Settling In Gently

Liko has found a pair of long Johns, and is carefully patting a small brass cup, top and bottom, to listen to the set or ringing noises it makes on the table. A tiny metal teapot next to her is half-filled with milk. The cool liquid inside makes a dewey shadow on the outside, and Liko refills her small cups. Two toy cats are discarded on the floor, their chins suspiciously milk-drippy. Liko's two blond French braid's are fraying. Earlier this morning, after we dropped the big kids off on the long morning trek from North Eugene to South Eugene, through clogged arterial highways and wide fog swept river roads, backdropped with gradations of mist-fading pines, Liko sat on my tummy as I lay on the couch, and her blond hairs flew around her like a wild halo, her bangs in her eyes. We watched two squirrels in the back yard. One weighed down a drooping sunflower, and it bounced near the ground while the squirrel worked. Then pop! The sunflower head was off! The other squirrel step

So about four or five years ago, I was working at the Hawaiian immersion school Kawaikini, and I heard about the thirty meter telescope being built on Mauna Kea. To be honest, I didn't quite get why it was a big deal. There already were a whole bunch of telescopes up there. It had gone through a legal and lengthy approval process, even conscientiously involving "native cultural practitioners", and it had the public support of the office of Hawaiian affairs. It seemed at the time like just another reactive anti-science protest, like the anti ferry, anti GMO, anti-Vaccine, anti sex Ed, anti evolution, and pro hollow earth flare ups that rocked the miniature political landscape on Kauai, and I was tired of alllll of that noise. The school participated in a roadside protest, standing on the side of the road waving Aole TMT and KU Haaheo and Malama I ka Mauna signs. I felt comfortable saying Malama I ka mauna, take care of the mountain, and respect the language and the c

First, let me say, I don't know anything. Go ahead and read my know-nothing thoughts, you've been warned. The thing with ceremony is, it doesn't happen in normal time. You cross a border into another world. It's not benign, it's not easy. You need help. There's a reason fairy tales are populated with helpers, with wise old guides in guises. You can't go it alone, you can't muddle through safely. You need to walk with someone. Ceremony is personal. It's happening in the outside world, of course. It's happening in the world of dirt and fire and dust and sweat. But it's really happening inside your own na'au, your own gut, the seat of your spirit. Although an observer can describe or name or categorize or claim ownership of the outer stuff, what happens in your own brain and guts and whatever that bloody breakable organ that houses love is-- that's entirely your own. When I'm close to ceremony, I can't talk about it becau

First, this is not mine to write about. But what happens to me what my eyes see what shapes me is mine. Words won't budge. So I'm left a little wordless a little stranded outside of the kind of time that links up like sturdy lego bricks, hours stacking tidily into days, days neatly lining into weeks. Sundance time is in the grass. The grass is an ocean. The waves surge and bend and say hush Or when you get up close, the tall midsummer grasses crackle, the seeds shuddering in their little pods. Opened doors, crosses portals. Some walls are torn down and others built again. Lightning crackles across the surfaces, birds and flying creatures cross the barriers with impunity. They invite us into trusting the portals.

I toss a coin in the air on a bright day It flies in the face of gravity Catches and throws back the light in rapid flashes Coin-glints are a tiny winking sun, too bright for eyes. Dark-light, dark-light, a short flight one thing or another. The dark face, the bright tail The blue shadow side opposite the blind-bright metal part two sides make one arc against the sky I feel launched into coin-flight Good-bad, good-bad flickering a binary That in the speed of time arcs towards sky then earth and makes one new thing, the flight is both light and dark.

Isn't it amazing? We have all of human knowledge, history, art, and music in our pockets. Open source courses and libraries and archives-- the internet is an astonishing artifact-- a weightless Alexandrian library. Sometimes I even remember that fact, and poke at my Kindle reading list, and then go back to scrolling through "Garden Design" and "Celtic Tattoo" tags on Instagram, or *LOL* or *ANGRY REACT* to memes on Facebook. Not doggin' on Instagram or facebook, I love it and I love all your kids' shining prom faces and your beautiful crème brulee and your pouty selfies and your yoga-in-the-surf shots. But I'm been thinking about something--about the value of being exposed to things you don't seek out-- allowing yourself to have curated experiences from some other brain that shock, shake and stretch you. I love driving with my podcast library, and all my favorite tunes and playlists bluetoothed onto my car speakers. It's a relief, in

Being a Mormon Missionarionette, Marriage, and My Imaginary Boyfriend April 22, 2019 I don't know why, but I'm thinking about my mission, and about marriage, and relationships, and God, and it's like a nosebleed-- unstoppable until sufficiently reclotted in my brain, so I am going to dribble bloodily all over my blog until I figure out what I'm thinking, and my thoughts reclot themselves. When I was 21, I was a Mormon Sister missionary in Japan-- a Shimai Senkyoushi in the Tokyo North LDS Mission to be very exact about it. I was young and strong and beautiful, although I had no idea at the time-- looking back at pictures I am astonished I was every so clear of eye and bright of brow. I was as lovely and celibate as a Laurel, entombing myself in lovely twisting wood to preserve my virtue. Maybe that's too pretty of a way to put it. I was young and serious and chaste, mortified to be of flesh and up to my split ends in a project to mortify the flesh, one day of