Aurinko

Solstitium, zun, solare and infernus.  I'm a diatribe of reason, hanging around café Sol.  Don't take away my Sun today.  Mud, leaves, twigs, vines.  Amorous hues.  An Aurora of my aura.  Splashing through the watery grass.  It's green and clean on Earth.  Don't be a techno terre.  March over terra firma with naked steps.  Listen to her firmament.  It just doesn't happen without the swing of Jupiter and the Sun's magnetic personality.  Moving mountains, rushing snow.  The twining vines dig my roots, rock my chakras.  Into a state of delirium, the depths of solstitium.  Eggs, Sun, Sow.  Sewing the day away.  Creating a little fun under the air tight rainbows.  Where is our ice and snow?  Another week forgetting there was a lizard lounge for cosmic dreamers.  Eternal screamers.  A café to sip and sleep on dust clouds.  Alone.

the Talking Deads

As I get out and about this season, I stop at some very interesting places.  There are people and places I know just by looking.  Then there is this cavernous and rainy holiday.  Quiet for sure.  Upon the clouds, the light floats a little.  Emitting rays from the last days of waning dawns, here comes the Sun.  Bigger and brighter and pulsing ever stronger now.  It is a day of Sun to my right shoulder, moon to my left.  The moon is big and white, hanging in the blue, hailing the Sun opposite.  She sends me around, let's send her again the opposite way.  There are some really big karmic bags being lugged around for the holiday season.  Nothing like some good baggage to spare and not some jolly man's sack o' toys, either.  For those who can not understand the need to provide for someone else.  For those who decide their choices in life are superior, let's look at the options, shall we?  I get sick of the jabs at people who are making choices in life based on limited options.  Then there is the other side of the world.  Judgments thrown around here would be seen as ridiculous anywhere else.  I wonder why that's so?  Why people feel the need?  Is that their present for the holiday?  A big clap on the back for being "better".  Good for you.  Don't forget that others are trying to find their way through things you most likely can't or won't understand.  This season sucks.  Each year, I try to find a way to make it better and it only gets worse.  Each year my hair falls free with the wind.  Good bye!  My colors will now be, until I'm taken over, brown and silver.

the Spectre Spectator

From the box, on the side, I can see the face of the man change under the movement of a single candle in his hand.  In the dark chapel, he moves the candle down under his face and produces the look of a most grave ghost named Marley.  His voice changes as he speaks the words of the chain toting phantom.  The man produces from his own face and voice a variety of characters.  The greedy Scrooge comes out in a higher, faster pitch.  He is scared, a coward, yet curious.  I sit among others but I am not seen.  One unused seat in the house.  A ghost watching the incarnation of ghosts.  Marley, past, present and future.  All the ghosts out the window, too.  And I am a ghost watching the ghost of Dickens' words play across the stage.  Words you know in your sleep.  Words that have some immortality.  Words.  It seems a phantom could make a noise or a word but I simply watch the brilliance of words burn across time and out into space.  We make our words to remember.  And we use them to transport.  One person, after another, will pass the sentences of the living, into the fragments of the dead.  We can understand but not own the pen.

the Addict

There is a certain type of person that has relegated themselves to put their nose to the grindstone.  There is an addictive personality that goes with weathering a place of eternal economic depression and debilitating weather.  This person has to be the addict.  It does not matter what they are addicted to and breaking the addictive behavior is one of the most difficult things to do.  Be it shopping, drugs, sex, food, social media or gambling, the addictions take root to make up for the dismal atmosphere and prospects of life.  Can we live without our ghettos or 'hoods'?  Can we live without our "boogin alleys"?  It is a fair question.  Can we be happy unless someone else is below us in status?  There is a huge superiority complex that happens in such a competitive-over-nothing atmosphere.  I've seen a fair amount of competition over the pettiest of things.  It all stems from unhappy people.  People would create a competition out of breathing if there was nothing else to have a contest over.  Breaking the habit.  Tossing out the cigarettes and alcohol.  Getting rid of the drugs.  Stop shopping til you drop.  Stop throwing money out the window or into the lottery.  Stop sleeping with whoever comes your way.  Stop eating til you are gorged each day.  Stop posting or tweeting or stalking people on social media.  These things get in the way.  If the neutron bomb actually went off and all technology was rendered unusable, what would people do?  Would they bother to learn survival skills?  Or are we too spoiled to come back from the brink?  Are we too addicted to learn?  We don't need as much food as we think we do.  We don't need pointless social interactions but we need to truly enjoy the ones we do have.  We don't need a myriad of lovers but we do need love.  We don't need substances to get through the day.  Maybe we can go without all the Hollywood diets, too.  Even eating healthy and working out can become an addiction.  Even work.  The addictive personality is to take something to an unreasonable level or let something rule our life.  As for me, I just want solitude and time to myself.  That is in short supply these days. 

the Silver Wheel

The needle sharp point of the piercing gun breaks the skin and leaves a hole within.  Aches, pains and a silver star shaped body jewel ready to wear.  No more nose.  The world knows of the horror within.  The tattoo needle scratching the skin.  Quick to put the color on and make the scars permanent.  Wearing the paint life til death do we part.  A five star hotel in a forty year old man's kitchen.  He can make and bake.  He's a freakin' magician but I haven't fallen for the spell.  I look upon him with star spangled eyes.  An infinite patriot that wants a star burned into her flesh and nailed to her nose.  Arianrhod pursues and moves the wheel of starlight around as the moon dances down to the ground.  What does this celestial wheel have to do with my outer appearance?  I'll wear it til this animated flesh moves no more.  The sickle and the ice.  A creep reaper, out to torment the most innocent of dreamers.  Plant life.  A plain life on a shelf.  In the penetralia of my mind, my psyche, ganglion, I squirm and worm out of the worst scenarios.  Face your fear.  You are an awful excuse for a person.  Swing, Rataczyck.  He was the last immortal of Vinland, returning to his home of ice and fire.  His volcano blew to welcome him home.  Origami limbo. 

veritae Winter darkness Light

The seashell delicate sky obscures a pale winter sun.  As we drive by a dark twisted forest of all kinds.  Only the dark evergreen pine colors the trees of dark brown and blackish bark.  Striped birch seems gray.  The vine like limbs weave themselves over the panoramic view and dark clouds  edge the horizon.  You have to climb to reach the cold pale winter sky.  Just a glimpse of what the fire is, on the other side of our cosmic chakra system.  Sun is fire.  Sun is Sol.  Sun is spitting at us, each day, the fires we need to live.  For life.  But today, Sun is hiding in a haze of yellowish hue behind light seashell blues and light yellows.  The sky's bleak attempt at warming us.  It gives way to the black clouds and rambling woods.  It runs up to the road to meet us.  It says, 'come in' like in an old fairy tale or horror movie.  Come in.  This is your Pennsylvania version of the English moors.  The woods.  Stick to the road.  Sun is soul.  Beware the moon at night.  Beware the moonlight.  All changes, all dies or all comes alive.  Sick at six p.m. in a midnight deep dark cemetery.  The moon will light it up for strange shadows to dance over headstones and graves.  The grave gives way to disturbed earth.  Lazy grassy lawns with bereaved skeletons inside their boxes.  Modern midnight spooky tales.  These specters claw their way up to listen to the ghastly tale I must tell of pale Suns and brilliant moons and the living limbs in the forest.  The bones rattle and digest each request.  No longer caring but really listening.  This is how we know they are like memories forever ago.  Stark, cold trees and dead things during December's light.  Yule ghosts flitter over ivy and holly.  Here they pass over holy grounds. 

the Dried Bouquet Hallway

Kitsch Witchery and my maniacal domestic bliss converge into plans for decorating and celebrating for these long lost holy days or holidays or sabats or  solstices or equinoxes.  Remainder and reminder.  I'm a domestic lady, for now.  No peeling wallpaper, thank you, but there is chipped paint.  The lavender out in frost will be brought in to thaw and dry and be hung in my dried bouquet hallway.  An entire hallway space dedicated to my outdoor grown herbs and flowers to dry.  Makes sense and a use for the space, which at present is clogged with all kinds of crap.  Dried mint, etc. will hang there.  I like the smells.  I'll need a skinny bench to work there, too, and my seed cupboard and shelves in the hallway.  I don't can (yet).  I don't sew (yet).  I don't have time (yet).  Food complicates my life for now.  But I'd like to have a somewhat cozy Yule, at home, with a nice little meal and candles.  Curt and I relaxing with our animal babies would be nice.  No running, to and fro.  But that is not my "vacation".  That is the ideal, of course.  But not what happens these past several years.  It's all running and going crazy and pulling out my hair.  Trying to figure out what to do, what to get and then find time to wrap it all and get it to where it's going.  The prep for this "celebration" exhausts my spirit and makes me cringe at the word 'holiday'.  I choose to focus on ice, frost and snow.  I choose to focus on wind, rain, sleet and slush.  Hail.  That's a word.  What's the weather done?  Perhaps I'll focus on wiping my pups muddy paws and making a window seat for my cats to doze in.  Perhaps I'll just quit the maniacal business of 'rushing by' the holiday and actually TAKE a holiday.  Take a break.  Take a vacation.  All in my own home.  I'm enjoying making it better but the snail pace at which I'm getting things completed makes me anxious, irritable and envious of others who do it all better and have more time.  If I can't get things completed, I don't, can't, won't enjoy the simple joy of Yule this year, let alone my birthday.  That is just how I feel.

Bacchus Valley land of Werewolves and Lucia

The smallest detail of a dream.  A carved relief in an underground cave, not yet discovered by anyone.  (Man, those dreams get frosty overnight.)  I wandered the land of ice and snow and crawled my way deep into the earth to a place of strange treasure.  The orbs of stone.  The walls of stone and glass.  The cold, dark sanctuary of art.  We pillaged the place.  We looked for precious things.  We identified the boon, looking for the names of each gem or jewel or stone.  And with each passing item, I found more strange things.  But one thing, on the wall, caught my attention.  One thing made me pause in time and forget that I was an adventurer, set out to sea to find this place.  In the land of ice and snow, I found Bacchus on the wall, looking at me to take him down.  Wine appeared, quite suddenly, in my glass.  I was a lady wearing the warrior marks and the wind blown, grassy fabric, but I was in the temple of a strange god.  He's not so strange now.  I gulped the draught of wine and took down the relief of the demi-god in his shrine.  Eons protected and he was mine.  My mind, a cauldron and pentangle.   In that instant, I could hear the incessant howling of the wolves.  My mind saw the blood colored snow they left behind.  In this land of wolf and ice and blood and sea, in this land of rock and wine, I had to move across the stone floor to the tunnel and dig my way out with Bacchus under my arm.  It was like digging from a womb out into the brilliance of sunlit snow.  All the while knowing death is chasing you down.  The Bacchus wolves howled and I knew they were in pursuit.  Funny how, even death can cast a shadow.  Back to the boat now, with wine in your veins and your god in tow.  You and the other rioters run until your vessel carries you home.  Inside the wood, on the waves, riding to Sun, I could relax with art I had plucked from time.  He came home with me.  Shuddering against the stars on the water as chunks of ice flowed by.  I held him up against the starry sky.  I wondered at his journey and this sojourn over the cold watery mirror.  He was writing, in me, his Magical Menagerie.  Until we arrived home on the thirteenth of December.  My demigod of wine and my candles I wore.  Lucia girl and Star boy.  We lived in our land of Winter with the god of Summer. 

Nocturne Lady

Singular or plural, I bounce from one to the next to find him.  Something strange told me I'd be out and about looking for someone who didn't want me.  But it hit me unaware.  I didn't know that I'd feel it or find it.  I didn't know I'd be on a hook and pulled out to sea.  I didn't know I was his trophy, until I was.  I didn't know because it just came along and took me.  Some invisible arrow struck me and I was over.  Done.  Finished.  Some invisible wave carried me away from solid shores.  I was out in the open and in the torrent.  No where to go but into the maelstrom.  Some raging sea of youth and hostility, lust and tragedy.  I became the joke to end all.  The lady, the elder, taken by fancy back into the realm of youth and greener days.  It's like living in a dream.  Nothing is real about it.  The grays still grow and the wrinkles deepen.  Time and sorrow pull apart an already heavy heart.  But she worked to keep it light these last few years.  She worked to go back in time.  Her midnight hour rang and she knew the world was over.  There was no such man waiting out in the battering wind and rain.  There was no love beyond this worldly realm.  It was all a dream and a light invocation of old emotions.  One day, back there, we were young and swimming and laughing and playing.  We were young and out in the sun.  Playing together like lovers do.  Those days and summers flew by like the forests from a window of a speeding car along the highway.  They are gone.  Today is like the slowing of the clock until it dies on the time.  We are all wine dying on the vine.  Like some poet said, eons ago from the dark theater, is everybody in?  What words he felt were immortal have since passed away.  Some hunter may find them buried beneath the dust and if they dig further they may discover my heart beating away the ticking time of the almost deceased clock on the wall.  A pulse so light and erratic, that it is mistaken for the rain on the metal rooftops.  Does she still have that tell tale heart?  Does she still wear it, bright red and bleeding, on her sleeve?  You can tell by her closing eyes what she felt and meant.  But those thoughts and loves and emotions are dying away.  Soon she will be just another yesterday.

Aurora on Ice

Holiday scenes flash blues and greens.  Across the sky, energy flows like the rainbow bridge.  Reflecting from the calm face of the lake, the sky reversed.  Stars stare up.  Silver smoky eyes wide enough to see themselves in the infinite dream.  The still lake holds all of heaven in its mirror face framed by crystal ice.  Yellow green aurora crackles and shifts.  It dances serpentine spirals in between the fallen snow and dainty stars.  It departs on fragments of ice and wind.  Steal the atmosphere.  This green flowing water branching out over the rough terrain.  The face of a place I know.  Snorri's words fall like snow down here.  Aurora Borealis field of stars awash in varying hues.  Bleeding colors over space and time.  Volcanic eruptions through lightning flashes.  Swing, Reykjavik.   Mountains sweet and old.

post haste

Out of the woods. We're not out of the woods yet. Night does not delete it's fall. We catch a glimpse of sunset. Only a slim silver crescent shines above the gray mountain. And, to the north, a large gray mass of cloud moves in. Like a blanket pulled over the last rays of day. It comes to cover the tiny crescent moon. We stand, as if transfixed, and witness this display of winter coming on. From Bridgeview to Bridge St., my heart moves through the forest. It travels the long roads and gavants through the holloways of the woodlands. Other women's men. Ghosts that line the side of the interstate. I fly by. They stand, unaware. I pick at the treasures on the ground and take them home. These things string memories of where I found them. They remain keepsakes in my fossil bag. I've known this land, with orange and red trees and dark skies for many a year. I dream of Woonsocket and a different space. But there is no ocean in the dense forest. Dream away. Long rivers. Dream away. Long roads. Even catching a thought passing out a car window is a dream. Brain waves caught those terrific songs of musicians. And the only one who hears is the crow in the green leaves. I've seen one before, watching me. He knows my face. He carries it with him through the only land I've known. I wonder if it will fade when I'm gone. When all of this will be a distant memory

Greetings from Appalachia Hotel

We'll all have a good old fashioned food fight or eatin' contest.  The winner chows the doughnut hole.  Burned ends and all.  Pele fire all up and down your chin.  Some witness takes the floor and calls out your hobbies and styles.  Writes your star chart even.  I'm having a problem with food and livery.  Here in my boxed remove in Appalachia, I find myself hardly getting it done.  Miss Merchant tossed her cookies.  It's time to move on from old sorrows and humble pie.  Here in this organic matter that oozes from the dark depths of the human heart, we see our cholesterol rocket and our fires fade.  Give me some carbonated fizz to finish off my palpitations.  Pump, pump, pump.  Die.  I also can not breathe through fart noises and sulphuric emissions.  Rotten eggs for those rotten tomatoes.  The words stink like rotten food.  The food we gorge ourselves with.  Piles of food.  If only it were real.  Fast food should be an apple on the go.  I'm an adult so certainly my decisions should follow.  But, oh the junk culture has me by my guts.  It won't stop until I'm a rotted out core of my former self.  All of this for a haunted house.  This human flesh needs some tlc.  This vessel needs some care.  It's been put in the corner for far too long.  It needs to take priority.  I've mapped my struggles out like Cervantes and his windmills.  The long ago listless rotations of dreams around an idea.  Struggles kind of linger in that way.  Can't get a breeze to blow. 

Salton Sea

I get all very Doomsday Device sometimes.  It is quite unpleasant.  And I recant all of my positive vibes, replacing them with negative ones.  I get hopeless and helpless.  Sometimes, I feel despair.  It's all to do with the state of things.  Our human affairs.  We collect and grow so many problems on this planet Earth.  We forget that this place is supposed to be a garden for food, water and beauty.  It is supposed to be a place to grow healthy in.  But, in our most human mind, we lost it.  Somewhere along the way, we lost our ability to see the ground we walk on or the stars above us.  We harvest bad feelings when we forget to let the good in.  We walk around on borrowed time.  Cancer twists around some things we don't see.  I want to be free of it sometimes.  The pressure is building along the San Andreas Fault.  Some kind of spring board release.  I don't want to see it when it snaps.  But there are positive forces building also.  Going low to the Badwater Basin while climbing to the peak of Mount Everest.  The world will change whether we decide to care for it or not.  It will take us where it wants us.  Our care should come for the quality of the Earth we stand upon.  Our care should come for the generations on the way.  We have some leaders reflecting this thought.  I want, I want.  I wish, I wish.  But these things are not easy to acquire in material form.  Lust for power.  Words fall on the weak.  What are we going to DO?  What should our activities be?  How do we baby step ourselves into responsibility?  Simple, powerful and pure.  These things are our connection to each other.  We are not as separate as we seem.  Awake and describe the very world you see.  Get beyond the neutron bomb.  If we peel back these layers of time, we are left with the flint and the fire.  We are left with the cave dwellings.  Religion, the scribbles on parchment to the very ritual.  The theater of the natural and dream world.  Of the want.  The higher desires.  To the wish.  Let the transcendent be activity.  There is the ritual stage.  The practice theatrum, theatron.  The dream stage performs and changes the ideas each time.  A dance with slight changes of movement.  Practice space for the creation of worldly change.  I am an onlooker to this play.  And I still follow patterns of the stars.  One great cosmic drama unfolding in the riot of the human mind.  Still crawl as if on the Death Valley floor.  Writhe past, as if it's 1913, Furnace Creek.  Understand the soil, terra firma, firmament the memory of water and long lost garden remains.

the feral cat at parties

That is so me.  I'm the one standing alone.  I'm the one leaving early.  Of course, I'd rather spend time with the outdoors.  I want to find the fleeting forests.  Just for an instant we were here.  I am the philosopher who doesn't need to be at the party anyway.  It's incongruent of me to pretend.  I remember when we walked along the broad sidewalks to town to seek the company of the wild young ones.  I knew then that my philosopher shouldn't be there.  She didn't like the parties.  She was always writing that down.  Aqua vitae.  To drink is to fall.  To excess.  There is only one way.  That way is forward.  Auribus teneo lupum.  There is a danger in following your heart.  There is a vulnerability that can't be denied. 

Pitch Glittering

His avarice is like an anemic vampire.  This is his domain of greed and anxiety.  No one wants to live there any more.  I am pinioned through reason to dismiss his want of money and power.  He opines daily about his obsession with control.  Would I be banned from saying so?  I've lived a protean life teeming with possibility.  I am a simple Bedouin following my lodestar.  The night dwells eternal.  The moon glow pear is my possibility.  How many times did I dream of it, out of my reach?  I love to feel real.  Like noshing on pesto and cheese.  Life and it's plethora of possibilities.  You may not wake for tomorrow.  Printemps is too far off to tell.  Do we live or die or are we reborn?  Exchange your death for a life anew.  We parlay existence like butterflies all over this universe.  With so much starlight in our cosmos, why don't we look up?  We change but we can not use it.  It is a sad state.  Screaming butterflies.  There is something rare and fragile and fleeting about this world that makes us ignore the bigger ideas.  We are willing to accept our seconds as counted and return to the stars unaware.

the Shielding

Moments move forward.  Time elapse and collapse.  A stranger upon a dusty road.  He is the same, yet he is changed.  Forever he is remembered as the one who died.  Rise up.  Take your shields.  The corpses and carrion are a riot here.  Sail the sea to live, then die.  This one did rise up and several found him there.  Lifeless beaches glisten like glass.   We sailed on for a tomorrow.  Fields of heather wave under the wanderer's touch.  You'll find them in the shieling.  Behind the field, a barrow mound.  Wild things grow there.  Faery paths march around and down.  From desert to beach to mountain, we have met him.  Moving silently through tombs and walls, we didn't recognize him.  From one to another, an attraction shielding between physical and supernatural.  He stood there tall and brown like the earth.  Bring them in from the burnt edges of soil gone to sand.  Bring them in for food and water.  Blood and wine.  Bring them all in to dine.  Bread and bone.  Shelter them.  They are strangers no more.

empires of alaska

Dirae Di over a frozen tundra.  The clock ticks closer to colder skies.  Build the fire high.  Some white covered mountains and long crystalline fields await.  The leaves deceive. A warm breeze on an otherwise chilly morn.  But build the fires because there is an awaiting storm.  Of winter.  Of cloudy skies.  No water moves.  Patterns of the ice cave.  A single sheet of icy rain.  This street is warm (for now).   Sincto Sin.  We all sit by the bon fires.  Escaping reality a little on an autumnal night.  We've reached twilight of the fading summer sun.  All blues faded and gone.  It's about the rustication and burnt embers.  The slow moon to follow.  Dirt and decaying leaves.  Rotting fields of pumpkins and gourds.  The last of the burning sunfire makes it crumble and puss.  All gone into putridity.  All covered over and frozen in time.  The act of death stopped by negative degrees.  Dominai.  Seek shelter in the light of the colored glass windows.  Smell the incense.  Walk the strange hued hallways.  Requiem.  Day for a night.  A long night of winter's sleep.  We see through your bright orb into the future.  From our smoldering logs up into the air on the strangling smoke, we rise and see from autumn, the coming days of dying.  All things die.  One after another.  People do, too.  They fall and leave behind the wild pains of inescapable, irrational human suffering.  We suffer to live.  In a bleak house on a bleak snow laden night, we see our box.  Snowshoes, skis, sleds, skates.  Piled on the floor.  Memories of what it used to be.  Pine trees starring into the dark night of winter.  These were my witnesses.  And time moved forward.  Time is gone. 

Double Crossed

Perhaps it is a day to be thankful and just wish it so.  Wish the days would yield some friend to spare.  But I get the glares.  I get the rolling eyes.  I'd rather have my own company than that of a false friend.  Let's just say, I like you but I know when to quit.  The Avon Lady came calling and she was so kind.  But there will be no calling, just a dirty exchange.  Do your laundry.  If you want to help, do.  But hang it on out to dry.  I miss you.  I miss some small things and some bigger things.  I miss days and nights.  Friends is a concept.  A friend can be a misconception.  No matter what I was into, I could always be cool.  There will always be those around who don't want to understand you.  I guess you have to confess that you are different and deal with the consequences.  May the chips land where they may.  Hopefully, in the end, you'll understand that I was always the waiting ear, the listening friend.  You might realize I was always there but unused, unneeded.  I don't need sweet kisses sent up to Heaven for me.  I've known for two decades what loss means.  Kittens, rainbows, sugar and spice.  That did not serve the days, weeks, months and years between the rain, the snow and desperation.  All of the colors will fade.

Formation of the helix

I've wrapped my loves around a single point in my life.  It seems I've decided that the work would reveal who I truly want to be.  Sometimes, an idea will catch my fancy and I'll try it and decide it is just NOT for me.  But lately, ideas converge in my mind to create one giant life tapestry.  Do I have a single passion?  Not really.  Maybe it's just being curious and seeing what I can do and what I can't do.  I am figuring out my own blocks by trying and it's making me happier.  I am still carrying the fires and dreaming of the stars.  I'm following.  I feel blind except for that lodestar bringing me home.  It is time to dream.  Dream bigger.  Take all of my experiences and let them feed off of each other.  Forging a path where they might grow.  In all honesty, I love the nettles along the road.  They keep me awake and focused and moving along.  I don't know what I'm doing exactly, but I'm creating a path to bumble along.  Something will come together.  Something will make sense.  And it does.  Survivalist mentality, work ethic, wild dreamer, compassionate stranger, world changer... in an unrequited way.  I'm not a screamer or a shouter.  I want to be a doer.  Learning to not list it, but do it.  Not think so much on it, but act on it.  That is how dreams become reality.  So, my reality is like a helix of things wrapping around each other.  Much like my Morning Glory vine twisting and choking over the fence.  Things are going wild out there.  Ideas are setting out on their own to be a wodewose in the forest.  Should I find him, we might merge.  One identity.  One decision.  Being Apollo and Dionysus in one.  Balance.  Yin and yang and all of that, too.  There's no real danger but it is still a tightrope walk.  Building confidence is the very reason one won't fall.  The work has brought us too far from where we started.  I can't see myself as I used to be.  I am excited for what I may become.  This is a boon of transformation.  This physical self must change to allow the spiritual self to evolve.  The harvest cornucopia overwhelmed with health and bounty.  A boon to my spirit.  A buoy, too.  The bane of my existence has always been self doubt.  Now, I see that transformation must occur.  It is painful.  Much like my Monarch friend.  Physical change, spiritual growth, mental shape, emotional depth.  If I can create a vessel that unhinges me from my tethers, what other adventures would be in store for me?  for us?

Moon Berry

The moon dims and shines as clouds pass by.  The moon face looks over the shadows and smiles.  What is all of this?  A bush of brambles covered with blue berries on a blue moon night.  Go to sleep.  Some want to pass away here.  The night is clear.  No more fight.  Collect the berries on a full moon night.  I got chills when I heard the words.  The exact way you thought you'd go.  We may know our fate.  Dance and walk.  The cycle is broken.  You did make it home.  Far away from where you thought you'd be. Gargoyles. You say you want to reach that heaven.  Ghosts in the Graveyard.  A splatter of blue.  This blue moon is watching over you.

Long Hair

Long hair rides the fire fly.  Soft glowing up into the sky.  I see them floating under the trees.  Ghostly pulsing orbs that pass me by.  Long hair rides the winds at night and is a saxicoline sprite.  Small and spit fire.  She is.  Long Hair dreams of the woods at night and moves through tall grasses under moonlight.  Braids fall down to flowing locks.  Long Hair suddenly has will to rise when the wind lifts her up by her braids and ties.  Fly little one and listen to tinkling glasses.  Wine toasts and summer roasts.  Strawberries dipped in summertime.  Long Hair smells of sweet grass and sage.  She smells sweet like lavender.  Out in a sprinkling of stars on a warm summer night, smelling grassy and fresh with a hint of wild forest.  Smells of the dirt earth pathways under her toes and smells of green leaves covering mossy rocks.  My Long Hair is my friend.  She is an idea that flies away into the warm months.  She could never live with clocks and cloth.  She is as wild as the air and the fire and all things that creep along waterways.  Long live my little one.  Long live my Long Hair. 

fire spirit

Days this week are marked with fire.  Fire in the camp.  Can we make fire?  Carrying fire.  The tinder bundle of straw and sage can hold an ember.  You can walk away and take fire with you.  Carry a fire horn.  No matter where I am in the wilderness, fire travels.  Aster planetes  follow, too, with their far away fire.  I am the wanderer who must curl up in the wickiup.  A warm summer night with fire, I keep strolling through the forest.  This land may become an earthen galley between a sea of trees and stars.  I will keep moving with my fire horn.  We are on some ancient ocean floor littered with arrowheads and fossils. (Yucatan)  I carry the fire.  Sweet grass scent.  The porcupine quills.  A night out with the land can be meaningful, spiritual.  I write a pantheists dream again and again.  Settle.  Did we settle this land?  Hierochloe odorata.  Hieroglyphs are tattooed on the rock walls.  Mother Earth's hair grows here.  Smudging the memory of streets and towns.  Smudging the memories of money.  Grow wild here.  Go wild here.  Leaves and trees mind here.  Walk down the native stairways of rock and earth.  Climb the vines.  Water flows there.  Sap flows, too.  But we need fire to make it.  Shelter, sustenance, stories.  We weave nets with milkweed.  Yucca.  We have skull broth and eyeball stew.  We have to cook our food.  Fire brings stories.  Many men traveled here.  We don't need asphalt.  We don't need machines.  Carry fire, find water.  Summer path spirit highways, we follow.  Earth roads to manna.  What fire brings to our spirit.  Fotia fos.

Moon Spy

I've taken a dive, Moon Spy.  A little ride over the galactic rim.  I got to fly over a moon bow and into a day glo  psychedelic trip.  All the little points emerge as rainbow dusted hues, cruising by the sidereal planes.  I'm adding fire.  I'm lighting the celestial torch on my porch.  Dark places.  We go with rockets by the brain farts of the suicide squad.  They squat in their nativity by the Devil's Gate.  Take it away, demonic rocks.  I'm out of your league.  I'm flying through space time and avoiding your superstitions.  We'll play rockets.  No church top reaches up that high.  Singing it up to "heaven" but your heaven is high.  Turn the days, this sunlight daylight day into a cornucopia of nourishment.  Cut off that devil's horn and feed the hungry.  At night we build rockets.  We fly them, too.  Cosmic ruins blow dust as we hellions cross the sky.

Gnostic Gnosh

Metanoia tonight.  Tomorrow begins a New Moon cycle of darkness and depth.  The Delphi priestess wears her robe and brings the foison to the masses.  A large wain delivers the sustenance for another year.  Fields of grain yielding.  A sun, a moon.  A passing thing.  What will they do when the Sun no longer delivers the wind and rain?  When the Sun no longer lights the moon?  Soleil.  She rides above the Piccadilly Circus.  She rides along King's Cross.  We no longer remember the dark green when it is lighted at the Cross Keys.  It's a Wheel, not a thing.  It is Medicine.  Wodwose.  I am ghosting the gunk food.  Not junk food.  All the gunk it leaves earns it's name.  And it's not just fast food.  Who would think the grains could no longer be mine?  I'm not allergic to wine.  And Dionysus has his ways.  At least the wine will sustain me during these days of wheat and barley, of rye and oat.  All the things I must deny.  Millet.  I need hydration.  I look to the water.  A Sagittarian dream of running cold.  I may try to hide in my PA Grand Canyon or the rocking boats off of Cornwall's ragged coastline.  Give me the night skies of Lapland.  I'll alight my Swedish torch.  Demiurge dine.  Gnosis brine.  The river Styx and a goddess Nyx.  Tonight, give night.  My Aeon Syzygies.  Ennoea, Charis, Sige.  Aletheia, Nous.  Travel mind.  Something to eat.  Another day.  The insides suddenly die down.  Like they are no longer dying.  They are living, breathing, digesting another day.  Whey.  Corn Mother.  I'll eat the words instead of the wheat.  Die down, the heat, the humidity.  Eat the food with water, the water in the food.  A drunken balter to the drums.  A little wine with the burning sage. I find myself suffering with uhtceare for the Sun and all that burns unattended.   In vino veritas. 

eat your vegetables

My mind is elsewhere.  Caprioling into childhood.  My mind is dancing the Gypsy Tango.  My mind is flowing through the Kara Strait into the Kara Sea.  I can see Russia from my mind.  This is no flumadiddle.  I'm perfectly flowing, unattached.  I'm no longer the barnacle at the bottom of the boat.  I'm no longer going along for the ride.  The women still echo.  Tomorrow they cachinnate in the earliest of early mornings just to make my ears bleed.  Thank you, you cacklers like crows.  You seem to smirk at my painful wince.  It is something you get used to.  The screaming and the grinding.  The humming and the hawing.  They seem to go hand-in-hand in the world of the work-a-day drones.  But I'm not there, I'm floating.  I've decided.  I've decided something.  I see the glowing cabochons in the earth and under the foaming oceans.  I am now of noble mien.  I no longer care to own or take or create a space for.  Let's share the wealth of beauty in the greenest garden we have.  Let's be the nobility of nothingness.  Get on my makeshift raft and let's set out for the blazing horizon.  There is some wild and distant shore we haven't yet set foot upon.  Gleaming beaches for miles beckon us to come.  The sun might just push away the glowering black cloud of storms above.  Penhooligan, my sobriquet, so often I've thought I could be a different entity on this planet.  I am the Greek, I am the English.  But we are different than what we think.  Stop and look at behavior.  We the calm equals we the chaos.  We the meditative equals we the raving.  We are mad mirrors chattering to ourselves.  We are related even though we are reticent to say it.  My sister is a perfect mirror of myself.  Hello, lady.  Tell me what we need today.  Your black to my brown.  My sinister sister completes me.  She crosses my 't's and dots my 'i's.  What do we use to cleanse this vast space?  Go and exist.  Feel the life and feel the death.  Reverse the curse of the everyday thoughts.  Remember the opposite is true.  This is why they can't feed you.  We are the same in our physiology.  Take care.  Remember to make the food real.

the Stream Dream

The Stream Dream is a place I go in my mind.  Tonight it led me to the edge of a land, a forest.  There was a road and we were on it.  Such a simple thing we were doing.  We were taking a ride that day and decided to camp.  We spoke to those on the path.  They had bought an entire town to remake into a tiny house community.  It was one of those 'off the grid' places.  We even had our animals in tow.  Soon we realized we wanted to stay.  The view off of her terrace was stunning.  The trees were strange and green.  Something inside of me said I had to have this and as she and I walked and talked, I felt worse.  My insides hurt.  My head ached.  I was reminded of my physical limitations with every step.  I can understand the temptations of dreams.  They are our insides.  They are our loves and our life.  We want to make them true and "real".  As real as we can.  We want to bring our loves to fruition.  All of it blossoming forth when, a few minutes ago, it all seemed impossible.  I'm not writing that this is a dream.  This is what I want in my reality.  I straddle two worlds constantly.  Something's got to give.  Being beaten daily has me wanting to hand it all over and walk away.  Let us live a different life, my love.  He is, after all, beaten, too.  This existence really isn't for me.  Even those moments of spending time with others seem wrote.  They are the repetition in a different setting, each one the same from weddings to funerals.  Sorry, I have weeding to do.  And it is far more adventurous to possibly run into a snake in the grass than a snake at a wake.  Jus' sayin'.  I'm partly reminded of the remote hills.  I used to play on trees and in creek beds.  I used to listen to sounds of rushing water and wind.  Now I hear churning, spitting and grinding.  The hum of electricity pulsing through a machine.  A flash of light and it could all be done.  My life couldn't be more in contrast from what I desire to what it is.  There is enjoyment in quiet moments.  But I live two starkly different and distinctive inner and outer worlds.  A person could get torn apart.   

Reichenbach Falls

The normal state of things shifts every now and again.  What I could see as an illusion now was very real to me then.  This is the state of things.  Moving in a car.  I wouldn't want to give up a car but I would want to move to those magical trees.  You see, a rather wound up person told me in a dream that this was HER view.  Why is it not mine?  I didn't intend to live in a toil town.  Even though bits of the green peep through here and there.  They struggle.  As do I.  The bits of this beggar is a personal tour into pain, longing and soul sojourning.  Piece by piece I put me together.  Life lies here.  Underground.  I so wish to go.  If I were to grow up and out, I think I'd feel free.  Greenery does something to my insides. 
Comedian of Tragedy
Even though you may believe my life is a joke, I say to you it isn't. Your actions speak and you continuously poke at the pains in me. Knife, fork and forked tongue. Go blue-sing your way through... some sugar shake blown. I can blossom without you. I have. I can see through your whiskey and sleaze. Just another night at the tavern of the good folks. Just another night for fools. Keep dancing to your jester tune. The quick brick holds the ham. I can't stomach the flood of fakery through the valley. Some river rushing wisdom by your door. Lay down. Put down your coat, you imbecile. I'll climb in my boat. Another night far from you. Sunday, August 26, 2012 10:38 a.m.             
I can pretend, Switzerland.  I feel the miles of memory in my pain.  Ancestry from  miles away.  Two hundred years under your falling water.  I can pretend, Switzerland.  And I'll wear my London, too.  Thousands of people pulse in these veins.  And who the hell are you?  Another summer night on a dying vine in a dying sky under a darkened moon and twisted pain.  There is rain in these woods.  Night will tell.  We pulled into a strange and sweet land.  Both of us having the same dream.  Sometimes, it is good to get away.  But we'll live here, my love, with our Swedish oven.  We only needed the limbs and branches and the sky above.  I have no desire to pull dead weight.
From the Devil's loam to logia.  We try to till a dark sky.  We try to pull forth a brilliant horizon from a dying sun.  We try to make things grow down for everyone.  I'm pulling dreams out of the air.  I'm pulling them from the storm clouds.  Changing winds remind me, as they shake these dreams from my hair, that you can only have this.  This air, this sun.  This face.  Your temple shakes.  So, the first cool breath of morning reminds me.  It is time to move on.

Kitsch Witchery Rules: it's not just an idea

When I began to write this blog, I really wanted to bring a sense of routine to my life but also a way to document all of the things that happen on the creative side of things.  This is like a craft night for Kara.  Too many thoughts coming and going.  I really wanted to get a handle on what makes me tick.  I want to get a handle on why chaos rules so easily these days.  A lot of life has been an idea and the inclination to sit back and wish for things but only to a point.  I'm so good at making lists but hardly ever check off any of the things I've listed.  I think it's time to do the opposite.  Right now, the biggest wall to scale is my health.  I sleep constantly, even when I shouldn't really be tired.  I squander time and don't get to take better care of myself.  I'm in the worst rut of my 38 years.  I really wish the tide would turn but I think it may take some time.  In the mean time I am learning the Gypsy Tango and the Farruca.  I am trying to read those twenty books by September 21st.  I am trying to get this house under control.  My energy gets zapped so easily.  My diet is a major struggle.  Need to completely weed out the wheat.  It is so easy to talk it back into existence.  But I can't do it.  It is something I just can't eat without consequences.  I need that sort of outlook and it is too much for me right now.  Wishing for a smooth sail out of this new moon phase.  I'm sharing and shedding art.  I'm letting go of old ideas and letting them walk out in the world a little bit.  I don't want to be set apart from the world.  I don't want to hide out.  I really want to experience all sides and, for that, I have to kill off the old habits.  Those that are the worst and the hardest to break.

Queen Routine

Women sometimes forget they need excitement in their lives.  I know the daily grind has gotten me down over time.  I forget to check the sky for the phases or hang out in the garden.  Lately, I've found new things growing around the garden.  Foxgloves.  I was very happy that they came up.  Going to try my hand at creating a calming space outside.  Learning some new things, too.  Really excited to hang out with music and dance for a while.  I need expression and meditation at equally deep levels.  The fire and the water.  These days, I'm loving the color red.  When the routine of life attempts to make one a zombie, it is best to break out however we can.  I'm really going to try to learn to dance.  Well, I've always loved flamenco dancing and so, I might try to learn it.  And I'm too immersed in things that take away my mental focus, so I'm going to play with some instruments that are less complicated than the guitar or violin.  Going to look into some castanets, maracas and a tambourine.  Meanwhile, I have a lot of ideas for the studio (inside) and the house.  Hopefully, we'll make some progress. 

suicide gods

What is utility?  Why do things exist if they can never be used or produce?  What is the purpose of all life when it is told to exist in stasis?  I can't sit like this any more.  I am losing identity but, more importantly, I'm forgetting to fight it.  I don't care about arbitrary rules of social norms.  Bowing down to this authority has robbed me of my body, mind and creativity.  It has taken my spirit and crushed it.  I'm sick of existence of the nonuse.  You aren't really useful are you?  Except for money?  Except for spending on useless things you'll never need.  Except for paying for the mundane task of existing.  Tax on breathing, shitting and eating.  Paying for things to cover your head, fill your belly and keep you comfortable.  Existing without use.  What is the purpose?

bits of the beggar

Detritus. 
What am I?  Not what or who I thought I was.  Not that person or being or thing floating, falling endless away from pulsing nature.  A cup brimming with life's essence.
It doesn't sustain me.
In my quest and questions I don't find truth.
I find what I can not be.  I find strength and love.  Be what I can't be.  But lately, I find this beggar looking ...for more.

It's okay to feel something there, inside.
I'm not a cross or star.  I'm not a smirk on a door.
I find what I am not and it makes me sigh.
Not glamorous, not well... not who I want to be.
So quests and questions yield what I do not want to find
Written on August 30, 2012
I sit with myself and sip from the samovar.  I am unable to find the time to explain how awful it is to be low in spirit sometimes.  Here, I can have a conversation with myself.  Here, I can look back at what I once wrote.  Years ago, it seems now.  I have to admit that I was scratching at the surface.  The ideas for this blog are at least three years in the making.

the Tree People: my long lost tribe

(from November 15, 2011)
For people who know me, they will inevitably know about the treepeople.  These are beings who came to me relatively early on in life and have been my saving grace and the very foundation of my personal beliefs and my creative outlets.  I am thankful for the gifts of this tribe.  This tribe who saved me.  I am forever in their debt.  Beings I created... with a pen, who jumped from the page to be my friends in the lonliest of times.  I called them the treepeople from the beginning and they went with me through my school age years and into college.  They followed me into independence and into my marriage.  They come through me to the pen and give me courage.  Is it strange to be grateful for one's creations?  I say yes.  I am eternally grateful to them.  Had I not had that shot of inspiration early, I may have talked myself out of a lifelong love affair with art.  I may not have gone with them through the woods as I sat in the dark with a candle and music and let them flow.  I had dreams early on to make them lifesized... and live with these lifesized guardians in a room.. such is the mystical woodland in my mind that is full of them.  I still strive to bring them to full scale through any kind of sculpting method possible.  For now they still come forth from the pen as always... bringing me love and thoughts and experiences.  When I saw them and created them and talked to them I did not know anything about any other mythological beings.  I had never heard of these types of creatures... they were simply there and to me that is magical. I guess it's a story about my  youth and my being.  They are me.. My energy is theirs.  Simply put, I feel they are the expression of the very tribe of which I wish to be a part.  For now more will come through.  More pieces of the wood revealed and I will continue to follow them as I always have down the forest paths of my mind.  This is my story... my earliest art adventure and the story of my childhood.  It is my greatest adventure and I continue to look forward.

creative pulse

I've had a bit of a revelation and it makes me happy that I did.
I've gone through giving up on wanting to sell my artwork but I did have a little revelation while reading a Native American legend.  I began to remember going to the museum in Salamanca, NY and the guy there told me that my art must be akin to theirs (the Iroquois).  I saw all of their Corn Mother sculptures and thought "plant people" I told him about my tree people.  Anyway, while reading the Life and Death of Sweet Medicine, it finally occurred to me that my art isn't that off the mark of what they are talking about.  My insides, my brain, whatever, wants to animate the flora and fauna.  I infuse them with my own version of animate and energy.  So, I thought, why not be a storyteller similar to the natives are in their legends and stories?  Since I feel the same inclination, why not?  So, in my own way, I'm going to try to make little books with stories I write that explain the different characters in my creations.  Kinda goofy, since I'm not going to do anything with these little books.  Maybe make copies and give as gifts or something.  But, I  am excited to get exploring creatively again. 
And, I feel, I get to give a little nod to all the storytelling traditions.  One thing I love is when, on Northern Exposure, the medicine man, Leonard Quinlock, tells Ed (shaman in training) that white man's new versions of healing mythologies and stories dwell in filmmaking and movies.  I love that idea, that we simply have a new way to tell healing tales.  Obviously, I'm also going to do the artwork for all the "little books" and bind them with thread.  I'm even going to find gift bags to put them in since I have a definite idea for the look of the books.  In this way, I can write the stories behind my creations and their adventures and create.  I want to be 'Kara the Storyteller' through my art and words.  That is where I belong.  In telling my own healing mythologies. 
  I'm printing the books on parchment and binding them with mainly black thread.  The sheer bags should be white or green or black.  I like the ones with the stars on them.   I feel I can get my art and writing off of its feet.  My first tale is about a seed inside a shell under a leaf.  An animate.  :)  Yay! 
Thought I'd share my end of winter thoughts and things.  I'll just be happy to finally have a little library of my own works.  Whether I get to the printing process or not. 
Right now, I'm jumping into the comic strip I wanted to develop for my treepeople tentatively called 'Leafy Hooligans'.  I'm also currently working on my Tree People Tarot and a 'Leafy Hooligans' calendar.

Waxing Gibbous

83% visible, 11 days old  We prepare to say 'goodbye' to merry May and 'hello' to a full moon at the start of June.  June will be here and there is so much to do!  I am trying to align myself more with the phases.  I am trying to deliberately move through each phase one day or night at a time.  Birthing things at the full moon is an excellent way to send out the positives.  This is animate and energy.  Working the muscles and the memory.  I want to carve the face, the scrolls, the curls.  I want to work on the comic strip.  Life being both comedy and tragedy.  I want the vibe of a cemetery in my quaint living space.  I envision a 'kara' shabby chic.  Some place to park my beat up trunks and tables.  Some stone slab to eternize this mess of life.  Tonight, my moon may appear.  I want to drink in the rest of May.  She'll be gone soon.  With the vines dying and the ivy needing a new home, things are restless.  Planting seeds comes soon.  I put them down the second week of June!  Happy Rosalia in the eve!  Though no roses yet bloom.  There is a promise for flowers to come.  Studio workings (in the studiolo) aren't yet done.  I still have some organizing to do. 

She in Spaces

No dusty old blanket.  No coffin cart.  No way to the cemetery.  I believe in things lost being reclaimed or, simply, found.  They should not stay lost forever.  In this sea of the everyday, we lose many things.  We forget.  Where do they go?  Down a rabbit hole?  People are the worst to lose.  Perhaps it is best not to have them.  I see the circles of the women, the ladies, having their fun.  They are doing all the things they so desire.  They circle and drum.  Why am I not one?  I could blame it all on the mean girls for their tete-a-tete at times they found to bring me down.  They nibble on their amuse bouche of tasty insults.  Hidden slurs.  Quiet whispers.  I could take them to task.  Instead, I'll queue the calliope music for the clown car of versions of myself that never were.  Where, exactly, did the time go?  I'm not a 'real' friend?  I can live with that.  But you'll never take me alive.  So, if I'm not real.  Indeed, if I don't exist to the majority of those in my life, do I exist at all?  Why do men seek to destroy me when they look right through me?  They are the descendants of everything they detest and they show it well.  No soul.  No mercy.  Should I rake them over the coals for it?  Are they the problem here?  It is my space to write and find things that are lost.  It is my place to reveal them.  Right wrongs.  Apologize.  Move on.  Things have got to start.  Things have to be found.  For someone in the bargain basement spirit bin, mine was half off.  For sale.  Dozing.  When I rinse, wash and repeat, I've become a drone.  A conformist to the norm.  Some people ask me to join their band, but I can't play.  Never could.  I'll visit someday.  Just to observe the circles and circles as they join and go on without me.  They have their life, their homes, their fertility.  They have their space, their drums and their spirituality.  I have myself.  She is the only space I've known in this place.  I'm sorry.  Meaning not to offend.  But I can not trust the self with something that my awkward self was never born to be.  I have no confidence in believing.  I see smirks behind smiles.  I have no faith.

Mistress of Fire

Growing up cold, I will steal the fire to feed the flame.  I will expire.  Until that day, I will surely live beyond the paved city, beyond the crumbling homes.  I will live with blooms and boughs.  I will live with a pin dotted sky of stars.  What do I throw out to the Universe?  Even if it doesn't respond, to me the absurd is just as real.  The realization of the smallness and meaninglessness of it all.  Don't quote me, dear scientist.  I am just reeling in my neediness.  My human need for something, someone, to care, is too strong to deny.  Don't ridicule me for thoughts a human should have.  I'm not a human machine.  It's just the wrong day and you didn't give up your artifacts of fiction.  You didn't tell me it doesn't matter that the sky doesn't care.  It stares without ever blinking.  I am aware of how big that sky is, even when it is shrouded in clouds or crowded with trees.  Those trees pull me up by the tresses, pull me up by my muddy boot straps.  Silly girl, they say.  Draw, they say.  It may be fun to cajole with these leafy hooligans.  I sense, though, that the rest of the world took a secret dig at my small world.  These things happen, to even the sweetest flower, to even the nicest girl.  She may have a flower face and shine up at you.  That girl probably has been dug.  She wears the black seed water bead choker and headband.  She looks happy on the outside.  It's a ways old circle that leads back.  I'm still taking that trek over the catwalk across the moonlighted sky with my dad.  He's still telling us that the men are hanging below us on ropes down in the midnight black abyss.  The chilly wind picks up and moves my long hair.  I dream what it would be like to tumble down there and see them as I fall.  The ghost of the old ones, hanging in dreams, hanging on the bridge with my dad and I.  A last memory.  A memory to last.  He takes us over the bridge.  We survive.  He tells us of hidden gold in the valley.  He talks of thieves and Native curses.  The land will reclaim this place, he said.  I remember it clearly.  That was what he said the curse was.  The trains took the land and the tracks would go, the metal would fall.  After getting over the bridge, after looking into the autumnal orange moon, we walked down into the valley below.  We walked into the darkness, on the wild pathway.  We heard the rustling of animals at night, we heard the babbling creek.  No other humans, just us walking.  We made our way up the ravine, to the other side of the bridge and back out.  We made it out alive.  And in the morning, I awoke to see a sight in the thick morning mist.  A native man with a headdress, tomahawk in hand, walking quietly out of the trees.  Abandoning all of my senses, I was transported.  And even though I slept under the stars, I was awakened to the possibility that dreams are real.  More so than the stars I sought in the sky at night.

Moon Candles

We work our way through the phases by the light of the moon candles.  Each phase and shift a reminder of another change.  The first quarter, drawn by athame, is lit by a small candle.  It is lit for the honoring of change and the pace of nature.  It is honoring the clock and wheel.  We are stuck in the cogs of time.  At present, so many things change.  Things revolve and evolve.  This candle calendar for the moon helps us keep track.  Each week we observe and make a tiny mark.  Each rotation is done with deliberation.  New shoots of grass and new moons growing to full.  Walking in a deliberate path with clover under foot or hoof or heel or paw.  Mindless movements of muscle memory.  We remember.  One phase unto the next.  The candle calendar for our moon phase.  Meditations in the midst of chaos.  One rung bell.  Of spring opening.  Who could tell the open hole in the earth to close?  Graves are plantings.  You spend your sleep with dirt and rock.  Bent tree gates to eternity. 

Queen May

I get drawn in because I am so needy.  She is the queen bee or the bee's knees of this ridiculous social construction.  I get drawn in.  I breathe a little too deeply sometimes.  I breathe in the toxic mixture of manipulation and fake smiles.  Is it a friend?  I wonder if I've been pulled in by a shill.  Someone made me relax around these hyenas.  I should defend.  I should pull my guard.  I should throw them away.  The laughing flowers in their quidnunc ways.  I can hear the shrillness of their sounds.  Little laughing petals mock me.  Perhaps, I shouldn't delve into it just now.  The whispers and back stabbing are tiresome.  Something comes with May.  It might just be the freeing temperatures and mild wind.  I have the devil may care attitude now.  I think I should keep it.  Don't feel guilty for feeling full.  Focus on the positives.  Cultivate life like a garden.  Keep loving the variety it brings.  Move forward with life.  One step at a time now.  Pull those trees out of the firmament of the mind.  Pull those flowers forth.  The ones that are pleasing to both eyes and nose are the best.  Pull that forest into view and have a fire to dance around.  Keep an eye on the sky, the clouds, the sun and the moon and never forget to gaze at the stars.  So small they seem to me but they are firey rays of hope shot across the expanse of space and time.  In this world, in this bubble, don't allow the negative to rule the silly spring time.  Don't let the flowers point us into Narcissus' mind.  We have too much to do without drowning in self pity and solitude.

Feast and Fuel

Listening to you has been the best fuel for my soul.  I guess I've felt out of it at times.  I've been running on empty.  You feed me in the best way.  You listen and respond.  I am in my repose.  I don't want to let go but I have to.  She drags away the mask of who she was.  Does she really have to let it go?  I don't want to.  I don't want to say good bye to that girl.  Am I her anymore?  Scrolls of hair drag down in the humidity.  Not who I was before.  Mint leaves over little skulls.  Not a happy girl.  But yellow trees and blue sky symphonies have been my days.  The bird songs in the backdrop.  I try to soak it up now.  The setting sun.  As I sat there, I knew it was over.  The fish jumped high in the morning sun breaking the surface of the pond.  The birds swooped in and made themselves known.  Things started moving as I set out alone.  I didn't want to say good bye.  But I took that moment to do so.  Now, I'm at another crossroads of leaving.  I don't want to let go because I never do.  Who will you be tomorrow?  Where will you go?  Life is leading the dance.  I can reminisce but I can not come back again.  There are crucial times in our life when we must make the correct decision.  Sit back with memories, the prom of the ancient shimmering isles where all the magic began.  Realizing I'm older, the feast must change.  We eat different ideas as we grow old.  The maiden must make her way.  Ways must part.  Now, we each must start.  Light the torch anew.  I am now in transition.  The middle road must be mine.  Holding out each hand  to bridge the gap.  From the young to the old.  Hold all the knowledge you can.  I don't want to make the trek alone.

Dark Moons and Silver Slivers

I am particularly fond of the moon.  As it moves into the first quarter, I begin to think about what life has become.  I am needy.  I am wanting a friend.  Firstly, I do have friends.  But, I guess I want to experience something I never have before.  I am always needy and always wanting.  I want to belong.  I can't instantly chum with someone.  It is not in my dna.  I guess I'm the kind of friend who like the more contemplative conversations.  Hell, I don't mind friending the elderly man who is so kind to me each day.  Honestly, he's a good friend right now.  I feel as though people speak a language I do not.  It is alienating.  I try to reach out with things I understand.  People always end up backing away.  That is okay.  Perhaps I am a little too intense sometimes.  And I've thrown my hands in the air and let the words go.  If this is popularity, if *this* is what it takes, then I guess I'm glad I'm not.  I should simply be thankful for who I am and that I'm not pretending to be something I'm not.  I can joke and I can be a smartass.  But, I am only that with people I feel close to.  If there are doubts there, I can't get that comfortable.  A sliver of the silvery moon hangs in the sky.  It's a little slice of a hello.  Holding out my hand, I pretend I can reach the moon.  I try to hold it up.  No chance.  This act is a simple longing.  I want to know more than just the loneliness of the silvery moon.  I want to know more than it's phases that are followed by the day.  Each night I hold out hope that tomorrow will somehow be different.  No more mirrors.  No more talking to myself out here.  One person has to enter this field.  How lonely will death be?  Are we really going to visit different realities?  Are we going to enter different rooms?  Or, will we travel alone for eternity seeking each other out and never connecting?  Float, flow through space.  See the dreamy dripping colors of a star birth.  Alone.  Where wood and bone may hold you, the stars you can not grasp.  Nothing touches but the dark out here.  Dreaming toward points of light.  Alone.  It is my gravitational constant.  My single mark for which to aim.  That barriers may rip away.  Connection could be made.

Agathos Daimon and relaxing at home

You might get switched for a witch.  You might get switched at birth.  Your identity might not be what they wanted it to be.  You may have been assimilated so quickly, your mark wasn't noticed.  Bringing out the brooms, sweeping away the dust and debris of another year.  Too much paper.  I'd love a glass of wine.  And although I'm a red wine girl, I don't mind some Sweet Chantilly with my dinner.  Something white and on the sweeter side sounds really good right now.  I'm a champagne giggler.  Basically, a really nice drunk.  But you don't want to test the waters too much if you have the tendency towards decadence.  Some do.  Drunkenness, craziness and wildness has driven even the most level headed, cool youth to their breaking point.  You only have it put all together if you can keep it from falling apart.  I have brought about banishing clutter.  It doesn't happen overnight.  But, I want to honor the ancestors well.  I want to tell them, it's all right to enter here.   They may not appreciate a cluttered house.  Too many cracks in the walls.  The grass has become overgrown.  Agathos Daimon may not be relaxing at home.  It might be about preparing.  I feel I'm in constant preparation.  I contemplate the renovation of a new place to be.  We are words.  I'll open another book, watch another show.  Life is working on becoming real.

Lilacs at the end of the alley

This time of year yields so much greenery that when a flower so powerful comes forth it can not help but be noticed.  Most people appreciate lilacs.  I have come to love them so much on my morning jaunt down the lane.  I almost forget the doldrums of the activities life offers up.  Sprinting out in the rain with two dogs and no umbrella, I pull up my hood.  I make it to the end of the mud and rocks and smell them before I see them.  They are simple clusters of purple flowers on a large bush that has become as large as any tree.  The scent flows through the decay of the back alleys and side streets.  It makes everything aromatic and beautiful.  Red rain boots protect against the mud.  Muddy paws pad around the soft earth and delight in it's messiness.  How much we need the water.  I always think that the colors owe their existence to water and light.  How much water will it take to bring out the burnt oranges in the fall?  How much water pulled forth this electric green?  And how much did the light burn through the mist and pull them up by their stems?  It's like hair standing on end watching this spring fiasco.  I am fully ready to embrace the chicks and nests and crazy growing things along my fence.  Lilacs in season.  There is no single time, so fleeting, that creates such contentment. 

Devil's Logia

Fine wine and fruit offerings.  The full moon stirs the restless souls to awaken and speak.  Dare I say, reach for the low hanging fruit from the sparkling tree?  These are dreams.  It seems I have a penchant to walk down imaginary streets as much as I do for living in a dreamscape.  Sometimes, dreams and reality collide.  Confusion ensues.  It is me.  But I also have a penchant for battshittery.  I love the absurd.  Architecture and carvings lace my world.  What about the face that smiles through the branches and then disappears?  I love a good farce.  I love a good tragedy.  The symbols on my class ring were the faces of comedy and tragedy.  The faces of the theater that they represent.  But those faces could also foreshadow the future after leaving high school.  Monk chants and opera stars.  Sounds that reverberated through my headphones.  I suppose this happens after an illness.  It happens after summer and winter arrive in the same week.  My bones and muscles are sore and ache.  My head burns.  The rest of my body shivers with chills.  It's like I'm constantly fighting with myself over where to turn. Nothing is sacred except the possibilities.  And they are like carrots on a string.  Possibilities always exist but you never catch them.  As a child, my earliest dreams were to become an archeologist, a police officer (detective) and a cemetery caretaker.  I haven't achieved or attempted any of these things.  I always envied the old men who rode the lawn mowers at the cemeteries.  Life in a small town is bliss as would be working amongst the dead in an even smaller town (of dead people).  Why do these cemeteries seem so small?  There had to be many more before us who were buried.  Take a bite of the forbidden fruit.  It sparkles in the moonlight and temps the young woman who stands below.  She was just checking for bears rooting through her garbage.  But there are other things in the night and in the forest, just a few feet from her back yard, than she can imagine.  The trees change at night and so does everything in the woods.  The gurgling sound of a stream can take on a creepy quality.  Any deviation in the complexity of the sound can make a brain scream to stop.

Designed to Die: a Flora arrangement

Secret keys to a dark space with dark energy.  Flora and green.  This time of year I call to her.  She dances the dance and lets the petals go.  Even the trees bend and bow and let loose their blooms.  'Take that!' She cries into the warm spring air.  Flora brings up by stems the green shoots of daisies and daffodils.  Sprays of leaves adorn vines.  Up and up they go.  They creep and crawl along the trellis or fence.  They show their faces to the sky.  Flora brings spring things to us all.  What a sweet surprise!  Lilacs and roses.  Buttercup.  Peony and posy (no rings around your roses), would you like a poesy?  Violet and Lily.  Poppies, Orchids, Dogtooth and some wild peas, please?  The world becomes a sight to behold under the growing banquet bouquet.  We shall feast our eyes on orange, yellow and green, red and white, purple and blue.  No more wilting until their time.  We can enjoy a moment under the sun and the moon.  Syzygy of earth, moon and sun.  The seasons change for every one.  Now, sip this wine and taste this herb.  Realize the day is done.  No more dancing.  Spring has sprung. 

Bacchus Calling: an ode to the wayward wanderer

Some nights, it seems are better than others.  Tonight was okay but not exciting.  The wind blew fast over the tombs and rocks and roads.  We sat in an alley in a long black car.  We settled down into the seats.  My sunglasses were perched on my forehead.  The dark clouds were moving in.  They came from far away and the storm looked like a torrential sea flipped on it's head.  Here we are, in the middle of mud and rain.  For another spring, we will never sleep again.

a place to die

Hills with roads.  Access to the dead.  All the vehicles travel here because the townspeople want to say their farewells.  Some come back to take care of their own plot.  Others are caring for the plot of a loved one.  All gather here.  Candles burn and flowers are heaped upon the wet grass.  Look upon the open graves.  There are no bones there.  But we can see the feet beneath us.  How far do they have to plant us to hold us down?  I saw the dead man quickly pass a crypt and move out of sight.  He was tall and pale.  He had long black hair and empty sockets and he moved so fast that it took my breath away that I saw that much of him.  I followed him.  He moved so fast, though.  I didn't realize the dead could walk.  I saw him enter the church basement.  There was a long hallway down there with windows open to other rooms with caskets.  The dead man stopped at each one and gave a strange low growl.  The caskets opened and they followed him.  They left the basement, all four of them.   They were a band of bedraggled corpses and yet walked like anyone else, except more quickly.  I dare say they had some kind of extra sense that gave their movements a crispness.  It was all so surreal.  But I followed them anyway.  They went away, into the forest and they walked along the flowing water of the small creek.  Stones and roots did not get in their way.  They stopped at a spot where a cave seemed to open in the side of the earth on the slant toward the waterway.  This was where they would dwell.  They had instruments and wine.  They played a tune of strange sounds.  Each would flail or kick as they played.  They looked as if they were marionettes on a string.  The singer was the tall one.  He was the leader and he smiled sardonically at the others.  "The worst," he uttered.  Although his voice was deep, it was still flat.  There was no humanity to it.  It sounded dead.  But the smile was all too real and I shuddered with the realization that the dead could smile like that, even though they couldn't really feel.  I listened to the strange concert through the night, dozing by a large rock down river.  When I awoke the music was over, but the ruckus continued.  I heard splashing and laughing and glass breaking.  A large number of people had gathered here to listen to the skeletal zombies.  Suddenly, they began again.  The living threw the cemetery flowers at their feet and used the candles to light the scene.  It was strange to me that the people didn't seem to care that the players were dead.  The guitarist was a woman with brilliant red hair.  She had leaves and sticks clinging to her scarlet locks.  The crowd was under some sort of spell.  The songs were slow and hypnotic and sounded much better than their rehearsal.  The drummer was a short blond man.  He seemed to be much more serious than the rest but his drums were made of some sort of animal skin.  And the band played on.  The moon was full.  The night filled with an exotic sound.  The songs played long into the night and each person grew tired and slept.  Something pulled them to edge of woods to this spot.  The sight should have been horrific.  Instead, they partied until the morning. 

blood and the old gods

New memories.  The fact that we are so transfixed with all that is ancient and wise and the fact that we live in a new age of science gives way to a new epoch.  We overthrow the simplicity of the old ways without losing the intent and we incorporate the new information to hone our skills and learn new things.  Our past may seem tenebrous but we have layered ideas, thought and language.  We have learned more and have more to learn.  Blood, it is said by some, is the defining factor in the calling of the old gods.  If one was born with some form of bloodline, then they are more likely to hear the call of a particular tradition.  I argue that blood may have less to do with it than our collective memories.  These things are what we remember and how we are.  And although I am not a true reconstructionist and my ideas, thoughts and beliefs live only in my head, I strive to put into practice the old AND the new.  My ideas may seem old but they are not and they are very much married to science.  In essence, my creations cannot exist without the natural world and the changing seasons.  It can not exist without the sun and the moon and the stars.  All these things are very tangible.  I impose my own inner truth on a constant and universal truth; the natural world.    I have always had a thing for the man in the moon.  He was probably the first personality I created in my head.  If I open the door to the absurd and see a face there, where the moon should be, I'm falling into an altered reality.  The door closes and I'm in.  There is no going back.  "Moon man!"  Someone is shouting.  Obviously, this 'someone' is not just anyone.  I see the large black figure lurch forward in the darkness, however it can not come too far as it is attached to the ground, quite permanently.  "Moooon maahn!" I hear the gravely voice continue.  It sounds as if it is choking and yet spits out the words rather well.  There are crashing branches and deafening sounds around.  The tree that talks is angry.  And he is sick of being rooted to the spot.  "I see you," he says.  His eyes glint in the darkness, catching a reflection from the shining orb above.  It is almost too bright.  But the forest is still dark and the tree is embedded in the deep.  Only glints of the moonlight can be seen through the brambles.  Something is falling from above and yet it is not falling with gravity.  It is falling and yet floating.  It is silver and shedding its skin.  When it lands upon the earth, it is a man.  He is not awake.  The tree bends down.  There is a strange sniffing noise coming from within the forest and the tree opens his trunk and pulls forth a shining orb.  It lights everything around it.  The face of the tree is rather terrifying.  And it offers the orb to the man who lies prostrate on the dirt floor.  The orb hovers and descends and falls into the chest of the visitor.  The natural spirits can call the high energies when they wish.  The ancient wisdom knows that the sky and forest are not separate worlds.  Each visits the other.  Lena lives on the edge of a mangled forest.  She has a small house and small garden.  It is a simple life and there is no access to most conveniences.  Yet, she is happy to have the sky and trees all to herself.  Across her small field is a pond.  Her small home is a happy one.  Lena has no children and she did not marry. 

Merry month of May

When I see them my mind becomes blind.  They are covered in electric green buds.  She walks over the pavement in a long dress, haphazardly carrying a bouquet of every flower.  It drags over the walk leaving tiny sprigs in its wake.  Herbs, flowers and wine.  The procession has begun.  He walks carrying a bent switch.  He strides over the grass in his leather brogues.  He chews on a shoot of grass as he moves.  They move swiftly over the land and bring forth the budding leaves and flowers.  The verdant landscape is owed to the lord and lady.  They are diurnal dwellers, carrying out their magic march in the warm May sun.  This is the penultimate moment of spring.  Spring is soon turning to summer.  They march over the most ragged alleyways.  They find every nook.  No polluted city can hold out against the carriers of the green.  They will find a way.  And as they move,  things bloom.  Seeds take flight and set out on long journeys.  Roots travel.  Flowers grow, bloom and die quickly until the next year and others take their time in the warming sun.  We follow the path of the green man and his cohorts.  Every green thing takes time, always in the clinch with the ever faithful death.  Death is danger with its ever present skullduggery.  But May pays no mind as she glides over the earth.  No treachery will stop her, no threats will keep her still.  May moves beyond boundaries and into the birth of the great and small. 

Green sprigs, tree chatter

Through all the wailing and swaying, they let their expletives flow.  Blowing down wind on the humans below them.  A branch might cut across the face of an unsuspecting victim of these grouches.  No doubt their knots and knees have them bent and angry.  'Hello, down there!'  'Hello, indeed! You walk where you want and you don't care to keep your own space!'  It was all a bunch of bafflegab to the urchins below, who simply want to get on their way.  The children skin knees on the stones below the trees and yet they won't cry.  The trees believe the kids all speak gibberish.  They are a pack of wandering dolts chattering gobbledygook.  The screams, it seems, pull the trees from their roots.  No old oak can put up with screams.  And that is what some of the children do, even when in play and perfectly content.  'Keep your caterwauling to yourself!'  The bent old oak says.  Even though, to the children, the trees sound like nothing more than leaves brushing leaves in a rushing wind. 

Rosalia as a spoke in the Wheel: honoring the dead, honoring ancestors

I don't belong to any kind of cabal.  My spiritual path is something that I've been carving out on my own for some time and I don't expect others to immediately 'get it'.  What non pagan people need to understand is that pagans are not cookie cutter type people and each person will have their own way of doing things.  Each person will actually have their own ideas and traditions and entire systems and that is cool, too.  So, this post is designed to share the significance of one sabbat, the Rosalia.  Rosalia is a time to honor the dead and it is a time that happens (for me) between the end of May to the end of June.  It is perfect that the more mainstream holiday of Memorial Day takes place during this time, also.  The Rosalia is demonstrated by going out and offering roses to those who have died.  You can honor loved ones and ancestors with roses during this time.  I also feel that Rosalia encompasses the a time to share an appreciation for flowers.  June 13 is my dedicated day to honor Flora during the Rosalia.  Whilst offering roses to the dead, one should share a poem or dedication.  One could also simply hold what is in their heart without ever speaking aloud.  It is important to recognize the dead, especially after a particularly long winter.  This is the time for our spirits to be lightened and the long hours to be shared amongst our people.  Remembrance is a beautiful way to keep loved ones with us.  This is why I love Rosalia the most.  It is a time to embrace the dead.  Keep them in our hearts and minds. 

zentangle, scherenschnitte and baby lanterns

It is Wednesday!  We inch ever closer to Thursday night.  I have some ideas up my sleeve for Kitsch Witchery.  This week I'll be focusing on meditative art.  Due to the wildness of the full moon this week and all the havoc that spring has sprung, it is time to try something a bit new.  I have yet to truly dive headlong into meditative art; an art form that some religious person would definitely tell you is 'of the devil'.  But meditations are not bad.  Indeed, prayers are meditations and so are using mala beads and rosaries.  This week, I'll be counterbalancing all the upheaval with some zentangle.  It is a form of meditative art and, one could say, is exactly what I've been doing with my pen and ink drawings to some degree.  I'll also be creating (or attempting to create) some cut paper birds in scherenschnitte style.  I have been inspired by the baby Chinese lanterns growing in my garden.  It is time to seed sow a little bit. I'll wait for my sunflowers but the lanterns are starting now and they are incredibly cute!  So is the mint!  Hip hip hooray for the month of May!

Criticisms and cataclysms

The life and times of the Brighid Birch.  That was to be her name.  All at once, it seemed, my world dropped down to zero.  In the void, there was no light.  It was not like the world of shining, distant, diamond-like stars.  It was a world with nothing.  I held onto the birch tree.  She was my friend.  The dreams of the daughter never to be clearly would be my end.  But this was not the only dream death I've experienced.  Brighid was one who was meant to be who wasn't and therefore she became a tree.  My birch.  I have dabbled with the Hawthorne and Oak.  I've held weary Willow's hand.  Juniper jumped into my path and Maple helped me stand.  But my little birch tree is so dear to me.  Aspen, a close cousin, calls her name.  I've heard Chestnut and Beech whittling away the hours with whistling voices.  Pine stands solemnly.  The seeds and leaves bunch around.  The ground is bare for another season, until the May Queen hangs around.   Did the elves hear her in the hedgerow as they said?  She makes no noise when she walks.  The flowering trees all giggle delightedly and that may be the only proof that she is near.  Deer and crow borrow.  It is a fair place to let her live and breathe.  Brighid.

Help! Help! There is death in my bed!

For some time, I looked out of the truck window and wondered why they moved so easily in the wind and rain.  They looked so calm most of the time.  It was as if the rain were their tears and the wind was their breath.  I could see them stepping forward and moving together in weird rhythms to music I could not hear.  I looked at my father, next to me at the wheel.  He was focused on the road.  He made a face and then looked down at the gage.  We were running out of gas.  He began to drive dangerously over the back road.  He took the corners hard, trying to get home before we were completely depleted.  I only watched and waited for the inevitable.  We stalled out.  And drops of rain were falling rather large on the windshield.  I almost lost my cookies back there, and now that we were stopped, I started walking back on the road to collect my luggage that flew out of the back of his truck.  Thankfully, we ran out of gas.  Otherwise, what would have happened to my suitcases out here?  I chuckled to myself.  Only my father would think that flooring it would get us home.  Instead, it cut us off.  He started walking the opposite direction and told me he had to go and get gas to get us started again.  But before he got going too far and just as the words fell from his lips, a car pulled over.  A friend of his and he had a gas can with him.  I couldn't believe the luck.  I tossed my bags back in the truck and got back inside.  We had shared some pie at the Crossroads diner.  We had talked a bit about the future.  At that moment, though, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to be.  I just knew I was at the whims of life.  And I was very clearly still seeing visions of things I had since I was a child.  The trees still moved and smiled and gave me greetings.  I still knew home by the trees and the land.  I never paid attention to city limits.  When I moved years later, the lack of pine trees would bring me right back to this place.  There was no leaving the pines behind.

Herbalia as a spoke in the Wheel: directional intent and the number 13

Thirteen jives with a lot of people.  Let's just say, it jives with me, too.  And, thusly, my created spoke (sabbat) of Herbalia is a time during the month of May where I honor the various herbs in my life.  This plugs in perfectly with Kitsch Witchery and my need for a Thursday night spoof.  Herbalia is a time in May and the main day falls on May 13th.  I create my own and mix in the true, just to keep things interesting.  I'm a creative sort, so why would spirituality be any different.  Just turn up the heat on the stove and watch the ingredients come to a boil.  Now, this brew of Herbalia is a straight up honoring of the green and my main (and constant) affair and honoring of the Green Man.  Not just him, but her, too.  So, in each of the thirteen months, I use the moon phases and, intermingled and twined like a Morning Glory vine, are the sabbats.  I still hold to traditional Wheel times.  The solstices and equinoxes.  But some of these others are new.  I also honor the cross quarter days.  Anyway, Herbalia (May 13th) is a day for honoring the uses of herbs.  It is a time to gather experience, information and create art.  It is a time to cook with herbs and get adventurous with spices.  It is a time to open the book of Spring Shadows and delight in all the mysterious and delicious recipes within.  Herbalia began with my love of Patchouli.  I will say, I've loved it's scent for a very long time and would get annoyed with the constant allusions to it being a "hippy thing".  I even created a tree person named Patchoula in honor of my love for patchouli.  I also learned to love peppermint (many different mints, actually, although in the beginning, I only knew a few), lavender, rosemary and sage.  I love that lemon balm comes to the fore every spring and that it spreads like wild fire, along with the orange mint.  Dill is another favorite.  This Herbalia threatens to be a yummy one.  I even would love to recreate the cream cheese wraps with spicy cayenne and herb dip.  Some kind of a healthy chip on the side.  Art wise, I love to use the ink and draw the growing herbs.  There is an herb cabinet in the kitchen of my brother that has a special place in my heart and I have tried to organize my own seed and herb cubbies for a while now.  Herbalia moves us beyond Beltaine and yet maintains the Beltaine spirit.  For me, it is a part of the Beltaine season.  Later in the month, and through the month of June, I also observe the Rosalia.