Monthly Archives: February 2012

Saint Valentine’s Day

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A few weeks ago my darling cousin Sarah posted a link to a blog article on her facebook website.

“What do you give a man who doesn’t have everything–but has given everything?”

Ann asks.  She must have a Renaissance man, too, I think.  And while I easily share the sentiment in this article, I never wonder with what to gift Cody.  My priorities nuzzle sweetly with the plenty of love letters to be written and special things to make.  I’m certain we will talk about these things in the future, so hold on to your horses.  Most importantly, I find myself encouraging and practicing letting love guide my every single day, rather than waiting for a holiday to gift with my love.  But, too, I am especially excited about holidays!  And I’ll be the first lady to tell you how grateful I am to have a man who gives his unbridled, unabridged, unfaltering support, who gives everything to the ladies who surround his life.  I can relate to Ann that way, so what do you suggest giving a man who gives everything?

Saint Valentine’s day skips around the bend and cupid flits about inside my heart this month.  I love Valentine’s Day; a holiday dedicated to love?  Yes, please!  Thank you, and I love you!  My mother-in-love is a wonderful example of Valentine’s Day love.  Last year she sent out about 30 Valentine mail tubes containing a ribbon banner (each, individually) hand stamped with “Love life, and life will love you back” each adorning a string of tiny pom pom balls, attached to a small dowel.  I love mine so much that I keep it with my Moonlodge altar box.  My mom hangs her over the mantle.  My sister keeps hers in the kitchen.  I just love that message.

As this Valentine’s Day comes whirling around the path–two people that I know are even getting hitched on the weekends sandwiching the holiday–I encourage you to find love in the smaller places.  Focus more on what love you can give versus what gift you can give.  Allow your love to guide you through the celebration.  Certainly, if you have it, focus on the romantic love, too, but remember that love is love is love.  Let us celebrate our love by letting everyone you love know that you love them!  How about loving a girl across the world!  Have you ever written a love letter to your postal worker?  What is your most profound love story?  Most simple?  What do you love most about loving love?

Photo Credit: Lindsey Royal Anderson; a fingerling potato heart.  I love it!

Today is for Lovers

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Things I love today:
heading home after a long and fun-filled adventure away
buying my couch upholstery fabric (it’s the geometric yellow with white circles)
buying my throw pillows (made from the floral magenta fabric above my couch fabric)
finding a fancy dress for a wedding in California this month
and thus, shopping with my mom, sister and daughter(!)
my mom and I collaborating to hand make a gift for the wedding (you’ll see soon)
rallying my fellow ladies to get involved and stand with the world of women through organizations like Tostan
Soko‘s music on repeat
all of the grand memories this month has brought
did I mention I’m going home today?

What do you love about today?

The Big Bus Push

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We currently live inside the bus now.  We are sleeping downstairs on our bed. We moved our kitchen from outside to the shanty.

Life is so sweet!

But there is still a lot of work to be completed.  We need to finish up the interior so we can move upstairs and move the kitchen in, too.

The month of January and February Willa and I ventured to the Pacific Northwest and then to the South to visit family and allow Cody the dedication and time to make a Big Bus Push! My dad came to help for one week. Cody’s pa came to help for ten days. Our adviser Leaf helped, too. And you’ll never believe what happened.

Yes, you saw that correctly, the bus is wired for electricity.  Solar panels here we come!

West coast sunset on the back porch, anyone?

Half Way Across the River

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You know that point where you are at a (metaphorical) river crossing?  You can see the other side and feel your feet sure stepping on the bank drying off and relaxing, you can almost taste it.  But, all too comfortably, you can turn around and see the path you’ve already traversed and how steady it seems and easy, even, to cower back.

The bus certainly had this moment; this pinnacle moment!  Having been building for many more months than anticipated, uncomfortable in the sludge of things, desperate for more hygiene (yes, yes, those of you who wonder how a farm girl with no electricity or hot water have never been to Well Within, or the spa like outdoor shower at the home of our friends’ Leaf and Dyana, but still, sometimes a girl just wants a shower and an oven baked chicken), and cold, so cold (even in plush California).

At one point I even broke down in tears of feeling overwhelmed with this beautiful dreamy project while having a tiny baby, maintaining a relationship with the man I so love, and trying to pursue my own self care and personal hobbies; I felt like I spent most of my energy to just stay emotionally afloat.

Leaf came over that day.  He is very in tune with the bus project, and with us.

He reminded us why we began this project, what we are standing for and who this makes us, who we are to our core.  His words were perfect; giving me the ability to see in this moment, to see that this moment is only a moment.  That every moment is changing and eventually, our life in the bus will illustrate exactly what we worked so hard to complete.

And we kept trucking across this river.  I’m so glad we did.

All the World

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What a delight to find a package waiting on the front door step (I’ve told you how much I love the postal service) a while back, my friend from San Francisco sent Willa Mayhew this very book!

And the message, oh the message!  All the world is you and me.  Yes, all of us, spiraling in and in and in and in, still, youth and seeds and babies and spirits becoming new babies, in and in; spiraling out and out and out and out, still, elders and wisdom and dying and reincarnating out and out; we are all in this together, the spirit is in us all.  I believe that if we are all in this together, the time is now to think about our future.  Willa is our future.  You are our future.  We are our future.  All the world is the future.

The Native American Iroquois tribe (and several other Indigenous cultures) prepare and live their lives for the next seven generations!  That thoughtful practice cultivates a wellness for the entire community.  If we are all effecting the earth together, perhaps we should gear our minds and daily practice to the wellness of one hundred years from now.  What are your favorite children’s tales?  How do you cultivate wellness for your entire community?  How do you think we can continue to prepare our lives for the next seven generations?

Full Moon Festival!

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Good evening!  I’m planning my full moon ritual tonight.  I’ve got out my journal, my we’moon calander, and a book about Sacred Ceremony (I typically tend towards ritual books by females, however, this book is a gem, especially for beginners).  I’m thinking of a ceremony outside, because Austin is warm this time of year (can you believe it?), and I want to move, boot scoot and boogie, y’all!  I want to feel rhythm of healing and release.

Until 2011, I had never participated in a monthly sacred ritual.  I feel nourished and healed and robust with love and light because of my red temple each dark moon.  These women nurture and love one another.  I see clearly that ceremony feeds the soul.  A few months back on the dark moon, Astrid hosted and showed us the trailer for Red Tent Movie: Things We Don’t Talk About, and my heart soared.  I had goosebumps and felt grateful to be a part of such a monumental movement.

I’m helium-hearted to bring ritual and sacred ceremony to the life of my daughter.  This is real.  We are woman.  Hear us!  Sing with us!  I want to bring you into our circle!  Blessed be!

Do you have a group of sisters (or brothers) with whom you meet regularly?  What are your rituals?  Do you participate in sacred ceremony?  Do you have a favorite ritual activity?

Raise the Roof!

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Quickly, the bus takes a new shape.  The first cut to raise the roof felt really intense.  We were really getting into this life: there was still time to turn back, but we were completely altering our potential home.

Living outside (all the time) felt really great. We breathed in the fresh air. Our cycles were one with the moon and the sun. We woke when the sun rose. We stayed awake by oil lamp light, illuminating our ideas of what this life would bring our way. We walked to the ocean (we have a secret beach, unbeknownst by many, except the neighbors). We began to really trust our instincts. We had mice. We threw away a few items of clothing of which the mice found appetizing for nesting. We got a kitten, named her Kimchi. She helped with the mice control.

Three guys, a torch, and a lot of hard work and the rib cage came together.  These are the walls for the loft upstairs and the structure for the roofing.

Living outside is also tough, though. Sometimes I just want a bath and an oven roasted chicken. But, we make it work. We push through the struggle, enjoying each other and our beautiful life.

The bus continues to grow and take a new shape. Cody regularly visits the dump to harvest new (old) wood for the project. Redwood!  It’s amazing how many beautiful pieces of wood people dump into the landfill.

My pop went to the dump to pick up lumber, the man tending the yard was polite enough until someone else was coming in to dump (this is where they make their money, what my dad was doing was free at the time), at that point, the attendant got agitated with my dad and told him to “hurry up.”  This really grated my dad’s nerves because here he is doing the city a favor by reusing the lumber from the dump.  Isn’t reuse a step before recycle, anyway?  But all in all, the dump has been super helpful in our endeavor to create our home with creatively piecing unwanted and free materials together.

We’ve had so much help from friends and family, it’s enough to make gratitude our daily practice.  We are so grateful, so so so grateful.  The universe is kissing us sloppy and sweet on the forehead.

And we will use the inner membrane of metal for the upstairs exterior.  I love this project!

True Grit Romance

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In a world where we can order anything online, void politically correct into an abyss of coffee crazed manic mornings, throw away anything to make robust landfills all over the earth, take a pill for any ailment and have casual lovers any night of the week, where do our loves go when they leave our life?  Just because the richness of some love has lost its taste, does not render love useless—love still exists, and romance is prevalent in my stash of love letters filled with dreams both day and night alike.  I am aware, due to personal experience, that these sentiments may well have been shared with prior loves.  And I can’t help but wonder, if our love increases for each new lover, we develop a deeper capacity to love, and if our ability to withstand the heartlaws of loverville enhances with each new paramour, then to where does the past love mosey?

When I stumbled upon a letter written long ago from a previous lover, to yours truly, it occurred to me that if we choose, our past loves may sit comfortably in a purple peacock box among other special moments in time.  While rereading the letter with soft creases and smudged sections, memories flooded of the time when he drove that cracked sky blue 1984 Monte Carlo four hours, nearly breaking down five times, to surprise me with breakfast.  And how forever never seemed long enough.  Stories regaled on his sister’s front porch of new and exciting adventures to electrify even the oldest dog as a puppy in big skins.  These were the basis of some of my biggest dreams, beginning to bud and blossom in the heart of me for all the future, with or without him.  So, as many things do, we ended.  Cold November came and swept my heart away to far off lands we only dreamed of, I set out to venture alone and came across a passionate love affair with the west coast.  The letter, carefully placed back into the peacock box next to the steel fire striker and under the needle-turquoise ring he gave me that I don’t wear with the same gumption any longer, floods my mind with wonder at where that love went as years have passed and my heart has moved over and over again.

Perhaps lovers of late take the place of late lovers?  And that seems silly at best!  There are no pills of forget to consume after lovers leave, no casual Romeo to subside the pain of the ending or hide the delight of the beginning, so where does that love go?  Deep into the back corner of our hearts?  To be pulled out, and reread through the tear stained letters and prior promise rings of forgotten forevers and suddenly recall romance to remind our current heart that love never left, and lessons learned from our long lost lovers live to lead us into a better loverville with the next beautiful budding beau.

And just as we should keep special boxes of long lost lovers from wrong turns in hurtful homes of past loves, we should, too, wear a string or remind our hearts to file the fears and faux pas of late loves’ fashion and be much more careful with our heart and with the heart of others in our future.  These lost loves which curve down corridors of our hearts to find a secret peacock room locked up to conjure a pill of reminder, lest they leave forever!

Cody loves when I talk about this.  He says he has never felt more comfortable in a relationship, and from the beginning we have been comfortable speaking of our exs’ and in a mature way, assessing the way we want and need to be loved.  I love that about our relationship, too.  I think that because we choose to love one another for exactly who we are, with an honest open look at how we became the way we are (ahem, previous lovers had some to do with that!), we are able to bypass some of the nitty gritty relationship woes which result in ending.  If I am stronger in this beautiful romance, a large part of me is in debt to the lessons learned from every love in the past; I bring with me sentiments learned from previous partners and transform them into poignantly personal, perfect-for-him love-ness-es.  And if he is stronger in this beautiful romance, I gratefully, gracefully accept, too, that his lost Juliets’ have helped to create the love hero I see before me.