Then he stopped and moved on to another area of the yard before finishing!  I hollered at him to ask him to finish, but he could not hear me over the mowers around him.  I figured maybe it was just as well not to get involved, so I let it go.  For now.

Then the next day the person who mows my lawn came and I asked him to go ahead and finish weed eating the labyrinth.  He used to take care of that yard when my former neighbor lived there, so he said he'd be glad to for no charge!  He was equally disturbed by how she had abandoned the care of the labyrinth.  I came inside and wrote a letter to my neighbor reporting what had happened and that I went ahead and finished the weeding in the labyrinth because I care about that sacred path and that I would be honored to continue to take care of it while she got caught up on the others things she's trying to get done.

Yesterday walking this labyrinth was the only thing I felt like I could do from that place of the sinkhole.   The hardest part was walking through a large area where there used to be a Lamb's Ear plant.  M. mistakedly mowed it down.  All that is there is black earth and white flecks of the plant.  It looks like ashes.  I shuddered then and now as I recall.  Lamb's ear: Phoenix's ear.  I am shaking inside.  Still so much grief and devastation materialized.

And, it's raining this morning.  I am seeing the rain sink down into the roots of the Lamb's ear and soothing the trauma, the sudden decapitation of leaves and life.  The roots being calmed, their shaking quieting.  The sound of the gentle rain, a sweet humming into the earth, into the Lamb's ear roots.  I ask for regeneration also from this rain in time, from the soothing deep in the roots.  In time.  I know such things take time.  For now, I pray for just soothing.

I am grateful for the Path again being cleared.  Truly.  It's 'just' a configuration, but it's one that leads in and out again.   I need to know that Way even if I'm just wandering feeling oh so terribly lost.  Thank you, Goddess for this Path.  For the clearing.  For the soothing.

I love you, Phoenix, this day of the Crossroads when I decided to live the life that would never have existed if I decided otherwise.  I am quaking with that Yes.  So unsure.  So so unsure of my way.  The other night I dreamed that I went to visit a young person in an institution.  When I came in the room, this young person was sitting in their bed, facing the headboard, howling.  I sat next to them and howled too.  What else can one do?  That is my siren.

Love,
Me

Not a single siren nor arrest

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

Last night and today have been the worst times so far that I can remember since the nights and days after you were killed.  I have felt so very lost, like I don't know what I'm doing.  I feel out of control of my life.  And the grief has been huge and growing/deepening, like a sinkhole, dragging me further and further in.  At one point in one of the huge surges of grief, I heard an ambulance in the distance and I went right back to the night you were killed and I lay beside your lifeless body, waiting for J. to get home.  There were no emergency vehicles to come help you or make any arrests.  With that awareness, I almost came undone.  I do not know how I will ever recover from this.  I know I've been saying that for over two years now and I still cannot quite convince myself that it is simply True.  I will never recover.  I can stop trying to.  It will never happen.  Not in any way that I will recognize 'normalcy' as I once knew it.

I have left a way of life, I tell myself over and over.  Not just a relationship.  A way of life.  And I've left a womyn who quintessentially is such a good person.  I miss her and her ways of thinking and understanding life, of making me laugh and feel safe.  They were home to me for a long time.  And in this sinkhole now, I feel lost, directionless, without a touchstone of home, of roots.  I am desperate for connection and contact with her. 

That is not to deny any of the new relations I've been growing or what they bring me.  They are not roots.  They are something else that I don't quite know yet.  They feel mutable.  I do not lean very hard on them.  Not because I don't trust them, because I do not trust myself.   Not now.  Maybe not ever again.  I am not looking for a replacement of my relationship with J. in person or in structure.  I've left that way of life.  And this new life now...well, right now it doesn't feel like much of anything that I can hold on to.

And...two years ago tomorrow was the day I met myself at that Crossroads of life and death and I got really clear about choosing life.  That I will not and cannot take my own.  It's not who I am in my Essence/Beingness.  I never knew that for sure about myself before that day.  I am grateful to know this, especially for someone like me who falls into many sinkholes.   Yes, I am grateful and distressed because it means I am staying on the planet, no matter how Lost I am and remain.  No matter how undone I come from the lack of sirens and arrests for atrocities in my life and for wimmin all over the planet.  I honor that Knowing.  And the Work I face most days to endure.

I love you, Phoenix.  Thank you for calling me back to our WEb.
Love,
Me

The Day After Summer Solstice 2012

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
     It is one day past the Summer Solstice and I have been reflecting.  Yesterday, Summer Solstice,  there were two roses in full bloom: one at the back of my house beside your grave site and one right outside my window in the front of the house.  This one is on the rose bush that I've identified with you during that first year in our move here.  Remember, the one that was so beautiful and was such an anchor of beauty for me as I traversed that first year without you!  She is dying, bugs are eating her no matter how much I try to tend her, she is dying I think. But/And yesterday there was one beautiful full blooming rose.  From you?  The other one there by your grave site is from a bush, also dying, that work acquaintances gifted me after you were killed.  Again, was this other beautiful fully bloomed rose from you? 
     Today I've had a quiet morning to myself.  Facing me most often when I get quiet is the grief, still the grief, forever the grief.  I sat down and leaned into it listening for what it had to bring me this time.   Why?  Why did all of this have to happen two years ago?  and one year ago?  Why all the loss?  Why cannot I be in full bloom and still have my beloved companions/Guardians in my life? Why the disconnect?  Why the letting go of such beloved Beings?  Why the cost?  I just don't understand and inside I feel crazy trying to face it and explain the inexplicable.  I don't believe in cosmic exchanges, that is the sacrificial giving up of one thing to gain another.  I don't think the Divine/Life Force works that way.  So, I don't know how to make meaning of this, to try to settle this unsteadiness about it all.  Most of the time nowadays I just keep moving, facing the next thing knowing that this cradle of ruins and grief also live inside these walls with me.  And there are times like today that I am called back to the cradle to cry and ask why, ask for answers and insights to explain to myself and others and to just sit with the incongruities, the urgent incongruities.
     Thank you for the roses, Phoenix.  I know they are from you. I've been kissed by a rose from the grave.  Again.  Two times this time.  I wish that it made everything better.  It doesn't.  But it does make me weep in gratitude for you on the WEb with me and hope that there is something deeply being rewoven and repaired that I will get to see/experience soon.
My love to you always,
Me

Watching night fall

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
It is the last day of May 2012, a mostly quiet day with myself and Beetle.  I have been feeling so depressed the last several days that today I spent the day doing physical things around the house that need to be done as well as being outside as much as possible.

 Beetle and I went for a walk, our usual path into the woods around the local college.  We came up to a place along the creek where a large tree had been washed off the bank, her massive roots still somewhat clinging to the eroding slope.  Beetle made a spontaneous jump down the bank and then couldn't get back up.  In fact, her whole body slipped down into a hole through the decrepit roots that sunk into a muck that she could not pull herself out of.   I slid down onto the unstable root surfaces and pulled her back up.  It was precarious.  My footing was not secure and there were only a few places where the space didn't collapse with our weight.  Once I got her up from the hole, she went down into the creek bed, shook and then climbed back up. I wasn't sure what was going to happen and I was still very precariously positioned and worried about what both of our weights would do to our grasp as I pushed her up the rest of the bank, then followed her, my feet slipping with each placement.  Once back on solid ground, I felt the adrenaline and then later down the path the emotions came.

You see, Phoenix, these last several days I have been praying for some sense of rootedness again.  With J. gone I am struggling with feeling a sense of ground.  In so many ways, I have not only let go of J., but also a way of life: partnership.  And for all of the ways that structure was not good for me, it was also very good for my sense of place, my sense of home, ground, root.  So, to literally find myself trying to balance myself on roots whose base had been and was currently being eroded, dislodged, was, well, a bit wuwu.  It was like materializing where I am internally.  Not only was I there trying to secure myself, I was there trying to save Beetle.  And, I'm not being dramatic.  I think had I not been able to get her out of that hole, she might have drowned.  So, the desperate imperative to save Beetle added the perfect physical manifestation of how I feel inside.  Freaky.  And...some of the tears that came later came with the words: the roots held.  We are safe.  The roots held for me.

So, the end the day, Beetle and I went down by the pond to watch night fall.  For several weeks and nights before J. moved out last July, J. and I would sit beside one another outside and do the same thing: watch night fall.   I distinctly remember appreciating those times and thinking: I want to remember this, how this feels to simply sit beside my beloved J. as the inevitable happens.  Night falls.  That can be counted on.  So, Beetle and I counted on that root tonight and watched her come through the bats, the sounds of crickets, frogs, birds and water flowing.

I feel like I am facing again the reality of our breakup and all the desperate imperative emotions that go with being so scared of the inevitable and the unknown.  This no doubt is part of my felt sense that my ground has been eroded again and my roots are desperately searching and clinging.  I am so scared.  And, Phoenix, today was a gift, I know.  A gift that there is something that anchors me by reflecting me.  It's not another person.  Or even an animal.  Something more mysterious.  But/and that Mystery certainly works through animals and people sometimes.  But today She was there in the Earth.  In that tree's roots that held my weight, my desperation, my fear and my heavy depression.

My love always to you, Phoenix. wherever you are...
Me

Weeding the Labryinth

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
I am on retreat here at my home for several days from work, from the world.  We have just passed the two year anniversary of our last time together in the physical.  This year it was the day before you were murdered that felt the most significant.  I played Patti Larkin's version of "Heavenly Day" over and over and sobbed my gratitude for that day, two years ago. 

Today I went out to the labyrinth and began weeding.  While I don't walk the labyrinth as much as I used to that first year when I was walking The Wheel for the first time without you in the physical, I still feel connected to that path.  It was a direction, a way for me to move literally through that troubled year and still offers itself to me generously as I need.  I wanted to pay homage by weeding it, keeping it a clear and distinct path.  As I weeded, Beetle was near by, resting.  She was really calm there.  Unusually so because she didn't keep pestering me to walk or engage with her.  She just sat and watched what was happening around us.  And there was much happening around us: birds moving in pairs searching for nesting materials, perhaps food.  Turkeys and their brood scuttering in the near distance.  A pair of ducks came in for a landing at my neighbors very small pond, then waddled towards the labyrinth not seeing me until they were quite close.  They watched me weed for a while then took flight to my pond.   It is a time of pairs, twos.  And I was touched not only because I have been seeking experience of you and I together again, but also because I realized, here were Beetle and I together in the labyrinth.  She and I have found a bond than is different than before.  It doesn't replace or even mimic what you and I had, and it has its own life of sorts.  Serious.  Playful. Patient.  Without grand expectations of affection (this one I've had to adjust to).  Protective.  Sweet.  My SweetBeetle/Sweetle.

I have come to write you, Phoenix, because I want to remember..  I want engagement with you during this time of my retreat.  This is Spring Equinox...the threshold of death and life.  The shifting of the Wheel from the Deep Inner Time to the Outer Time.  It marks the time, you were taken.  It marks the time that I, too, was taken.  Much of me has returned.  I am seeking the me that is still with you, feels you, knows you, hasn't forgotten and still is in the ashes of a life incinerated.  Not because I want to force anything to change.  No, not that.  That never works.  I am seeking that me to be with, to be closer to you. She holds you close in ways that I cannot do and still go on.  I do not wish to leave her and you behind.  And I won't take her.  But/and I want to remember how to get back to her/me there with you.  I do not want the path to be overgrown, so I cannot find the way, no matter how far I have to travel. 

Originally I was not going to be on the computer at all during this time.  No media, I said.  And, I make the rules; I can break them.  I needed to come here and write you on the WEb, put the Call you to you and to me.  I will continue to clear the path, following the leads back, ok?  So much keeps happening, growing, expanding as the Wheel continues to move and I with it.  And there has been good in this continued moving with the Wheel.  It's not that.  But/and literally and metaphorically I have so much stuff out in my home from teaching etc classes  that I need to put away and/or organize.  Clear the space.  Find my way back,  I want to.  I am not afraid.  This is part of my agreement with myself to live a life worth living.  This is how I have chosen to live a life chosen.  A Phoenix life.

My deep love to you.  I will keep calling for us to meet on the Path backwards.
Love,

Me

Tenacious Heart

Dear Phoenix on the WEb, I was awake this morning at 3 am. Now it is 5 a.m. and I've come to you on our WEb. Actually, you came to me yesterday morning at the window, I think. Yes, I think that was you in the form of a wren. The markings on her face were like yours: those sweet dark lines reaching out from your eyes, your shared shades of brown and white, the sweet way you both tilt your head. She got my attention perched on the rose bush, singing so loudly and sweetly. I watched her hop down to the ground then up on the window sill to where she could look inside at me. She really looked at me. Then back to the rose bush, singing. She cycled like this for a while as I watched and wondered about her and about you and I. I've been missing you. I'm always missing you and sometimes the grief just takes me. I do not recognize my life now as a life that you and I would have lived together. I know that sounds strange. Maybe I don't exactly mean that. What I mean is that everything has changed irrevocably since you were killed. I have changed, where I live has changed, my beloved relations with my partner has changed, relations with my close tribe has changed, my life: changed. I cannot even fathom how my life would look the same/different if you were still with me in this, your 12th year of life. And most of the time recently, I just plod along with that sense of irrevocable change. Other times, I am taken by the grief of having lost you and all the collateral losses/reverberations/aftershocks. It disturbs me during those times that I cannot feel/sense you with me. I see your photo, remember your sweet body, smile, greetings, your ways. And, there is a distance that has taken residence between us. I am disturbed by it. And then, yesterday happened with the wren, and I wonder... When I told someone about the wren yesterday, she mentioned that they are industrious, tenacious, and that it might be helpful to look up that word: tenacious. So, I did. Tenacious: not easily pulled apart, cohesive, tough. I wonder now that not only is wren reminding me of my own tenacity at a time I am feeling vulnerable and challenged, but/and additionally she is reminding me of our connection, Phoenix. Not easily pulled apart. Cohesive. Tough. So, I come to you on our WEb with that recognition of us that you brought me through wren: tenacious us. And, I still wish you were beside me, literally. I miss my beloved Companion. Yes, I accept our tenacious love: not easily pulled apart, cohesive, tough. Thank you for staying that way. And there's something that you always brought me during vulnerable times like this now. You brought me a calm confidence in who I am, deep down. I need that right now. Thank you for sending wren. This weekend I will be offering another introduction to the women's class as well as a hosting of another Trance Dance! There is so much uncertainty around both of these 'productions' like who will come, will there be 'enough' women for a class, enough women at the dance to cover the rent on the space, how will things go, will I have the tenacity to overcome my insecurities/self-doubts etc and remain internally cohesive, focused on the energy/reason I offer any/all of this stuff? That is: In Service to something better and greater than patriarchy offers women. To offer a place/space for women to come and experience something else other than what may have been their deficient/distorted experience as women under patriarchy. Even if just for two hours, or three hours,there is a space I can assist in creating that holds back and refuses 'out there.' And I say that fiercely and humbly. I am fierce about doing it and humbled that I can in a way that is meaningful to me and hopefully effective and meaningful to women who come. Thank you, Phoenix, for your tenacity with me, for getting my attention again. You have my tenacious heart. Yours.