Core Strength

You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.”  - Rumi

These Two

I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough. - Whitman

The Moment When

The moment when your doctor says, "we think you may have an incarcerated umbilical hernia so we are sending you to the ER for a scan and possible surgery tonight". And in your mind you say, " just because it seems so doesn't make it so".  And then the moment when this becomes your mantra.





The moment when the ER doc says, " well you have a hernia BUT your intestines are still intact and only adipose tissue leaked out which is the best possible scenario BUT you still need surgery".

And the moment when the nurse says, "You can leave now".

and you say, "That's a beautiful thing".

and he says, "You're a beautiful thing",.

The moment you laughed holding your abdomen saying, "I thank you from the bottom of my hernia".

Bionic Bellybutton scheduled for August 28th... 

And then moment I can get back into cobra pose.

The Words You Speak

The words you speak become the house you live in.  - Hafiz



She likes to embody certain words...

so she grabbed some fabric paint and Sharpies and made herself some shirts...

From Out the Dark Door of the Secret Earth

Yet under
reason burns brighter fire, which the bones
have always preferred...

It is the light at the center of every cell.
It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward...

- Mary Oliver

I saw a mala at the Rubin made entirely of snake spine and was completely smitten.  A few weeks later I found the skeleton of a tiny snake protruding from the ground and unearthed it.  I named her, Eve.  I made myself a wrist mala.  I made some other talismans from the spine and sent them off to far away friends.


 

What He Said...

His words sent a seismic YES from my core up through all the layers of my body...

Post by David Whyte.

Saints Bowing in Mountains

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear.

For as you talk...
I see great parades with wildly colorful bands
Streaming from your mind and heart,
Carrying wonderful and secret messages
To every corner of this world.

I see saints bowing in the mountains
Hundreds of miles away
To the wonder of sounds
That break into light
From your most common words.

Speak to me of your mother,
Your cousins and your friends.

Tell me of squirrels and birds you know.
Awaken your legion of nightingales—
Let them soar wild and free in the sky...

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear,

Yet Hafiz
Could set you upon a Stage
And worship you forever!

-Hafiz

This Blessed Summer

Swimming and sleepovers and giant dosas...

Simple Joys

Delicious fried green tomatoes, ecstatic lindy hop, psychedelic ocular migraine, this milky light, a surprise visit from faraway family.

She dreams of a warm lake, and moonlight, and skinny-dipping, and a bonfire. She remembers that night she drove to the lake with a handful of friends where they flung their clothing on the shore and plunged into the water like their lives depended on it. And when the laughter subsided, how the crickets sang louder and the silver streak of the moon reached across the surface of the lake until it touched each one of them. And then there was a reverence, like a baptism... and they began to sing...

"Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing through my open ears
Inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on, across the universe
Jai Guru Deva OM
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world"

She wants this again, another baptism of moonlight and lake and skin and laughter and singing, and swimming and fire.

A Sip of Sky

She's in the garden at dawn, taking notes. She once met a bluejay who could mimic a hawk. This morning she met a Raven who could mimic a duck. "Now I've seen everything", she said, "or not". Suddenly it began to sprinkle. She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and held her coffee mug up to catch the rain. She took a sip of sky and said, "thank you".
 

Some days ago,  a Giant Leopard Moth came to her front porch and died there so she saved the creature's body.  This morning a Tiger Moth was in the same spot, resting...waiting to chase moonbeams.  It seems to be the summer of the winged big cats!

Every soul is a teacher.
Every soul is a student.

Godspeed, Nicole!

I bless the day your voice reached my ear. Godspeed, fire spirit, godspeed!


Earth My Body from Nicole Sangsuree Barrett on Vimeo.

Earth my body,
Water my blood,
Air my breath
and Fire my spirit

I like to sing to the earth
I like to hold her
She likes to sing to me
She likes to hold me

I carry fistfuls of leaves
I make love to the breeze
I carry fistfuls of bones
I trust they will lead me home

I carry grief on my wings
I know why caged bird sing
Through many turns of this moon
My women have suffered wounds

But my grandmother's with me
Close your eyes can't you see
And my children are here
The rose, the Crow and Deer

I am surrounded by light
The light of stories
I need to quiet my mind
I need to listen

We are surrounded by light
The light of stories
We need to quiet my mind
We need to listen

Earth my body,
Water my blood,
Air my breath
and fire my spirit

Song of Summer

“Your self is sacred; be true to it.” - Paul Brunton (A Message from Arunachala)
 
"There is no right way or wrong way", her teacher said softly, "there is only the way...you have to trust that you are the way". Suddenly, she felt herself expand into the spaciousness of those words. When she awakens each morning thereafter, she takes a deep breath and exhales a long, quiet "thank you", then slowly places her feet on the floor.  "I'm just a soul in a human-suit", she thinks to herself, "no more, no less".  She remembers tripping over tree roots in the moonlight, and the way the rocks wiggled beneath her feet while crossing the stream. And the fireflies in the tall grass, the way they floated there so silent, so full of light.  She counts these things as blessings and keeps a list in her mind.  They are her buoys:

• The patina of her homegrown blueberries 
• Summer peach pizza with balsamic reduction
• Ukeleles
• Swimming pools
• The wings of the Giant Leopard Moth
• Wheels and the wind in our hair

His First Sash

"No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.”  - J.R.R. Tolkien

Resonance: Oh Sweetest Song

Resonance: when one object vibrating at the same natural frequency of a second object causes that second object into vibrational motion.

That reminds me of one of my favorite Rilke poems...

Love Song
Rainer Maria Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

Unus Mundus

"Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest, You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul." - Walt Whtiman (I sing the body electric)

"The Reunion of the Soul and the Body", illus. William Blake / etching Schiavonetti (1808)

 

Unshaddowed Light: Summer's Start

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest. - Wendell Berry

.

How monotonous our speaking becomes when we speak only to ourselves! And how insulting to the other beings – to foraging black bears and twisted old cypresses – that no longer sense us talking to them, but only about them, as though they were not present in our world…Small wonder that rivers and forests no longer compel our focus or our fierce devotion. For we walk about such entities only behind their backs, as though they were not participant in our lives. Yet if we no longer call out to the moon slipping between the clouds, or whisper to the spider setting the silken struts of her web, well, then the numerous powers of this world will no longer address us – and if they still try, we will not likely hear them.” ― David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology