Coming Home to You

"Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath."

-Robert P. Tristram Coffin
From Crystal Moment

Just back from Earthdance in St-Fortuant. A festival with the intention of a global peace prayer, and it was set on a beautiful land in Quebec. The people out there have begun building a wonderful magical forest with tree houses and installations with the focus of building a long term community. It was so lovely to be on land that was treated with such love and care. 

This was the last festival for me of this incredible summer. The fall solstice has happened, and now it is time for a change of pace. 

This summer has been so enriching, has set me back on my feet in terms of the types of communities I want to live in. Places like this where people are building and creating everyday. The type of world that involves imagination and intention. Places where there can be celebration and craziness, but also hard work and a movement towards a more enriched world. 

The question now is, how do these experiences translate? As I move from this active summer into the quiet fall, how do I make sure that the fluidity of these spaces, the daily art, the transcendence, the human connection and the openness to change, enter into my life everyday? It is so easy in the forest and with these people to be the type of person that I want. But in the systems I work in, participate in, I often have to be someone I don't really want to be. Especially in the art world, I feel like we've lost the magic of the universe. Which is ridiculous. Art should be all about the magic that happens in each and every one of us. 

So thank you, all the humans who have been involved in reminding me this summer that life should be focused around that magic. Hopefully I will continue to be able to focus on that as I hunker down into this fall. As things begin to quiet and die, I will begin to turn inward, and remember that this energy too is necessary to for this cycle. 

Civilizing the Child

You can't keep it, I say

it will decay.

Bury the mouse, I tell her

it will make the tulips redder,

give the trees babies,

fatten the faces of the daises,

put manes on the grass. 

Spring comes up thick from the dead, I say,

broadcasting the words like seeds

until she obeys, sadly,

with her green child's trowel,

and when she runs out the next morning

to see the pink hawthorn

has an extra blossom or two

-and it has, it has!-

I go scott-free, acquitted

by her happiness-tinged cheeks,

my judges, my blind jury. 

-Lisel Mueller

Poetry Lives!

McDougal, Littell& Company, 1976

All photos from event website