Tag Archives: Energy

Good Morning Moon

Posted on by Standard 12
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Good morning, Moon. You wondrous lover who awaits my rising blinds to greet me each morning. Some days you are as full as my good fortunes. Other days you are little more than a whisper at the top of grass, but there you are, all the same. We are companions you and I, rising and falling with the tides of our day. You have taught me so much, my friend, let me tell you. You have lit my way on many a darkened path and when you are but a sliver of existence, you have shown me how, even then, it is possible to cast your light for all to see.

Winter Queen

Posted on by Standard 8
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Oh that whore! She comes on like a beast. Whipping her snow and ice, demanding I heel. She blinds in her furious whiteness and pushes me hard against the door with her pounding wind. I slam it in her face and stumble to the stairs, breathless. I am Ahab and she Moby Dick.

“You shall not pass!” If I had Gandalf’s staff I’d have slammed it to the earth, but in truth, this statement is made rather weakly as she has, in fact, commanded me thoroughly all the way home. I have skated more than walked. Trudged bent, more than floated, regally. My fingers are stiff, my face wind burned and cold. I learned in karate, though, that if your opponent has greater skill, at least come out sounding ferocious. It may, in the end, be the only edge you’ll ever have. I head up stairs and unravel myself of gloves, coat and scarf. Snow pours off onto the floor and the cats scatter. My nose is soon running, but I am not put off. I stand before the dining room window and survey my winter kingdom and sniffle. I may be a snotty queen, but I am The Queen here.

Snow lifts off in waves from the roofs curling and swirling and slamming back hard toward the earth. Trees rock and sway in the gusting winds and the broken slot in one of my gutters whistles and moans. I startle at the sudden whipping of the screens against the windows, but regain my composure lest she think she has caught me off guard. She is impressive, I must give her that, but I am no puny human. I raise my arms up to command the winds, “Regale me with your winter taunts, you nefarious witch! Tear the shingles if you must, I will not be intimidated.” Admittedly, my cavalier stance comes from good homeowner’s insurance, but she knows nothing of this. She only sees my defiance and strength.

“I, not you,” I hiss, venomously with flashing eyes, “am the Winter Queen here!”

Love

Posted on by Standard 7


No idea where these images are from. My Aunt Liz sent them in an email.

Ah Valentine’s Day… A chance to remember love, yes? If we let go of the chocolate, diamonds, and Hallmark cards what is left? What is love beyond this day of hearts and flowers?

It is your complete awareness of your beauty alone in the dark.
It is laughter at your own jokes.
It is a willingness to be yourself despite what anyone else thinks.
It is dancing badly and singing even worse.
It is having such faith in the sacredness of all life you leave all to be who they are.
It is remembering why you fell in love with a person, a place, a song.
It is risking your former self to discover who you haven’t met within you yet.
It is making sacrifices because your inner love can’t help but spill onto all whom you love.
It is an inner well of such goodness you withhold judgment and criticism
It is a generosity of spirit that sees and expresses divine beauty and grace to all whom you meet.
It is filling your heart with the smallest, most mundane moments of your ordinary life and feeling immense gratitude for them.
It is knowing that the Universe pours love on you as a great river without ending.

Nothing brings love through the front door. It grows out of you as the oak from the acorn. It rises up a great fountain and floods your Universe. You are not empty and given love. You are love and when you anchor your mind there the world explodes in more facets than any diamond you have ever seen.

Over the Hill

Posted on by Standard 8
Waterton Canyon Road: Photo by Noelle
Before dawn: Photo by Noelle

Anticipation builds as you climb the hill and near the crest or travel the road that comes to a bend. You could come this way a dozen times and you never lose the sense of magic at what lies around the corner or over the hill. It is as ingrained in our spirit as the breath of life itself. We are meant to explore, discover and ponder this Universe we were given. We are all adventurers, though some of us have fallen asleep in the field. Comfy we’ve become that we are more like a cat in a sunny window, even when the sun has diminished and the earth has grown cold.

Wake up, wake up, you sleepy head! Do not linger in this spot for too long. There is more of Magellan in your belly than the sitting hen, you oft convince yourself you’ve become. Listen closely. Do you not hear it? The trail calls just over the hill. Just over the hill and around the next bend.

Alice

Posted on by Standard 11

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Free Bing Photos

If you ever want to see how ingrained a habit is, try breaking it, even once. I meditate every day after work. The weather has been unseasonably warm and to not go out in it would be a travesty, as my mother would say. To catch it I have to leave as soon as I get home and delay my sit for just a bit. Small thing, right? Even as I feel an exhilaration to hit the trail my feet drag as my body clearly wants to sit for meditation. Working at getting out the front door is tantamount to walking through a tunnel of cotton candy. It’s odd feeling your body wanting to go back inside as your head, heads out. That odd feeling though, is the sound of gears grinding on my ego’s ideas on how life should be. I’ve been thinking lately that I should practice that grind more often.

On any given day, goose poop litters the paths and sidewalks all the way to the marsh. On my walks I hop between the piles looking as if I’m playing the longest game of hopscotch ever. I know it’s pointless since, as the snow melts, the runoff is full of goose poop. What appears to be a clean path, isn’t. Still, I hop along imagining I am a paratrooper crossing a mind field into enemy lines. One wrong step and I’m done. Its entertainment for me, if not my neighbors and reminds me of being ten. Today, however, I remembered the muckers. I have sneakers I only wear to my friend’s barn to muck the stalls. Their bottoms have slogged through a lot of horse manure and I leave them in the garage. I don them happily knowing they were made for the world’s biggest piles of dung and finally leave my stoop.

A neighbor’s voice carries easily across the lake in a deep baritone, as he appears to be talking to someone on the phone. It is impossible not to eavesdrop.

“Everywhere we go, I ask after someone and they always say, “Oh that guy, he’s been dead for ages”. Then they seem all apologetic. Alice just says, “Don’t worry honey, we thought we should be dead ages ago, too.” His laughter banks off the houses on the other side of the lake and I can’t help but smile.

“Listen, listen here… I went to my 61st high school reunion. They had a list of names of those who graduated that year. Three pages of dead folks and a page of the living. All anyone wants to talk about is how so and so died. If he died parachuting out of a plane or in a runaway train ya got my ear, but other than that, hearing how old people died is about as interesting as stewed beets. Honestly, I’ve had a better time at a funeral.” He guffaws loudly. “Huh? Hell, I’ve already written my obit. No one lies about my accomplishments better than me. Ain’t that right, Alice.” I think I hear a kind of grunt come from inside the house, presumably Alice.

“No, no… I’m gonna be 87 next week. No, I’m not kidding.” He slams his hand down, emphatically, on the deck rail. “I’ll be 87. A guy called the other day to try to sell Alice and I life insurance. We told ’em if he was selling death insurance we’d be in!” Laughter storms the lake.

“I make a damn fine Rob Roy, I tell ya and here, listen up… If I get to heaven before you, I’ll have the finest Rob Roy you’ve ever had sittin’ there on the bar…. Well, hell, if you can’t drink in heaven where can you drink? Ain’t that right, Alice” Finally, Alice appears on the deck, “Ask him if he thinks that was water they were drinkin’ in those cups at the last supper? Ask him that.” I realize I’ve fallen in love with a woman I’ve never met.

Their banter continues and I walk on facing the setting western sun. They say sunlight is good for the cones in your eyes and that all of our sunglass wearing is actually weakening our eyesight. All our indoors-ness and computer screens are shortening our cones and causing them to vibrate in shorter color ranges. Holistic practitioners say we should get at least thirty minutes of sun every day. This is also true of the pituitary gland, I’ve read. That as we age the pituitary calcifies and it needs sunlight to blast off those calcifications. These are the sort of odd concerns and thoughts one has as they age. Do I have a clean pituitary gland? I mean, who wants a pituitary as hard as your shin bone. So I walk with my eye lids half closed and let the sun warm my eyes and imagine a limber pituitary and long, vibrating cones. Or I do for few moments, but the sun is warm and speaks so much of spring that after a time I am walking, half lidded thinking of beaches and warmer days to come. My meditation time is now long forgotten, along with the goose poop, as I walk into the sunny marsh. I realize I have gone from weird hopscotch lady to pituitary worrying sun bather. I remember the old man having himself a fine laugh at death with his old gal, Alice. I laugh, too. Me and my muckers and my calcified pituitary and short, faded, retinal cones, breaking the ceiling on my wierd little habits. I laugh even harder and wish I could confirm how funny life is with old Alice.

Field Sprites

Posted on by Standard 10
Bear Lake: Photo by Noelle

Bear Creek Lake: Photo by Noelle

Late afternoon and they are the briefest flash. Light catchers snagging flames before dark. I don’t know who I was before I was the one who sees them. I suspect it doesn’t matter now. Once the heart sees it can never be truly blind again.

Winter

Posted on by Standard 9

The lake: Photos by Noelle

Winter is richness, not death. Riveting blues, stark vistas, animal tracks seen in a brilliant sun. After her tail quickly vanished into the ravine only her tracks were left on the snow. Cheeky coyote.

Night Walk: Part V

Posted on by Standard 3
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Free Bing Photos

A twenty minute walk would normally take you to the lake, but on this night it was closer to thirty five. The the road I cross from the marsh to lake is poorly cleared and there is a field of six to eight inches of snow to cross to reach the lake. I followed the cross country ski lines I saw so clearly in the light of the moon, from someone who had passed this way earlier in the day. I knew in all this crunch of snow and steaming breath no wildlife would be caught unaware. An owl can here a mouse crawling under snow a half mile off. To any Great Horned nearby I am sure I sounded a fire brigade to its ears. By the time I reached the lake I was sweating and hot and pealing off mittens, coat and hat as fast as I could. Temperatures enough to freeze the lake solid and I was as close to naked as I could stand amidst huge billows of steaming air.

As my breath slowed I became keenly aware of the sounds around me. Someone scraping a shovel on a sidewalk not quite a kilometer off. The highway to the west that runs below the hills that nestle the lake. A dog barking and someone calling out to a passerby. Sound carried across the snow as if we were all swimming in water. The ice on the lake cracked near where I was standing, but was muffled by all the snow. I was alone out here. With the light of the moon I could see for miles. Nothing along the lakeside moved. I stood very still and looked all around me. I am not even sure how to describe how the moon turned the lake into an iridescent opal of blues and purples. How tiny bits of light winked up off the snow in the moonlight, made all the clearer because of the darkness. How tree limb shadows snaked out across the snow in the deepest shades of purple and violet. The snow-capped hogbacks rose beyond the lake peppered in evergreen and patches of tall grasses positively glowing. The stars sat deep in their velvety darkness humbled by the moonlight and I too bowed to her power.

I redressed quickly as the sweat began to cool me off more than I wanted and picked the lower trail. I knew I needed to keep moving. I passed near a neighborhood that borders the lake. All the shades had been pulled that faced the mountains of these houses and I wondered at all they were missing. If I lived at the corner house I would never close my shades. On a night like this I would sit in my darkened home with the curtains wide, sipping hot cocoa enjoying an immense view.

On the far side, farthest from the neighborhoods and the roads and nearest the hogbacks, I stopped and listened for a long while. If you listen carefully you realize there is a deep silence even in the noise of neighboring life. It is steady and persistent. You may stand to listen for a moment, but it enchants you the longer you stand there. In all that silence, in all that open space covered in moonlit snow you forget yourself. You forget the cold and the distance for home. You forget you are a mere human in all this grandeur, and yet, that is when you realize you are the grandeur, too. The moment you stopped to appreciate all that beauty and silence you became a part of it. Instead of moving through, you moved in. In that moonlit field by the lake you have become, like the wild buckwheat and tall prairie grass, another motionless figure adding to the rich texture of a majestic landscape.