Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Spring Returns Amidst...continued

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,


I wanted to write to you again as the day as progressed.  I did go out to your grave at the workers' lunch break to rake and clear some more.  Then I decided to plant some beautiful bright purplish blue pansies I was initially saving for something else.  I needed beauty here because it looked so dingy and depressing just like I was feeling.  It was quiet, no chainsawing, I could hear the birds all around me and Beetle was happily in her yard watching me and chewing sticks.  So, I planted something beautiful on this day of Spring's Return, on the day I returned you to the the Earth.  Seems like the least I could do. 

I finished planting just as the workers started cranking up again to down more trees!  Something interesting happened though, I did not hurry in.  I took my time carting the leaves and debris away in the wheel barrow.  Beetle looked concerned and followed me all the way around the yard and back as if to say, "Don't you hear them! We need to retreat inside!"  I stayed as calm as I could, spoke lovingly to her about what I was doing, then came into her area.  She ran to get her stick and I felt like saying to her, "Don't YOU hear them! You really want to play NOW?"  She smiled at me and dropped her stick at my feet to throw.  Ok....so we played...amidst the chaos of more trees being taken down.  I laughed and cheered her on like I do and she responded in kind, happily and with zest.  We played for some time and then I needed to come in to get a phone call.  I felt some sense of victory, Phoenix.  It was a sense of being in two streams at once: the high state of alert and probably PTSD with the sounds around us as well as a playful state with sweet Beetle. 

So, I planted something beautiful for us, Phoenix, on this day.  And something ostensibly beautiful was planted in me...amidst.   And it wasn't denial...it was a twin stream.  Blessed be.

Thank you for your paw in the experience, as I'm sure it was there on our WEb.

Much love on this mixture of a day,
Me

Spring Returns amidst

Dearest Beloved Phoenix on our WEb,

Today is the day three years ago, I, and three other women, returned you to the Earth.  I remember C. (and I think J. though so much of some things were a blur) dug your grave there beneath the pines while I laid on the ground beside you in the sunshine, crying and looking over your body, sounding and singing.  It was the first day of Spring, the threshold of moving from the Deep into the Outertime, the meeting of Persephone/Kore and Demeter, the beginning of an entirely new level of Deep for me.

Last night, I read through my first journal of 2010 that included this experience three years ago. As I read, I remembered writing much of it and I felt such compassion for myself and my commitment to stay true to my grief, no matter the cost.  I read things about how the awareness at the time was some on the potential cost of my partnership, how I was not comforted by it/her in the ways I needed. That I did not remember writing, though it is not a surprise I wrote it.  I was immersed in the grief and devastation and only found ways to go to work work, to Priestess my class and to C. for support.  The rest was collapse. I know this WEb log has chronicled that. And today, I am sitting much with the collateral loss of my partnership that began in that year you were murdered and my inability to recover that relationship from the wreckage.  During the course of that first year, my heart closed to J. because I did not feel like she could meet me in the deepest wreckage.  How much that was true I do not know for sure.  I know she wanted to go on with our life together way before I could even decide if I wanted to.  I am being really careful to not sound like I am blaming her or myself (though that is certainly easier to do).  And, I feel like I am walking through some ruins again that are important pieces to the demise of things, some that were my 'choices' (ie shutting myself down), some that may have been hers, and some that feel out of my hands and hers simply because of the enormity of such a crime against us.

Currently, as it has been for three days now, there are men outside in my neighbor's yard taking down trees.  The sound of chain saws and cracking of big limbs is right now in the background of this writing.  In fact almost all the trees in front of her house are being cut down because my neighbor is afraid that they will fall on her house!!  Instead of trimming them, she has decided to categorically destroy them all! (by the way, she is ex-military!)  The impact that has on my nervous system is too much to try to articulate, especially in light of this anniversary.  Here again, I have a neighbor who has such little regard for Life and is simply having them mowed down.  It's insane, simply insane. I am trying to stay calm. And, I feel depressed.  Very depressed today.

I'm not sure what else to write.  It is the first day of Spring.  I am not joyous at this threshold.  I am quite deeply depressed at the state of the world around me.  This last weekend I was at a retreat and at one point I was stretched out on a bench outside the house looking up at the warm sky.  There towering above me was a tree, growing right up against the deck.  Tears flooded down my face feeling the calmness of having and trusting trees so close to the house.  What is happening to this planet that many like my neighbor have moved so far away from Relations with trees.  This is SO disturbing to me right now.  I feel uprooted by the whole thing and am having trouble finding some settledness.  The energy outside is so aggressive.

I need to stop now.  Phoenix, while they are on their lunch break, I will go tend to my land, particularly on your grave.  I don't know what else to do.
I love you so.
Me

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Three Year Anniversary

Dear Beloved Phoenix on the WEb,
You have already come to me...in the dark.  The night before last, I awoke to silence and lay there wondering if it was going to be sleepless for the remaining dark time as it has been recently.  Then a few minutes pass and I hear outside my open window a shuffling and....howls, howls....like the time I last held you on my lap three years ago, our backs to the North, and howling my wretched grief and anguish.  Remember that moment?  Into my howls blended howls of coyotes at my back as I held your broken body, my broken heart and spirit.  Beetle and J. in the side yard joined the Call.  I remember everything about that night.

And last night, I dreamed of being in that old house; the lights went out in only part of the house. I was stumbling around trying to figure out which ones worked while also feeling scared of what/who I would encounter in the dark rooms. And sure enough, I encountered a man, neighbor, maybe your murderer, but/and in the dream he acted helpful reminding me where the breaker boxes were.  I remembering being concerned he was there and also relieved to know exactly where he was, no surprises.  Befuddled, I went looking for the breaker boxes as he described.  Then, beloved Phoenix, you joiined me, moving through the dark, trying to remember.  You were right by my side in and out of rooms checking panels of switches. At one point I remembered where the main one was (not at all where he told me!) and went towards that.  You trotted away to chase something and I called you back but when I voiced your name, it came out "Beetle."  But you were clearly in your beloved strong, brindled furry body and you did come back to be with me as I continued to figure things out.

Must I speak anything else? THANK YOU for coming to me, Phoenix, in both these ways.  O. reminded me this morning that anniversaries like this may also be hard and disorienting for you, depending.  Maybe we are both stumbling in the dark through the memories, trying to remember and find the main switches that light the way.  And, there we were together.  This is our day, marking both the horrendous violent way our WEb was broken, as well as the last day we loved each other in this Outerworld. 

Lastly, I found a picture last night of Demeter and Kore as twins/mirror reflections of one another. I've not seen them quite like that before and have been pondering, letting it sit and shift inside me because we often think of them as two different people: mother/daughter etc.  This image invited something different inside me: something of two linked consciousness happening at the same time.  Let me try to explain.  So, I am 'queen' of my Outerworld now: my life here with Beetle, with Myrrh, with O., with our classes, dances, tribe etc and it does not include you anymore as of 3 years ago.  I move through this Outerworld.  And, Phoenix, I still believe I move with you in another world that is elusive, moves in and out of darkness, grief, engagement with the unseen, the wuwu.  Clearly, like my dream, these worlds blend, they are not separate and...I am 'queen' of that Innerworld too with a different life/consciousness that calls and engages with you.  My dream of calling you back but the words came out 'Beetle' gets at this best, I think.  I am not split consciousness, I am twin consciousness.  Does that make sense?  I am still trying to get the words for it, but/and the image I found last night 'spoke' something of it. What if Demeter and Kore were not two different beings? What if they were twin consciousness (with Hecate, they'd be triplet consciousness!).  Then the story when Demeter and Kore 'reunite' is really a doubling that happens, an intensification of energy, crossing the thresholds of worlds, like we did last night and in other dreams together!

Here's the image to close.  I love you, Phoenix, and am most grateful to continue to have our lives together on the WEb.  He may try to confuse us or mislead us in the dark and we find our way to the main fuse box.  I love you always.

Forever repairing what was torn,
Me

Friday, March 1, 2013

3113

Dearest beloved Phoenix on the WEb,
Last night I found myself on the floor again. It has been a long time since I have collapsed like this. Cascades of feelings poured through me for hours, the core of which was that deep deep felt sense of loss, missing you.  This is the first day of March: 3-1-13, such a lovely symmetrical date.  March carries so very much life and death in my personal Wheel of the Year.  This round it carries in addition the first day that I will not be employed by GE.  Yes, my last day was yesterday, the last day of the month of February.  I know it was the right thing to leave, it was my choice and my timing.  I said my conscious goodbyes to folks and to the space over the last two weeks, so I've had time to let go in ways that I wanted to.  I have so deeply appreciated the employment, many of my co-workers and the folks that I served there.  That position was a container for me of so much personal change.  I had folks remind me of the time I chopped my hair off! One brought me a photograph of me when my hair was long and my uniform was green!  Now my hair is short and my uniform is blue!

 I arrived there 6 1/2 years ago planning only to stay a short while and months stretched into years over the course of which I lost you, beloved Phoenix, I let go of my partnership with beloved J., I began something new with O. and so much additionally in between.  These are huge life transitions in the course of these almost 7 years!  And it was the container of GE that held a space for me to continue to engage in life in a particular way in spite of the times when I would go there with swollen eyes from crying half the night before or when I would show up hardly 'there', a ghost even to myself.  There was a beloved sister there who was my link to what was real, no matter how bad it got.  I could go to her and she would understand.  I remember several days there after you were shot, I would have panic attacks between shifts. I carried a homeopathic remedy, Ignatia, with me which would often help mitigate them but/and it would take some time.  Those days, I would go to RW, my sister, and she would tell me to go, go! do what I needed to do, she would cover for me.  I would get myself out the door to the pond there and walk with such intensity as if I could outrun the awful panic that was chasing me.  And it worked every time, thank Goddess.  I have so much gratitude for things like this that were part of that container to hold me through. 

And so, I've said goodbye to that container.  I dissolve it as it has served us well, giving it back to the well of creation.  And now, I am in the Void.  I asked myself yesterday what that is like this time, this particular Void and the answer was startling: it is a place between She and I.  It is calm, it is connected, it/we is trusting.

So, then...how does one end up on the floor from that place?  Well, sweet beloved guardian Companion of mine... we have learned together that it is never just one thing, nor rarely a linear sequence of one things.  The WEb, we know, the WEb.  What I do think I understand about it all is triggers.  Even though I have and do feel that Void as all I have said,  the absence of something that has grounded me for so long through so much is triggering of the other intense times of loss when I could not access trust or She and I or anything but the HUGE cascade of feelings that washed me onto the floor last night, the bottom being the absence of physical presence of you, of J., of O. of my twin.  It was and will always be inconsolable grief. Such an easy thing to name, inconsolable grief, and the words don't even touch the enormity of the meaning/reality of the experience. Inconsolable grief: that which no one, nothing will ever be able to fill, mend, repair, soothe.  An endless gaping wound of loss that streaks through my heart, down my left arm, through my fingers that reach for some physical contact of memories of times when the missing match was there. 

So, that is where I went last night again.  I did not try to stop it or redirect or numb out. The cascade had its way and took me with back to you and the beginning of this month of life and death.  Sweet Beetle and Myrrh slept with me all night long even though their presence was not what/who I needed/wanted.  This morning, though, Beetle curled against me like you used to do, Phoenix.  It was not you, it didn't fill the missing match and...she is so my girl, my sweet devotee, offering me all she can.  I am grateful.  And...still in all of the feelings, not wanting to have to explain to anyone anything.  I am hoping today to feel better enough to go for a walk with Beetle and do some errands, gently finding my way in this place of Void, a Winter Solstice here on 3-1-13.

Much love to you. I am so grateful to have a place to come 'talk' to you, my sweet beloved Phoenix.
Me