I can't go on. I must go on. I go on. Dealing with Defeatism.

Moonday.  New Moon.  A good time to go inward and listen to what our deepest, wisest selves have to say.

As for me, I have no business posting today.  

I'm overheated and surrounded by waste.  I pick up garbage along the community garden fence as often as I can.  Other neighbors do it too.  More garbage blows by with every gust of wind.

When I throw away trash I feel it in my body.  The landfill is part of me.  This is true.  Its part of all of us.  We all have accumulated waste in our bodies that we can't metabolize, but that's another story.

I have chosen this.  Chosen to love and defend this little corner of earth.    I'm sure the garden is necessary for my survival too.

Tomorrow morning at 11 AM there will be a public hearing to help determine the fate of community gardens in the city, which are imperiled yet again.

Why are community gardens imperiled?  Why must people fight to save them?

I don't want to go to the hearing tomorrow.  I would like to spend the time working on my business, or plotting an escape to the ocean for a bit of sanity and perspective.  But I'm going to the hearing.  Dammit.   Be the change etc. etc. 

I'm reminding myself how grateful I am to all of the amazing people and organizations who work so hard for the earth, and therefore for us, the creatures who live here.  All I have to do is show up tomorrow.  How easy is that?  Fairly easy.

Don't know if this rant is of any use to anyone else, but I feel better.  So for this moonday.... RANT!  Or better yet, dream.  What is one collective change you would love to see in the world?  What small (or big) thing do you do to make it happen?

For those of you in NYC, info about the hearing and pep rally starting at 9 may be found on the New York City Community Garden Coalition's website.

life is a dream

Happy Moonday!  It’s the third quarter moon tonight, equal parts light and dark.   The weather is finally cooling down here in NYC, and the last few nights have been good for dreaming.  

Treat dreams a little bit more like waking life, and waking life a little bit more like a dream.  That’s some of the best advice I’ve ever received—maybe in general, but certainly in trying to recall my dreams more frequently.

Treating waking life like dreaming-- that is, looking for signs, symbols, layers of meaning in things-- also stimulates my writing.  And its easy to do in the carnival of New York City.

I love picking up random pieces of paper I find on the street and imagining that someone wants me to read them like clues.  Sometimes I find grocery lists, an occasional overwrought love-note, or most magically a single yellowed page from an old book sitting on the middle of an empty sidewalk.

This latest falls into the last category, a lone page from The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader.  This is in part what it says:

“Meditation is a never-ending movement.  You can never say that you are meditating or set aside a period for meditation.  It isn’t at your command.  Its benediction doesn’t come to you because you lead a systemized life or follow a particular routine or morality.  It comes only when your heart is really open.  Not opened by the key of thought, not made safe by the intellect, but when it is as open as the skies without a cloud; then it comes without your knowing, without your invitation."

What a gorgeous little reminder for me to open my heart on a cloudless summer night.  Thanks Krishnamurti!

What treasures have you found in the street or in the woods/desert/jungle?  Stories, wisdom, inspiration?

Learning to Give from the Overflow, not from the Well

There is a wise Sufi saying, 'Give from your overflow, not from your well.'  I interpret this as meaning give from a place of love, joy, and abundance, not suffering and self-deprivation.

Today in New York City its a rainy Moonday, which feels good.  Its like a snow day for gardeners.  I'm taking some time for myself after spending a large portion of the last two weeks working on a massive volunteer project.  I'm the director of a kid's community garden on the Lower East Side called the Children's Magical Garden.**

 Kids love worms. They get super excited whenever they find one.

Kids, teachers from the School for Global Leaders across the street from the garden, parents, other garden members and I have been putting in a rain garden, a small native wetlands that soaks up the water in the garden's lowest point.  When the plants have grown up some, it will not only look like a wild, beautiful place, but will also create habitat for more song birds, humming birds, bees, dragonflies, and butterflies... increasing the wildness in the city by just a little bit, and providing an amazing outdoor classroom for kids and adults alike. 

All of this warms the cockles of my heart and so I haven't minded all the hard work, even though it has involved digging three feet down into ground consisting of broken brick, brick dust, rusted metal and the like.

My hands look, to quote a literary friend, "very Pearl S. Buck" with the ground-in dirt (even after scrubbing) giving them a mottled appearance.  On the upside, I can feel my hands getting stronger and think I would do alright in an arm wrestling contest.

This community garden is one of my greatest spiritual teachers.  Sometimes its lessons have been frikkin hard. 

Its a large unpaid undertaking and has the potential to suck up all available time-- very dangerous for an entrepreneur and writer with a penchant for procrastination.  There have also been so many seemingly hostile elements to overcome such as--

• Toxic soil. (Most NYC soil is poisoned with lead from paint and must be painstakingly amended or replaced with new, healthy compost.) 
• Endless rubble.  (The garden was build on the foundation of a burned down building and has been sinking into that crushed foundation over the years.)
• Ignorance.  (Very few people have any gardening experience, and therefore greatly underestimate the challenges the space provides.  They think it is simply a matter of planting flowers and watching them grow.) 
• Personal conflict/ toxic relationships.  Toxic environments produce toxic relationships.  It has been challenging to say the least to work through personal difficulties with other gardeners.  In the end, however, it has also been deeply rewarding and transformational to all involved.  These transformed relationships have made this next, more productive phase of work/play possible after years of two steps forward, one step back.

What I have strongly come to believe is that service, to be truly effective, must involve the concept of what my Dancemeditation teacher Dunya calls dynamic reciprocity.   This means that the work actually feeds you.  The work leaves you feeling joyful, inspired, re-energized, more creative, more full of juice for your own projects.

Forget selflessness.  For most of us, its a trap.

Dynamic reciprocity goes beyond feeling good because you are "making a difference".  That attitude of self-righteousness has the potential to slide into its own flip-side, an attitude I've felt many a time... martyrdom.  "I'm spending all this time and not getting paid.  My work isn't appreciated, and yet its now somehow just 'expected' of me by the community.  The garden doesn't look beautiful yet and so people don't see all the hard work I've put in..." blah blah blah.

Then there is "Oh my gosh!  Look at me with my big ego wanting credit!  I'm not selfless enough!  This is about the earth, the children..." blah blah blah martyrdom.

I decided that this year I was going to pull self-righeousness and martyrdom out by the roots and compost them.  I've been planting joy and contentment in their place.

I've made it a point to focus on activites I adore such as mentoring a small group of local kids I've known for years who are committed to the garden and to listening/working with the earth.  I'm learning to better delegate the tasks that I dislike, such as contacting the parks department. (I actually much prefer removing rubble by hand than organizing on the phone.)

I have also reminded myself that it is because of this project that I was sponsored by the community to go to school to become a permaculture designer, something that has dramatically increased my happienss.

The past two weeks I haven't had as much time to write, but all of the additional physical activity has magically worked out all kinds of kinks in the third draft of my play and first draft of my novel.  My third eye feels very open, and I feel tremendously grounded and focused in my herbal consultations after working so intensely with the earth.  Dynamic reciprocity is happening, and its truly awesome.

For this Moonday, I would as always love it if you have art/poetry etc. to share in the comments, and am also interested in where you have found dynamic reciprocity or rooted out self-righteousness/martyrdom in your own life...

**Children's Magical Garden website still under construction.  Find lots of pictures of the garden on the facebook group, Children's Magical Garden Community and Supporters

Thanks to friend, fellow Dancemeditator, and novelist Karleen Koen who first introduced me to the phrase 'give from your overflow, not from your well'. I've been pondering it ever since.

On breaking unwritten rules

Happy Moonday.  Its a waning gibbous-- three weeks give or take before May's full flower moon and an excellent time for spring cleaning and the release of worn-out habits before the new moon.

I've never been one to obey a rule or code if it strikes me as nonsensical or unfair.  One that I simply can't abide is the unwritten rule that a woman should not be alone in city parks after dark.  If 'bad things' happen, well, what was she thinking?  As an intrepid city herbalist I find myself alone at night in city parks with some frequency.  I do usually bring my dogs.

Sunset.  I'm on my hands and knees on the ground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, gathering a wild, abundant medicinal plant called cleavers, Galium aparine.   I'm determined to gather enough to make a quart of tincture (a lot) because this is the lushest, largest patch of cleavers I've ever seen, and its a plant that I need for my own healing.  I've been searching the park for  hours, and have finally found it.  But its getting late. The sun goes down.

When I make herbal medicine I thank every plant as I harvest, and I chant or sing as I go.  On this, the first almost warm spring night, I'm chanting Ya-Hadi, a Sufi chant, ya (invocation) Hadi (the Guide or Guidance).

Even though its a dark moon and I'm harvesting by thin orange lamp light, I can make out the cleavers easily by their distinctive shape like successive Doctor Seuss umbrellas on a chain and the way they cleave to my fingers, as their name implies. Their stalks are rough like cat tongues.

I've long known about cleavers' reputation for soothing swollen lymph, and have taken it for this myself, but beyond that our relationship has been somewhat superficial until now.

As I'm harvesting, I'm intently 'listening' for what the plant has to say about itself.  It gives itself up so easily.  I feel that this is an excellent herb both for physical and emotional flexibility.  (Its used to treat arthritis, as it turns out.)

I've almost gathered enough when the tall dead mugwort stalks I'm sitting under start to snap and I turn  to see a large man looming over me.  I let out the deep growling warrior's bellow my father taught me.  The man jumps back.

He is not a threat, at least not to me in this moment.

I say, 'I'm sorry I shouted, but you know, you startled me.'

He replies, 'That scream... I know you are a macho girl.  You have machisimo.

'Yes,' I reply.

'You are very lonely?' he asks.

Its important that the plants have good energy around them at all times when I'm gathering and making medicine, so after letting him know that no, I'm not lonely, not at all, I tell him what I'm doing, show him the cleavers, and explain some of their medicine.

'It give me energy?' I say it will.  'Delicious?' I tell him no.  Its bitter.  Good for the liver, like all bitter herbs.  He tries it anyway, and says nothing.

I turn away from him and continue to chant and gather.  He stands and watches me.

After about ten minutes I've gathered enough.  Earlier I had collected a small bag of silvery green spring mugwort tops for tea and wild dandelion greens for salad.  I can't find the brown paper bag in the dark.  I ask if the man will help me to look for it.   We find the bag. I thank him and say goodbye.

'Be safe!' he says.

'You too!' I reply. 

Cleavers definitely helps increase emotional flexibility.   (And next time I'll bring my dogs.  I'm happy to talk to curious onlookers, but don't want them sneaking up on me when I'm deep in a plant conversation.)

What is an 'unwritten rule' you sometimes (or often) break?

As its Moonday, I'd also love it if you would post poems or art of any kind in the comments.

Slower and Lazier

Sleeplessly 
I watch over
the spring night--
but no amount of guarding 
is enough to make it stay.
 by Izumi Shikibu

----------------------------------

march sun
i dream of the farm
even during the day
as it was
as it became since
trees growing thick in fields
even the blackberries
once rampant
succumbing to their shade
i remember the call
the chill sun of that day
your hands
wet birds
your eyes cloudy clay
i miss the chestnut walls
sheltering hills
the trees dressing
for spring
softness of worn stones
found in
abandoned roads

by @ten_ten_ten on twitter.  Here is his poetry blog.  As far as I know he wants to be anonymous beyond this... (Just in case you weren't aware, twitter is a great place to meet poets.)

Late March Moonday. Its just after the Spring equinox, with a waxing crescent.   Today on the south side of Tompkins Square park I noticed that the daffodils were in full bloom.  I find it almost painful to look at daffodils because it makes me sad to see them crisp in the hot sun and fade.  It seems to happen so soon after they bloom. Spring is ruled by all of these gorgeous, short-lived blossoms.  We all deserve a holiday from our lives just to appreciate them properly.

As that hasn't been declared yet,  my antidote is to go into Pooh bear mode whenever I can.

Be slower and lazier.  I want to feel my spring.

Even in my 'leisure time' as a gardener I can get overwhelmed by the amount of work there is to do now-- all the pruning, readying the soil for planting, clearing away the dead brush-- but the plants grow without me.  The mint grows around its long dead stalks, the un-pruned apple tree bore fruit for years without anyone's help but the sun and the rain.

So today I'm just taking it in.   

In the comments, I'd love it if you'd share something of your experience of the spring-- this one or any other.  Do you have a picture in your head that says 'spring' to you from yesterday, last year, or twenty years ago?

I'd also be thrilled if you shared poetry or art, yours or someone's who inspires you.

a plant for peaceful warrior women and wise men

This week's Moonday Post...

These last few days have felt like spring in Manhattan with brilliant blue skies and a carnival atmosphere on the streets of the East Village.

Yesterday I walked by children carrying bunches of cut daffodils and people dancing to jazz music in Tompkins Square Park.

I was on my way to a friend's house with my dogs, weighed down by bags of produce from the green market, when a man passed me a little too closely and shouted some rape-y comments.  Really violent things.

That almost never happens to me.  I have a pretty good force field, but it was down.  I wasn't prepared after a winter of automatic shielding by the cold and layers of warm clothes.

What popped into my head was the chant we all learned in elementary school, 'I'm rubber and your glue whatever you say bounces off me and sticks onto you', which I muttered as I passed.

I'm blessed to know lots of men who actively discourage cat calling.  I'm grateful too to all of the parents and teachers who work had to bring up boys with respect for women (such as my mother in law).  But the most instantaneous way I've found to discourage cat calling is to change my posture, my attitude, my vibe.  I don't allow it into my space.

Today I'm off to the park to restrengthen that force field.    I want to see if artemisia vulgaris, mugwort, is popping her head up yet.  Artemisia has the namesake of Artemis, Goddess of the hunt, the moon, protector of animals, the young, and the wilderness.   Like the goddess Artemis, Artemisia vulgaris is a moon plant.  The backside of the leaves are silver, like moonlight.

The plant artemisia is very subtly psychotropic (mind-altering) when ingested or burned as smudge.  It can enhance the vividness and recall of dreams, strengthen intuition, and deepen a person's relationship to nature.  It grows all over the world in various forms.

This plant has helped me to gain a sense of independence and inner strength.  I've enlisted its (her) wisdom to help others also come to trust their own intuitions, their 'gut' feelings.  

Its a plant par excellence for wild, fearless women and men, and I'd go so far as to say that its a remedy for cat calling.  Artemisia brings out the peaceful warrior in women and the wise woman in men.

There is a fierceness about the plant that has nothing to do with aggression. Artemisia helps us to stand tall with our shoulders back while moving with precision, grace, and a steady gaze, effortlessly discerning when we can relax, and when we need to be alert.

Right now I'm imagining Mr. Rapey-Comments sitting in the park somewhere with a large clump of mugwort.  He finds himself drifting off.  He starts to dream.

In the dream he comes across Artemis.  He was watching her bathe. She looks at him.  He thinks, 'oh shit',  his brain tunes into the collective unconscious and he remembers the part of the myth where Artemis turns a dude into a stag who is torn apart by dogs.  Only this time she transforms him into a woman in Manhattan in the spring.

There are lots of men out whistling, shouting, and hooting at women on the street.   He, now a woman, comes across himself as a man.  He hears his male self speak violating, ugly words.  They reverberate inside his female body.

He opens his eyes, changed.  He has heard his words as a form of self-hatred, and with this knowledge he begins, slowly, to heal.

Do you have a good cat calling story?  Some time when you were able to shift the energy? 

Wishing you a wild, happy Moonday.

Herbal footnotes:

There's lots of fantastic info on the medicinal uses of artemesia vulgaris.  Here are some links to great sources:  Susan Weed,

Henriette's Herbal (a compedium of excellent articles)

When its very young, artemisia is a light mint green and tastes pleasantly bitter.  Its used a lot in cooking and medicine in Asia.  In acupuncture its burned as moxa.  Like all bitters, its excellent for the liver and digestion, and so is a potent addition to the diet this time of year when our livers are all craving some t.l.c. after the winter.

Pregnant women should avoid it internally, though they can still benefit from its dream and intuition powers by sleeping with it in dream pillow or hanging out with the plant in the park.  

Artemisia is everywhere, so once you know what it looks like, you'll always have a friend around.

Writing Myself Out of a Box

I don't want to write a process-y post.  I don't think that anyone will want to read it.  But nothing else will come out, so here it is.

When I started this blog, I was in conflict.  I think of myself as a writer, dammit.  But I'm also an herbalist.  I wanted felt like I should have an herbal blog on my business website, friendlyherbalist.com.  But since it seemed to be stuck, I decided I'd just start a 'say anything' blog and see what came of it.

I didn't want to write-- exclusively-- about herbs.  I didn't want to be-- exclusively-- an herbalist.  I was afraid that somehow my artist self was going to be swallowed up by my herbalist self.  I'd started my journey into herbalism when I was pretty creatively blocked.

By the time I wrote my first post here I'd worked my way out of the block, largely thanks to years spent learning about medicinal plants, and through them deepening my relationship to nature and my body.

When you enter into a relationship with a plant, learning all about it firsthand by touch, smell, feel, taste, listening to the sound of its leaves in the wind, and listening to your intuition about its healing medicine-- it changes you.

When you gather its flowers or dig its roots and make herbal preparations that then cure your ailments-- your aches and pains, your grief, your scattered mind, your brokenness; it gives you strength.  Its incredibly empowering.  So then of course you can make your music, or dance like no one is watching or... write a play.  You can speak clearly.  You can step into your power instead of giving it away.   Having a relationship with the medicine plants is a portal into the sacredness of the earth and your own body.

 

Marsh mallow flower, wild harvested last July, Brooklyn, NY.

So, as you may be able to tell, I'm passionate about this stuff.  And what's been coming up for me lately is that... I have to share it.  More.  Its needed.  What's that line from T.S. Eliot?  'Hurry up now, its time.'

I love lots of things:  Poetry, dogs, dancing-- even dog dancing.  The theater has my heart.  But the sacredness of the earth... that is what I know.  That's the part of me that feels like a clear channel from sky to earth and back again. 

So I'm going to write more about that.  Not exclusively.  Oh no.  (Don't worry scared inner writer--I'm not boxing you in.) I think that I'm just ready to claim something.  Some knowing.  We'll see.

Feedback is good.  Are these topics-- deepening relationship to nature-- sacredness of body and the earth--- hands on herbal medicine-- of interest to you?  If you enjoy this blog, what would you like to read more about?

doubt, prayer, and the healing power of beauty

 

Sunset.  Low tide.

Faith and prayer have never come easily to me.  I’m a doubter.   I talked to a friend about it once when I was feeling anguished on a meditation retreat, and she said maybe the most comforting sentence I've ever heard.  She said, ‘Maybe God likes you that way.’

Recently I watched a loved one go through something hard, and I came to the realization that I'm completely powerless to help her.  It seems that I’ve been given two choices:  worry, or pray.  I’ve had this short poem by Hafiz rattling around in my head for days now.  I need to have it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.

Now that all your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job.

So this is my prayer.

Sometimes time melts.  Six hours spread out in our minds to reach the girth of a decade’s worth of memories.

My friend and I were fifteen and it was summer.  Neither of us appreciated those facts much.  Both of us had a parent with cancer and life felt full of snares.  But we'd been graced by a trip with her family to a largely unspoiled island with the Atlantic stretching out on one side, and wide green salt marshes on the other.  It was easier to breathe there with the salt air and all of the space just to be. 

After dinner and some games of gin rummy one night we took our usual barefoot walk along the quiet beach.  We could see layers of stars above the dark ocean, and little else except for the glint of foam at our feet under the half moon.

We walked a long way along the shore to our favorite place, a protected cove on the northernmost point of the island where the beach ended and we had to navigate through spiky reeds and armies of sand crabs to sit on some large rocks over the water.  That night the sea was smooth and it was easy to imagine walking on it, out and out.

Still heat curled around our bodies and tickled drops of sweat from the backs of our necks before we slowly eased into the dark water. We walked in up to our chests, then dunked our heads and shoulders under quickly, shivering for a moment before adjusting. 

We traced constellations in the sky, getting lost in endless layers of stars and distant galaxies.  Shooting stars radiated over our heads, one after another.  It was a meteor shower, a poem to bent time, end of time.  It felt like a mystery that was outside of us, and somehow passing into us directly through our eyes.

Around our shoulders and arms we found more stars.  There were stars in the reflection on the sea’s surface, and yellow sparks inside the water too. 

Phosphorescence danced with our movement, shimmered in our wet hair.  We were crowned with stars.  We were inside of them, two Queens of Heaven, two infants safe inside of Mystery, splashing and laughing, in love with the rise and fall of our sparkling forms, in love with everything until the sky grew light and we made our way home to slip into our beds by sunrise.

That night unfurls inside my spirit like a map to Source when I’m full of doubt and forgetting beauty.

I pray that my loved one who shared it with me can be comforted by the memory too, that if her pain ever becomes too big, she can remember that time, have it become one of her maps back to beauty.  I pray that like for me, it will help her remember that the universe is vast, gorgeous, endlessly varied, always changing, always eternal, whole, and that somehow nothing is ever lost when we love it.

A Month of Moondays

I officially started the Moonday Experiment a month ago.  The idea is to take a little time out every Monday to celebrate the moon, as the day was originally dedicated to this heavenly body.  Our culture currently has an implied ban on merry making and wildness on Monday.  'Good T.V.' after a grueling day of work and commerce is the dominant trend.

The Moon has long been associated with creativity, intuition, and wildness.  It makes me sad thinking of how disappointed the moon would be if it could look down and see how we spend our Mondays.  I've wanted to see what would happen if some of us do something creative and/or wild on Mondays to celebrate the moon.  I decided that on Moondays I would do something creative just for fun. Meeting my writing goals doesn't count.

So far I've seen a subtle shift in my attitude towards Monday.  I've noticed that the busy list-making part of my mind that wants to get the work week started with a 'bang', isn't in complete control.  Sunday I found myself actually looking forward to that art time on Monday, despite also needing to get some nagging tasks accomplished.  Thus far celebrating Moonday hasn't stopped me from going to the bank and the post office, but it has made me care a little bit less if I get everything on my list accomplished.

On Moonday I will reflect on wildness,' I thought to myself on Sunday.  'Maybe I'll even find a way to be a little wild.... Hmm.  And I'll take time out to read poetry and do some art-making, just for fun....'  Yay Moonday! You are so much more fun than Monday.

I've asked everyone who thinks it sounds like fun to join me in this experiment and celebrate Moonday in your own ways, as well as to post stories of wildness, links to art of all kinds including dance, theater, visual art, poems, etc.  To write about your dreams, your thoughts on wildness...  If you haven't been spelunking in the comments you've missed some inspiring stuff, so here, here, and here, are the links to the previous three weeks posts.  Just go straight to the comments. 

I'd love it if you would share something, anything that you like, but here are some questions if you want a prompt:  The moon is often associated with insanity. In an effort to take back that lunar intuitive wisdom, the question is, what is one of the most crazy/brilliant ideas you or someone else has ever had?  Or an idea that seemed at first to make no sense, but somehow was just the thing....  For me, it was deciding to take up dancing when I was very stuck in my writing.  If I hadn't, I truly doubt I'd be writing this sentence now.

Happy Waxing Gibbous (nearing full ) Moonday!
 

Mint and Mangoes

Mint

It looked like a clump of small dusty nettles
Growing wild at the gable of the house
Beyond where we dumped our refuse and old bottles:
Unverdant ever, almost beneath notice.

But, to be fair, it also spelled promise
And newness in the backyard of our life
As if something callow yet tenacious
Sauntered in the green valleys and grew rife.

The snip of scissor blades, the light of Sunday 
Mornings when the mint was cut and loved:
My last things will be first things slipping from me.
Yet let all things go free that have survived.

Let the smells of mint go heady and defenseless
Like inmates liberated in that yard.
Like the disregarded ones we turned against
Because we'd failed them by our disregard.
                                                --Seamus Heany, from The Spirit Level

That line-- my last things will be first things slipping from me-- always gets me.  I thought of this poem tonight sitting in my tiny Manhattan kitchen eating a mango that I've watched ripen for a week.  I cut it carefully, and as I ate it I closed my eyes and savored it, trying not to be greedy for the next bite and the next, which was almost impossible.

When I was very young I lived in Florida.  We had a mango tree in the back yard.  I was the only one in my family who was not allergic to the skins and so from a very early age it was my job to pick and peel the mango for everyone. I treated it as a sacred ritual.  I remember that my mother would hold me up to the tree because I was too little to reach the ripe fruit, and then I'd pull as hard as I could with both hands to get the fruit off its stalk and into her basket.

I almost never eat them now.  We moved to Virginia when I was five.  Seeing them all green and uniform under florescent supermarket lights still seems like sacrilege. But when I'm sick I crave them.  There's good medicine in mango.

Eating that mango tonight, peeling it carefully, sucking on the juice from the pulp around its core, put me in touch with my grief.  There's my small, personal grief, honoring my losses, remembering my first things, thinking about my last, and then there's grief over the earthquake in Haiti.  Mango trees represent the largest tree population in Haiti.  Its a country full of mangoes.  Environmentalists have been using mangos and other tree crops as a way to both repair the damage done to the earth and at the same time improve the nutrition and earning potential of the people.  In my mind I see a tree on its side, uprooted, its fruit smashed and scattered.  I think of a child.  Those small hands.  I think of my last things, slipping away from me.

Happy Moonday!

0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east;
     Shine, be increased:
0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the west;
     Wane, be at rest.

From Sing-Song by Christina Rossetti

Here's an interesting bit of info in case you didn't know:
"The Helinistic seven-day week was essentially astrological, linked to the stars, an amalgam of astronomy, astrology, and math of the great scientific cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece.  The days of the week were associated with those (seven) heavenly bodies that could be seen with the naked eye: the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.... the English weekdays come from the Anglo-Saxon translations of the planets as well as the god/goddess in whose honor they were dedicated." ~from Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles, and Celebrations by Donna Henes. (A fantastic book)

So what day does the moon, that most feminine of heavenly bodies, associated with Isis, Artemis, Oshun, with art, women, wildness, and mystery get?  The moon gets Monday, a day known in the modern world for its drudgery after the fun of the weekend.  Even though I work for myself, and could theoretically make Monday mean anything I want, I often get pulled along by the 'get to work!' vibe, doing my banking, going to the post office, and don't find myself honoring the moon much on manic Monday. 

I want this to change.  I wonder what a little conscious, weekly honoring of the moon will do for me.  I think it may do great things.  I'm excited to experiment.  So to help me in this venture, for the foreseeable future I'll be posting bits of art, poetry, and stories of wildness here on Mondays, and invite everyone to share any art/craft/ or bit of wildness here in the comments-- post a whole poem,  or link to your site with artwork of any and all kinds.  I vow to make art for art's sake on Monday-- write a poem, make a collage, dance, sing, and/or to get out in nature and howl at the moon a bit.  Hope you'll join me.

My Young Heros

Post inspired by Day 20 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge:

 Who is your unsung hero of 2009?

I'm smiling right now, looking at this picture of two of the kids I mentor in a children's garden in New York City.  They are planting tomatoes we grew from the seeds of the previous year's crop for our communal 'pizza' vegetable garden.  

When I tell people about my work with the kids, the reaction is often something like, 'Oh, that's great. What a good thing you're doing for those kids, etc.' While I truly appreciate the cheerleading, because its unpaid and often unnoticed work that takes precious hours away from my business and writing, I want to tell people, 'No. It isn't what I'm doing for those kids. It's the other way around. Those kids save me.'  

The two little girls in this picture love the earth.  They worry about what's happening to it the way I worried about nuclear war when I was growing up.  The older one told me that when she sees trees that are being 'mistreated' she cries.  She said that she cries at night sometimes thinking about what's happening to the planet.

The kids feel incredibly proud when they plant trees, make compost, watch the seeds they planted grow into sunflowers.  They are delighted by worms, by dark rich soil, by finches nibbling crab apples and mason bees dozing on coneflowers.  Their delight is infectious to anyone who is open to it. 

They are learning how to be advocates for the earth, and they inspire me every time I see them.

Reimagining Home

Go where you will.
Take the long lashes
that guard your eyes
and sweep a path
across this earth....

there is no fixed place
on earth for man
or woman...

Alice Walker from Revolutionary Petunias

There is no place called home. 

The place where I spent many years growing up still exists.  My mother still lives there.  The land she's been cultivating for over twenty years is mature now with tall trees shading her moss garden, accented by purple flowering hostas and lacy white hydrangeas. Large fuchsia rhododendrons put on a show every Spring.  There are vistas of  Black Eyed Susans in the summer, and roses that bloom from April till November.  One night this year I dreamt that the garden was gone, that I would never see it again.  On my next visit I crept outside at night and hugged every tree, thanked every corner of the garden for being there.

Soon after I'd gotten back to my apartment in the city, my mom called to tell me the apple orchards at the end of the block had all been cut down. A new subdivision was being built.   My mother's boxwood has been browning.  Box is very sensitive to air pollution.  We know this story.  Its the same all over.

In her heartbreaking book 'The Place You Love Is Gone' Melissa Holbrook Pierson writes about what it means to grow up surrounded by nature, and then to have it destroyed by development.  It takes a toll on us psychically, even after we've moved away.

I live in Manhattan now.  I volunteer in a community garden designed to help city kids connect with nature. Its threatened by development, and I've spent countless hours organizing to save it. 

I've dreamt of having my own garden, a place I don't have to fight so hard to keep from being destroyed.  But I hope that when I'm finally sitting in the garden of my dreams I remember that it is really always all around me:  the parks, the street trees, community gardens, dandelions in the cracks in the sidewalk, rain forests, glaciers, wetlands, orchards.  They are all my responsibility, to a smaller and larger degree, to protect and to tend. Everywhere is home.

(above photo is of purslane, a very nutritious wild plant growing on Delancey St., L.E.S., Manhattan)


Post inspired by Day 11 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge: What was your favorite place in 09? (the earth)

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Spider Alchemy

Day 3 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge:  Best Article '09

The earth is sacred.  I remember this when I'm standing on the street at dawn under a Bradford pear tree bursting with birdsong as the sky slowly turns from silver to peach or I'm watching a rose bloom in the snow.

But what about when I'm running late for someplace, talking on my cell phone in the back of a fossil fueled cab?  Do I remember then?  When my life seems to be speeding out in front of me, racing away from the natural world, sometimes a dramatic reminder of the profound beauty and alchemical power our earth possesses can bring me back into a state of wonder.

This really exists:  Golden silk threads that are 5 to 6 times stronger than steel and as soft as cashmere, created by large spiders in Madagascar.  The shimmering golden silk would make Rumpelstiltskin proud.  Scientists have been trying to emulate the material for use in NASA, and have failed to be able to do it thus far. 

Fishermen in Madagascar have been using the thread to weave simple nets for centuries, but the silk webbing is too time consuming to extract (painlessly and harmlessly) from the spiders to consider using it commercially. 

Still, two European men became obsessed with the idea of weaving with this spider silk and, with local women doing most of the real labor, they spent 5 years creating a large tapestry, which is now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City until February ‘10. 

The men spent half a million dollars of their own money to do it.  They were called crazy.  Maybe they are.  But it is a crazy that I understand.  To me, the tapestry is like a visual poem, a ballad from and to the earth.  It is singing, ‘Look how amazing the earth is, the creatures of the earth!  Just look!’  It takes my breath away.

Here's the link to the fascinating New York Times article that inspired me trek to the museum and then wade through all of those old dioramas to see it for myself.    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/arts/design/23spiders.html