Kissing the Joy as it Flies

“He who binds himself to a joy, does the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.”

An excerpt from the poem:

“Heaven in a Wild Flower”

by William Blake (1757-1827)


You’ve probably noticed themes of death and life in my tomes. I used this week of creative residency as a template for my last week on earth. I’ve channeled my elder self and asked him to write the wisdom he learned as he returned to the northern islands for the very last time. I have slept very little this week. I felt his tiredness and his losses. I mostly felt his soul still yearning to experience all of life. Last night we walked in the waxing moonlight, with the crimson crown of Orion guiding us on the milky shoreline. I sang our song and shined my small flashlight toward the heart of Orion chasing the moon across the sky. A hundred lifetimes from now that small light will still be on its way to Orion’s heart. But the song has already been heard.

Three years ago today she died, my soul-friend-beloved. Our whole world lost her just as she was reaching her stride as a young elder. Today is a day similar to that day. We’re on the verge of our first artic storm of the season. This could be the day of change for me, or for you. The potential of constant change makes everything more vibrant and beautiful. Like the persistent fragrance of the wild basil below the window, the call of the heron over the bay, the tear on my partner’s waking eyes or our cold house smudged with the curling smoke of a newborn fire.

I want to say this:
People, don’t mistake the platitudes, achievements or even comfort for real life. These are only thought forms. Life thrives between the thought and movement and in the simple things. Love is attention and noticing. Like the eye contact with your daughter at the breakfast table, the spontaneous song on the freeway, the humming bird shivering in the blood red madrone tree or the silence of the phone punctuated with the scratch scratch of the pen on paper. What makes these moments poignant is the obvious fleeting nature of it all.

So many worldly achievements establish an air of permanence and mastery. Rubbish! Something is lacking if any part of life is not seen for what it is. We are God’s moving, living dream. The Beloved Mystery is creating us moment by moment.

And yet, my tiny quivering light still travels toward the arc of Orion’s bow.

She was no dream. Yet after three years, our life experiences together feel like a dream. I remember her. She ignited the poet and dreamer in me. She restarted the heart of Avalon in me. She taught me to dance without worrying what others think. I hope I brought some gifts of joy to her too.

Everyone has gifts to be shared with you. Somehow it’s the fleeting and fallen ones that stick with you. Through happiness or sadness, let the gifts of God be witnessed and cherished as they fly.

I am grateful for this last day to walk the shoreline. A cold snap is falling from the north. My elder self will embark tomorrow on the ferry to his islands. I let him go, until we meet each other again in the future.

Thanks for traveling with me.

Rick

Heaven or Purgatory

Everyone should get a chance like this. Everyone should have a week to experience their unrequited life, with dreams come true. Here it is for me.

I’ve been softened by the realization that fantasies are not very good company. I have my ritual here, just like I’d dreamed. I live in a cottage on the bluff. The beloved ocean is within view. The good people are in the village nearby. I have the comfort of silent rituals, like the tea pot rocking back and forth with steam. Right on cue. The writing table is waiting like a needy lover, just as it was left last night. Everything is in order. I even have a new book of poetry opened for another divination of my day. It’s my dream life.

Now that I am here it feels as if my family life, the work on the farm, my job and my community on the hill were the life of another person. Like I’m very old and the memories are as dreams. Like death is near (as it is for every poet). Everyone should get their chance at living their “What ifs”. I find that this experience is a way of manifesting a dream. Then I find that heaven is basically like earth. Maybe not so painful here But it is not so succulent either.

I don’t have the heart to complain. But my heaven is not complete. I need a family and friends that can see me. I feel like I’m part of the ancient myth of the fairy. When I’m not recognized and seen I begin to fade into the other world.

My heaven is a sort of creative purgatory. It’s a beauty not directly shared. It’s a stack of tattered story books left on the piano by people who no longer live here. Purgatory is safe. It’s a ghostly comfort to live in that in-between place where I am a witness to every memory and act of nature but not connected with anyone physically.

Here’s another cue: The sun pushes through my window, between the lace of cloud banks. It is my time to walk on the beach. It is my daily time to gather the shiny stones the waves have ground to pieces. To walk and walk and walk. At the end of the peninsula I’ll turn around, like I did yesterday. Then I’ll return to the cottage, to my paper and my ink. If I’m lucky, I'll discover a message from earth in my inbox. The flashing screen saying that some living being is thinking of me. Like a prayer, someone is wishing that my stay here is beautiful and productive. Someone is missing me. But they knew it was my time to go.

I am grateful that I was given the chance to circle back into a life I’d wanted for so long. It’s a temporary landing. But it is enough to know how much I appreciate my current life and love back in the ordinary world. How much I miss Heather. I appreciate the life here too. I have a pocket full of wave polished agate and granite to bring home. And perhaps a story or a memory or a simple dream.

What is your fantasy life like? What is your dream of the perfect home, or town or even mate? What real joy would they bring that you cannot claim right now?

For most of my life I felt like a ghost. I was not quite part of the real world. Committing to someone at home that loves me and sees me was the best decision for LIFE I ever made. If that’s the only realization I find on the beach here, then it is enough.

Rick

Human Doing, Human Being

I have the privilege of being a creative resident sponsored by Centrum in Port Townsend, WA. I have week to write and dream and go wild creating. This is my fourth day here. I was driving myself nuts trying to produce something “worthy” through the first few days. The editor and the creator usually have to be separated in times like these. And the internal critic, that surly little man, needs to go on vacation. What about sending him to Maui, or even Australia? I’m going to be content here on the salty skirt of the northern Islands.

Walking on Fort Worden beach I found a curious army washed up in the foam. Hundreds of infant kelp, high and dry, clinging to small stones. I’m not sure if the stones were meant to be anchors or just tools to slow the drift until the young kelp get stronger and bigger. Either way, the young were lost to the air and howling sands.

This got me to thinking about the rules I’ve been anchored to. I’m connected, yet I continue to drift in my creative process. Here are a few tidbits from my critical editor. Sure, all of them make perfect sense. Yet when they become religious dogma, they squelch the joy and fire out of the creation. process. Ultimately the end result looks land locked and meager. Maybe you’ll see yourself in these contradictions:

Rick’s Rule-O-Rama:

Invoke the muse every time you write.
Just be yourself.
Release your pain.
Be joyful.
Free write.
Be disciplined.

Light the candle.
Be free, damnit.
Rise early.
Sit by the window.
Don’t move.
Walk more.
Use fewer words.
Put flesh on the story.
Don’t be such a critic.
Be deep.
Tell a story worth hearing.
Let it come from the heart.
Autobiography sucks.
Seek to be heard and published.
Write for your own joy.
Make it therapeutic.
Just be real.
Be bigger than yourself.
Collect stories.
Use ordinary words.
Challenge the reader.
Don’t be too ethereal.
Share the dirt on everything.
Allude.
Show. Never tell.
Have a plan.
Never plan.
etc. etc.

Well, you can see the mess one could get into if all the rules rose up in a storm. I’m not sure whether to be grounded or dreamy, to be connected to the ocean bottom, or a drifter. I think I’m like the little kelp. I have the illusion of being grounded and the companionship of a form. But the sea will still take me where it will.

At the beginning of the week I had a vision that was honed into a plan. After all, one needs a juicy plan to get into a residency like this, right? That’s all in the past. I’m learning something about my unique voice. I don’t usually tell workaday stories very well. Yet, I can sing ruthless beauty from my heart!

What does all this mean? Put boundaries around the “shoulds”. So, I made a structure for my days of solitude: Create, unfettered in the day. Edit last season’s writing at night. And if I’m lucky have a rockin dream, where something beyond the rules or structure makes a visitation.

Today a storm rushes from the San Juans down Admiralty Inlet. The sea is wild, but not frantic… like me. I just go with the weather, faithfully being true to my particular, quirky self.

Rick


Here’s the view out my window:

THANK YOU CENTRUM!!

A Place for Beauty

The Field (c) R. Sievers 2008

I was startled by the tear in my raw throat. Getting sick yesterday was not on my agenda. After a night of tossing the covers around the bed I woke up calm. I was then startled by the peace in this day. Instead of working hard to improve my little world here I’ve sat. I’ve been wondering how many people actually have the privilege to sit down with a cheap blue pen to record the musings of the sky. Who is that lucky? And there are so many other things to be concerned about, right?

After all, the sky has fallen. There’s depression on Wall Street. Our presidential mirror has burned up the world with light from the past. The cars sliding to the mall are still fueled with the blood of innocents from some sandy environ. Who am I to chide the sure and supple ones with my childlike poems?

All I can say is that all of my life experiences have led me to this very chair, scooting across a pile of wadded poems, oil pastels and graham cracker crumbs. The cell phone is blinking its urgent red light through the scrim of discarded papers. I won’t answer it just yet. I’m dreamy today. Sick with the beauty as much as from the razors in my throat. I just want to listen for the voice of God in the trees. If I’m lucky, to hear Her voice in the rustling of inky wings.

I wonder what sparks this addiction to beauty? Is it the fog or how the sun stirs his holy liquid hands through the morning? Is it the golden field framed with the symphony notes of knotty pine? Perhaps it is the rusty maple standing sentinel with the brick of the old chimney. Maybe it’s the silver barn shimmering signals to the creek dancing around its feet. I also recall the coyotes marching through the forest right to the edge of my fevered dreams last night.

Now I just watch through the steamy windows. The meaning of everything is clear, without words. But I’ll try to translate the wink of the midnight coyote with words anyway.

I think about the ones I love. How hard they are working right now. I remember them like I remember what God has created. The kids at school swinging a tetherball and playing a piccolo in band practice. My mother flying her wood laden pickup truck up highway 75 through the lava plains of Idaho. My silent father sitting on the sand pondering his next money making adventure, while he finishes studying the shape of the waves. My brother asleep so many years beneath the forest. My step father asleep in front of the TV after lunch. My beloved climbing the metal clank of stairs above the churning river. And here I am at my window.

There are so many ways of swallowing up time. And there are so many ways to sing of the succulence of this life. I want to know that I am fine in this world remembering all of you, my beloved friends and family. I want to know that I am free enough to see secrets in the spiral of grasses. Secure enough to dream beneath Orion’s watchful bow. I hear the headlines and I also remember all that is correct in the world. There has to be a place for beauty, even in the sad and struggling times we’ve called into this existence. I think that beauty and remembrance are as necessary as air and water. I think attention is as important as food. Sometimes I even think attention is the essence of love.

I encourage you to loaf for just a moment with me. Be free enough to pause. Remember those that you love and then let them go. See something beautiful you have never recognized before. Maybe the world needs this sort of care as much as any. And a loving pause seems to be such a fine way to begin loving and solid action.
Rick

The Farmer and the Chicken

Image: Coming Home With Stories (c) R. Sievers 2005

Dawn entered the day about an hour ago. I’ve been watching my neighbor across Risto Road attempting to herd a black and white striped chicken into a corner of a pen. The woman’s long braid swings rhythmically as she chases the hen. She has a long wispy stick in one hand, prodding the roundabout runner. In the other a hand she holds an amazingly wide butcher knife. Shining. When she has the foul seemingly cornered, the hen skirts around in frenzy. This happens over and over again. It’s an amazing dance to observe. Apparently all the other farm creatures think so too. They lean through their barbed wires watching with quizzical expressions. Everyone knows the outcome, whether quick or strenuous. Even the chicken knows what is coming.

I sit in my window again recording whatever skirts through my fingers. I move slow and steady across the page. I don’t wonder if chasing after words is worth the effort. I only want to catch my prey. I have a pen in my write hand. In the other hand I have a sharp honed blade, leaning out from last nights dreams.

I’m going to write again and again. It is my ritual. It is my dawn. It is my time to chase the feeling around the page until I capture the quarry. It’s a primal rite, just like the one I see across the road. All the penned up dreams and stories watch from the dark corners of the cold morning cabin. The young revelations are lurking under the old lumpy bed. A song roosts on the fir branch outside the frosted window. They are all curious about the chasing dance occurring at my desk. They know the outcome if I will just keep at it. They know that someday they will be next. And I’ll take them with gratitude in my herky jerky grace.

Someday my life will be quarry for The Beloved, who stands outside of time. All my stories are building me cell by patient cell, until I become more than myself. And I’ll be reborn on the sharp edge of rough love.

I look again into the barnyard down the hill. The curious gawkers have gone back to their cud. The geese and ducks have ceased their squawking. The dogs are fast asleep. A light burns now in the farmer’s kitchen window. There is fresh smoke rising from her woodstove. I watch, like the Spirits watch all of us. We are all interested in the raw integrity of how life chases after life in order to live.

I am grateful to be a player in this scene. My pen continues scratching the dust of these pages. With one eye I search for precious kernels. With the other I watch for the bright glint of the sun slicing through the mist.

What are you chasing after today?
Is it life?
Is it worthy of your effort?
What stories will you bring home when the silver light falls?

Rick

Simple Magic

Photo: Stones in our field brought from the Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes you don’t see the magic of life events and decisions until months or years after the fact. This weekend marks the six month anniversary of living on our farm called Elysia. I’ve grown a lifetime in these two seasons. I’ve written a lot to you about longing and beauty. I’ve written about my island home. The islands are blatantly magical. Who would not be bulldozed by the awe of a hundred mountains floating in a crystal sea? Now I write to you about carrying the magic in simpler country.

I feel the steady growth of subtle magic in my life on this land. This place is more than a place. It’s a school of the human soul. It’s a grist mill of the heart. It’s sometimes a burning field, now frosted in white (like me). If I can adapt and thrive in this country and familial context, then I know I can do more than I ever dreamt. There have been many new challenges: a neighborhood that is often filled with ignorance and poverty, the roar of family life, being baffled between city and sea, being alone most of the time yet on the hem of a braided community. If I can expand and explore being a provider of safety and solidity, if I can evolve and not leave behind the creative good aspects of the puere’ (being a child in an adult body), if I can release the codependent ways of control, then I can be more than my original programming. I am becoming a man here on this land. I am waking up from the “other world” and seeing the joy in the grit of this world.

Last night I revisited the little home I moved from in Uptown, Vancouver. I drove by slowly, craning my neck. The old street was draped as usual in autumn leaves. I wheeled by in the stealth of night’s covering. I saw a ragged yard, a dead tree that I’d loved from a sapling. There was the picket gate off its upper hinge, cockeyed. The shades glowed with incandescence. But there were no shadows dancing there. No flicker of candles burning. My old house appeared sad and small. I wonder if it appeared like this when I lived there? That little place was a weigh station for my move further north. I never made it to my islands. But life apparently is not over yet.

Sometimes miracles occur within very common handiwork. For years I dreamt of Avalon where the Spirits and I danced with God, a primeval forest with stones singing in the rub of the tide. I’ve spent most of my life dreaming.

(Photo: Cabin Window Rain)

I came Here by surprise. Through the heavy dreams of March rain I drove into the weedy driveway. I Stepped out of my car and heard the creek whispering just like it is today. Six white buildings stared at me blankly from a three acre canvas of grass. I said to myself without thinking: “This place could work for all of us.” Like we were already a family. That moment was the entry point to a thousand small decisions that helped me grow past my self perceived limitations.

My life script no longer cries “Someday I’ll be home.” I hear the river in me whispering that I am the home I’ve always sought.

I’d lived my entire adult life, until this past year, bent on living safely like a monk. In many ways my profound spiritual experiences tainted me. They showed me a world “just over there” that shined with only love, grace and belonging. It was not like the rain of this world. In my twelve years of shamanic training we practiced dying (sometimes literally) in order to reach the compassionate ones. Now, I practice living.

I say to the loving spirits: “I am wrapped in God now. Yes, I know you are waiting. I know our island home hovers expectantly. Wait for me. Be patient. Let me gather more stories, more happy tunes with sad words, more colors from the twilight forest. Wait. I’ll come to you when I have learned to be human.”

I think I’ll practice much more the miracle of ordinary living. I think I’ll practice the gifts of deep breathing, laughing and crying before I go to the other world. There is so much to be grateful for today.

Rick

Better Than a Dream

Photo: Astoria on the Columbia River Bar

My early winter task has been to go through my bags of photographs. Each year of my pre-digital life had been stuffed into its own grocery bag. My goal has been to pull thirty images from each year and scan them. So far I’ve waded through 1985 through 1991. Thousands of pictures have flown into a heap for the fire. And some remain. One photo from 1990 struck me. It shows me laughing with my entire family. I was beside “K” my first lover and adult companion. I was struck with how far life has come since then. I am struck with gratitude for what is now, here on this farm, with my family. Here’s what I wrote in my journal as I looked at this photograph:

I’ll never forget her words. It was July of 1990. I was unconsciously bent on rejecting her. It had been only months since I’d backed out of our wedding. Now I was unsatisfied with the infernal hovering. I wanted to fly. I’d arrived at freedom’s door. I’d been a professional therapist for nearly two years. The money flowed into my life from multiple sources. I was only twenty nine years young. Condo on the hill. Red turbo car. Degreed. I was itching to live some other way… as usual.

We were due to go on a family reunion trip to Idaho. Little did I know then, that would be the last family gathering. By Labor Day my mom would bravely leave my childhood home, alone for the first time in twenty five years. And I was about to break into the shiny and jagged shards of a new adult life.

Our years as a couple were full of travel, wine, concerts and all that the burning city and verdant hills could offer. I claimed her as my very first lover. I had just risen from graduate school. Only four years before I had been homeless. Now that I was home I was on the cusp of rejecting her.

The trip was set to begin in a week. I was poised to go alone. Of course I told her everything on my mind; one of my better habits (?). I remember how she looked up at me from our tangled sheets. I remember her exact words:

“You better not dump me now. Wait. This vacation is all we’ve got left. You better take me along.”

We went on that vacation. We laughed. Loved. For ten days we forgot the leaving and denying of our years together. My mom brought our whole family together on Redfish Lake one last time. We were all happy. How transient and yet lasting, this life.

I say this to you, dear reader: Be careful. Some day you will come across a photograph that will remind you of the selves you thought you left behind. Hundreds of colors will hit you. You’ll find that events and people are still alive in you. And they may be almost too much of an effort or pain to examine. I encourage you to look anyway.

It’s not that I miss her. It’s not nostalgia. It’s not that I made a faulty decision to leave. What comes is a great flood of joy. It’s so big it hurts. Also, there is regret. I was so unaware how rich life really was… really IS… at the time.

Photo: Heather on Samhain Night
And then the memories of the others come to me. The woman I lived and grew up with on the river. The one I lost by being too careful. The one who’s anger I embraced too closely. And today one woman I deeply love…my first adult partner… and last. She works on the tugs and barges on the Columbia River. On her travels she passes the island beach where I first loved a woman. She sends her wake upon the shore where my once young cats grow old without me. She plies the waters like the innocent one of islands.

What slaps against my hermit’s heart is how important all the people have been in my life. I also see how the dark lord of depression, the family sicknesses and the drug of the spirits have all sucked me away from connecting with others. Really, I’m grateful. I see how I really, truly lived my full life. Yet in the aftermath of so many efforts and hard work I see a continual leaving behind. All in search of an ideal. My ideal loves have been in the form of psychology, shamanism, holistic healing, Art, an island paradise, a house or two and now this cabin in the field. These are simply not enough for me anymore. In the memories I see the skin, the eyes. I feel the laughter and arguments. I soak in the silences and drunken nights and love making and dreamy plans together. I always ended up leaving for the sake of an Avalon. So many chances of love rejected.

I admit I am more grounded now. Leavings and rejection and splitting up always extract a deep toll. All the wine and song and trips and money spent. All the long discussions and sweet kisses and family gatherings. What were they for?

Wisdom!

The past is not gone. I have taken it all along with me. All my friends and relations. All the experiences. It’s like I’ve died. Now I’m recollecting and reviewing all of God’s gifts. How do I transform the ones I neglected or used or slept through?

Now I’m working hard not to sleep through my rich and varied life. Here I am in my little cabin, pinning my self to a swaying field, sharing a table with a family. I have a lover who adores me and a broad future. I have no idea how to proceed now that I am present, now that my soul has folded into my growing wisdom.

Be warned, friend. Going through old photos can be dangerous to your complacency. Yes, throw away most of the images if you will. But ponder a few. Hold them lightly and with reverence. These memories are you, right now. Remind yourself of what you’ve moved through with each new photo you release.

I’m grateful today. My life is simpler, less arrogant. I still have the privilege of being on earth, unlike a small but growing number of my friends and lovers. I have the pleasure of this cabin and this desk. I have the plans for community taking shape from my sweat in the sawdust. And I have a beloved coming home to me this evening. While I plot nothing but to simply be here with her. She comes back to our home on the edge of a country mountain. The smell of the river in her hair. The love of our shared and tangled life in her eyes. I am grateful at last. I have new simpler wisdom that comes down to this:

Life is better when it’s shared

Sometimes what you have now is good enough. And sometimes it is better than what you could have ever dreamt.

Rick