Saturday, February 27, 2010

Presence ~ In Lieu of Presents

As Dave Henson, Executive Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Sonoma County would say: "I am broke, not poor." 
The money I have, I prefer to spend on food - on the life-affirming medicine that our edible planet sprouts forth.
I harbor few possessions, for the mall lost its appeal around the same time that I surpassed my girlish figure. 
I can count on one hand the things I own, such as a '90 Volvo, purchased from a dear friend only three years ago, a few plates, bowls, and cups, and an assembled desk of oak purchased on the cheap from Ikea.
Mainly, I am a keeper of trinkets & mementos - of books filled to the brim with pages scrawled by both my hand and that of others as well as with the photographs of a life well lived.
What I treasure most is what cannot be taken away - the hard won experiences that have accompanied time, travels, education, and relationships.

I don't buy things ...
I prefer to spend quality time and to give of my presence.
Truly, this is a gift that can never be given away - the precious moments that we enjoy in each others' company, giving our ears & our hearts.  The passionate beating, the tick tock of the here and now, is palpably felt and the memory is sealed - forever kept in the unique container that is this human body.

Presence.
(My friend Ben would say that this is all there is.)
Presents.
(Capitalism would have us believe that this is all there is.
Yet, as Frances Moore Lappe wrote in her book, Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet,
"The desire to consume is, fundamentally, an anti-social value.")

So, what does it mean to give of my presence?

When I am whole-heartedly listening - when my entire be-ing is attuned to this moment, now, to you and to whatever may unfold and give way.  Presence is when I am choosing to ignore my very real and very human desire to plan ahead, to think about what I am going to say and how I am going to respond.  Presence is when I respond less from a place of needing to protect myself (out of fear that I may get hurt and out of desire to control an outcome) and more from a willingness to expand, reach beyond, and grow into something far greater than I myself could have ever fathomed.

This is presence.
This is intimacy.
This is improvisation in action.
This is a living democracy.
This is relationship and this is dance.

Won't you join me???

Friday, February 12, 2010

Honoring the Season

(Okay, enough of my inundating you with all of my death and destruction blither blather. Here's some romantic, dreamy yumminess, written years ago for a special someone who rocked my socks off with a mere KISS. Enjoy!~)

(I call it) MAGIC
Your kiss
like giant space rock
bursting into flame
overhead
shot through
this wandering soul/star
puncturing its atmosphere
leaving it to burn
in orange anticipation and
in the heat of red's passion
awaiting
your lip's return.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Death Becomes Me...

Wasted moments,
spent fretting
over what to wear
what to think
what to say
and death becomes me.

Wasted words flung haphazardly
into the chaotic drums of
empty ears.
Wasted moments, wasted ways,
the wasted wilting
and we turn back
towards the Earth, towards the source
from where it came from itself
from its own
wasted wilted withering.
With every breath
spent in solitude in an open
airy breathy silence
death becomes me.
Another wasted day
spent pulling in,
caving in, hoarding
contracting and
restricting
and death becomes me.

Another void
of choke infested streets
of mindless chatter and the
pitter patter of feet running
and skimming along the delusional paths
to freedom and independence.

Wasting wasted
adding to the piles
of cheap plastic crap made in China or Mexico
or Sri Lanka but surely it is not the States
the lawn chairs, am/fm radios
and other wal-mart grade land-filling shit
wasting away in piles the size of small department store buildings
flung like cancerous tumors into the backyards of our neighborhoods
into the family rooms of our homes
into the very heart of our animal nature
turning our wilting ways
and our wasted days
into mindless chitter chatter
and our running feet sent a pitter-patter
on these streets to nowhere.
and death becomes me.