shimmering starlit leaves

New art blog:

bluelightscribe.blogspot.com

She Is Wisdom

Beloved,
You are Wisdom.
You are Beauty.

You light up the world with every graceful move you make.
Countless times I have seen you transform space and time
as you meet all that comes your way with softness,
gently turning conflict into a quiet exchange of ideas.
Your patient effortless ways amaze me.

You are the one who transmutes toxins to healing elixirs.
You, with a heart stronger than all the raging storms of men.
You, with eyes like grey ocean winds
how is it that you make everything simple?

Wherever you walk, your pure love blesses the earth,
and the forces of darkness give up their war games
turning instead to plant flowering orchards.

I have seen such turmoil arise in me,
being driven beyond all else to find truth and beauty in the world.
As I strive and storm and stumble on my complications,
so often I have spoken and acted without restraint

and soon come to regret
that I did not listen to you better

when you said, with smiling eyes
just love me.

Union

Our wedding was pure magic. This picture says it all for me.

Transitions, part 1

So I'm getting married in less than three weeks. This is insane! Its hard to believe that I'm so close to the threshold of this monumental Life Shift. The process of planning the ceremony event has been building all year, with so many ups and downs that the internal process has often been understated. This is such a big deal for me that most of the time I don't really know how to go about writing out my thoughts. I have been learning so much, so deeply and so fast that rewriting the insights of yesterday often seems impossible when I am already awake again, walking to work at the bagel bakery at 3:30 am.

I have always known, at my core, that I have truly met my match in Skye. She is more of a true and perfect partner than I ever dreamed of meeting. At every step, the wisdom she carries and unique ways she moves through and engages the world are a perfect counterpoint to mine. I recognized pretty quickly that this woman, by being my exquisite opposite, possessed just about all the skills I did not! I thought I was doing pretty well for myself... but like a flowering plant growing between sun and soil, there was so much more to become. There was no way we could not grow by embarking on this adventure as partners. Time has proven that we mirror and grow each other, and I could never have changed and learned so much alone.

As for preparing to get married, for better or worse I've ended up making much of the journey on my own - that is, without much advice from other men on what it means to be married. For deeply-feeling introverts like myself, its not easy to open up matters of the heart in conversation. There also seems to be a cultural habit among men to avoid the topic - an unspoken assumption that, by getting married, you are giving up your autonomy and putting on the ball and chain. I couldn't disagree more - to me, it is an outstanding testament to one's strength and courage to commit in this way, to be a man by giving everything you can, for love alone. I think I've learned the most by simply being around married couples and noticing the dynamic they have, how the passing of seasons has clearly strengthened their partnership.

I'm working on writing my own wedding vows - something that also means a lot to me. Having done some amount of ritual in different spiritual traditions, I appreciate the tangible shift that a ceremony can bring about. Words can be empty phrases or powerful invocations, depending on how they are spoken. Intention is everything. Maybe I have a habit of overthinking, but I intend to make room with this ceremony for the biggest dream I can dream, and put my heart's deepest yearning into it. The way I see it, we are tilling the soil of our future gardens, and even though the wedding will be over in a day, its also an opportunity to evoke Love in a supercharged and blessed form, in the midst of our family and friends, and send us off bright and ringing.

I'm aware of my limitations - being 26 years old, I've only had so much time to understand who I am, to consider the state of the world, and the implications of what I set out to do with this life. I've decided that its ok to be just a little naive, to have enough bright hope still that you are able to take these leaps of faith. Otherwise we would become victims of our own cynicism and our dreams would quietly wither and become nothing more than faint murmurs of hope for a better future. We must act on the vision that grows within us, and bring it into tangible form with our own hard working hands. Its been a somewhat bewildering year for me, to sort of strategically improvise every step of the process without many examples.

So I am hopeful and doubtful at times, aware of how much is at stake, how wonderful the promise of a vibrant life together is, how partnership demands your authentic bright self and calls upon you to live up to your best qualities. I'm engaged in this work, from now on and always, and there's no knowing where this current will take us. Only that we have struck out together with the best preparations we could make, and carrying these treasures - the intention our soul carries for this life, the dream gardens we tend to even now, the promise and responsibility for our future. Its a huge undertaking, thrilling and scary and promising nothing less than complete life transformation and a vast outpouring of LOVE which has the power to change the world around us... I hope you'll join and support us on the way.

(thoughts)

Is it just this relationship status change? "Guess what y'all, we're engaged!" ... Now how do we measure up as a future husband and wife? We used to just get as much groceries as we could together with a small income, enjoy cooking at home, go for little walks, watch movies... now there is WEIGHT on what we do because of the future. Wasn't there always?
I've seen enough versions of the husband I never want to be, and some great examples of men who seem to offer the best of themselves in partnership. Suddenly my lack of togetherness is terrifying, imminent, hanging around my neck and there's nothing to be done but unwind it all and sort my life out. The thing is, the unfinished threads somehow got caught in the whirring gears of the present, and I'm jogging on this treadmill while trying to detangle a dense knot that may soon shackle me by the ankle and trip me face forward onto the moving ground.
Let me be clear - I always wanted to prove myself. The indecisive periods of my life were filled with long journal entries like this one, searching for what was important to me, dreaming of where I truly wanted to go. I am happy to look back and see the ways I've grown though my own effort, and some of the difficult situations I resolved.
Here I am with everything changed around. I moved across the continent with the woman whom I will marry in 8 months. I've changed my diet to omnivorous. I've all but stopped formally practicing the meditation path I grew up with.
I barely know what socializing means at this point... the friends I considered close are far away, and I'm slow to make new friends. Long habits of being a loner aren't helping much. Its also hard to find meaningful, fun activities with people you're still getting to know, when you're not sure what's the most meaningful thing for you anymore...
I spent so much time digesting spiritual, philosophical books, and having conversations of that nature - now there's too much inside to say and there seem to be no easy introductions to deeper thoughts. I feel like the people I meet aren't on the same wavelength, so that the things we agree on are relatively mundane. Yet here I am, almost silent, offering very little in the manner of conversation-worthy subjects, so where do we go from here?

Engagement Announcement :)

Guess What, Y'all!? (A Musical Slideshow)

This is the video my lady and I made to announce our engagement.

valentine, 2010. -*for Skye*-

It has come to this -
scattered pages at my feet,
poems which fell short
of adorning you with just the right words.

You move me, deeper.

The less I say, the more melodious this love song becomes.
Day and night, unceasing, i am changed so
by the harmonies enveloping my senses
as something magical grows within my chest.

My world, once a veiled dreamers odyssey,
glows with new life.
First flames, now embers,
warming us for each night to come.
Each morning, watching the dawn of your waking smile
I know somehow that we've grown again, invisibly.

More powerful than the tides and wind, this
force of knowing
which resounds within us.

We grow each other
by sheer proximity, it seems.
This fertile everpresence of you and I
could levitate entire gardens,
nourishing them as they float through the sky
and shelter passing birds.

Somehow, the dreams I've borne in solitude
now quicken their dance
when I am next to you, this dream woman
who seems to be made of starlight,
summer wildflowers and giggling faerie rhymes,
who dances with the grace and abandon
of a young river otter,
whose delighted grin reveals a magical formula
to clear away my little stormclouds.

This mask of self-importance is worth nothing.
I find myself doing the fallen flat ridiculous
just to laugh with you.

You are my seastar sunblossom,
my silver-tongued songbird,
serene, your voice often melts this heart
rending armor to ribbons for the winds to steal away.

I cherish the exchange of treasures
each time our eyes meet.
Sea green merges with sky blue,
emerald sapphire raindrops and gold summer snowflakes fall,
and our world changes yet again.

Just walk with me, darling.
I can't wait to see whats next,
and when we're older,
we shall have quite the story to tell...

big year, 2010!

!!!

winter

Strolling sided by side over frozen puddles and under bare scraggly branches, playing word games as our breath dissolves in tiny slow motion frost clouds, hurling rocks above the river to watch them break the ice, greeting the last cluster of Canadian geese, pointing out garden gnomes, crossing the threshold back inside to warmth.

morning vultures

I can usually feel them hovering out of sight, as I start the day's work. Those little demons of the morning, bearing yesterday's little regrets in their talons, like a crowd of very ugly cats with horrible grins offering the carcasses of small and pitiful things at the doorstep. Damn them all. I could deal with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. This is a host of little devils all around. If I don't keep a sharp eye, they simply circle closer and closer, waiting for the moment to dig their claws into my shoulders and bring me down wearily. No matter how breezily the days seem to pass, there will be those little things that didn't quite work out, and linger unresolved. The disappointments, worries, feeble hopes, all born of my own vulnerable insides and fed by my fears. I know them well, and they remind me often of their presence.
Like a pack of feral dogs, there's nothing for it but to growl back, roar if need be, and throw the nearest one a blow it won't easily forget. The only thing they fear is a flame. My own fire is what fills me, fuels me, lights my path. Its a weary task to spark the flint and tinder in a rainstorm. Better to feed the bonfires, let passions blaze bright. When the creative spark is neglected, the shadows bring back things that weren't invited. But if this is our furious tea party, so be it. We'll sit face to face sipping Earl Grey under storm skies. Telling the sea of beady eyes that this, is not what I'm here for. And when the fire in my chest is bright enough, I will show them, and they will flee, because dawn has arrived.