Casa de Milagros, Peru
i hesitate to even attempt to drape the gossamer of language upon such winds sweeping through the valley like a whisper’s dream of howling at the rising moon they called me outside into the twilight and as i stood upon the stump leaning my body into it learning to speak the language of mountains those winds picked up and i rose with them like the wild sighs of a lovestruck planet that breath filled me only full surrender could welcome the force of it through the core of me
there i was filled to bursting with this largest breath, all of life’s unfettered curiosity, mad glee and undeniable subtlety whipping past me stirring up my senses rising up my spine
time doesn’t move in a straight line the way words sometimes just happen to rhyme
time moves in cycles and those cycles move
i would be telling half-truths if i said my eyes were the only thing that was wet
my own ecstatic nature burst through me, riding the wind up over the jagged burnt sienna faces of the mountain, skimming along the surface of the river, stealing kisses from the glowing trumpets of brugmancia blooms and then rushing back into me, overwhelming in its expanded state forcing my self to expand just to catch my breath
in exchange for everything, i offer everything
giving my breath to the wind not unlike giving tears to the ocean I gave my self up to the frenzy lost myself in the sinking light letting go was never so graceful
when you give yourself back to the mountain to the river to the river’s stones when you give your self up to the rushing winds what remains?
(i move in cycles and those cycles move)
what remains?
what holds meaning in the center of the wind?
(whatever it is, for a moment i became that container and lived to tell the tale)
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
by monday i will be in america where even from here the distant celebratory cacophony of “change we can believe in” is heard. i wonder what i am returning to, just as i am beginning to know this place. many people are feeling more optimistic about the general state of affairs than anything i have seen in my lifetime, that in itself is a powerful force.
for now, i am here, learning from children without parents how to craft a family.
learning from a life how story flows.
learning from the wind how to let go.
learning from my memories of you how to return.
fruta y alas
eve
sacred valley, peru
mi familia…
change is the only constant, indeed.
just this morning, Mama Kia left with her daughter for Cusco, to go have some tests done on her internal organs because Howard, the canadian chiropractor, is afraid she might have an abdominal aneurism. It’s the closest place with reasonable machines to do the kind of test she needs. Kia, having already twice healed herself of cancer, is relatively serene about the whole situation, although she is exhausted by being in pain all the time. She hates not being able to garden and pick up Baby Sol or even make her bed or put away clean dishes. It is wildly surreal to be writing about all of the unbelievable things she has done in her life (escaping hand over hand on a cable over a flooded river in costa rica, living alone in a house with no door or windows for months here in the valley, etc.) in a time when she is not capable of doing any of them. Her first concern has never been herself, and now she is finally being forced to slow down for a moment, and take care of herself. she knows it is time to focus on more inward work, and writing this book is catalyzing that in so many ways. she is always laughing anyways, which just makes it hurt more.
the sun was shining so strong just after she left, I took a mixture of water and flowers and essential oils that has been soaking for three days that a young shipibo shaman from Pucalpa, who had been staying here, had instructed us to make. He told us the land needed clearing from all the work that has been done here, and all the gunk that people leave behind. Today was the day to do it, and somehow I knew it should happen before Kia got those tests, as though clearing this land would somehow help clear her field as well. Jose had alluded to this, that her dis-ease is connected to that of this land. So I took this big bucket and walked the entire perimeter of the retreat, and around each tipi-yurt, around the temple and the bathhouse, spreading the flower water with a rudra plant and singing, which is important to the clearing. I am learning to relate to time differently here. I move slower and accomplish more. I took my time, sprinkling the stove in each tipi and then its perimeter, walking around it clockwise and singing, focusing my song on the clearing of the land and on Kia’s healing. Song is such a powerful vehicle for intention. The vibration of sound carries the abstraction out into the matrix where reality forms, sometimes, i swear, it even catches the light. the sun was strong on my shoulders and i felt around me a moment this past summer doing a similar ritual with red rice around the perimeter of my aunt Deborah’s house in colorado, singing into the sunlight. and then through that strand of memory i felt my song extending back through infinite moments of women clearing the land with song and going about the practices of their days, catching the light. I felt all of their songs, coming through my own song, lending the power of their lineage to my work.
and then just as i was finishing the light shifted. the clouds rolled in over these mountains, these mountains that are unlike any mountains i have known, so red and jagged and squares of farmland up slopes that don’t even seem walkable. lighting cracked, though the rain held, which is thankful as the blankets are all still on the line. my skin is still warm from the sun and the sky is dark, as I sit here typing. i don’t really know much of anything. change is the only constant. song is a map and a vehicle. healing happens in ten thousand ways.
i am a detective inside another person’s life, paying attention, tracking the thru lines. every now and then, a particular strand of the story will illuminate in my mind, and I will see how her father the abusive missionary faith healer is directly connected to her true belief that she could heal her son of paranoid schizophrenia which led to creating the retreat center in costa rica which is how she met woody which is how casa des milagros was able to come alive. each strand is interwoven with such chaotic precision, shaped by her consistent intentions and practices.
story holds medicine that can not be stolen, and if given away, only grows and becomes more potent. the power of story lies in its ability to bridge experience and imagination, idea and emotion, reality and myth, just as life does, everyday, just in the living of it. here it is almost effortless to surrender my life to the dissolution of any boundary between reality and myth, which in fact leaves me feeling far more grounded. i no longer question the infinite synchronicity and absurd magic of life, i just revel in it, learn from it how to be its food.
i feel how the performances we have been working on for years are a part of all this, reality crafting through dissolving the boundaries between theater, ritual, and life, feeding something larger than ourselves with offerings of strange beauty and delicious eloquence. I am feeling so inspired to push that work further. (you know who you are, i’m calling you out..let’s get to work!!)
the veils are thin these days, dia de los muertos is upon us, and of course i am feeling all those who have passed on in this last cycle, since we last painted our faces like skeletons and wept through the city streets. some days i feel like i am weaving a leash of words to keep Kia tied to this plane for a little bit longer. these is still so much to be done.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
it is night now. the sky did finally crack open but not until after the blankets were off the line. Kia returned from Cusco triumphant…no aneurism! she is still in pain, but at least we don’t have to worry about something bursting and that being it, the end of this particular story. give thanks.
on sunday we will go with all of Casa de Milagros to the little cemetery in Lamay where Luz Marina, Kia’s first adopted daughter, is buried. She died last January of lupus, just a few weeks before Heidi. this story we are working to tell is in honor of both of those magical beings, whose passing brought us together.
the work is real and for that i am eternally grateful. the rest flows from that. we are deep in it, sorting through 30 years worth of journals, tracking the patterns. i am overflowing with teachings, with learnings, i only pray to be a worthy translator for the unfathomable richness of this story to find its way into the world.
blessings on your dia de los muertos…
i love you all so much, missing the wild affection of your nearness, infinitely thankful to be weaving a story alongside you…
eve
Sacred Valley, Peru
mi familia…
night has settled its thick blanket over the body of the world, cloaking us in stars and the undeniable sweetness of the brugmancia blossoms that always intoxicates me as soon as darkness falls. there is a massive waterfall crashing down from the mountain just above my head and the tumbling song of the river rushing by my room is both lullaby and wake up call.
i am staying at Hanaq Pacha (Quechua for heaven and earth), the aptly named little retreat center Mama Kia runs, about a half hour bus ride into the Sacred Valley from Casa de Milagros and about a 20 minute walk up the mountain from where the bus drops you off. It’s ridiculously beautiful here. During the day the smell of several varieties of roses permeates the field, the whole place is a huge garden, an infinite variety of flowers and vegetables and cacti, with yurt/tipi structures dotted here and there and an outdoor claw-foot bathtub looking up at the waterfall. We have been living and working here for the past few days as Kia has been preparing for the arrival of a group who will be staying here for the next week.
the symbiosis of the retreat center and the orphanage is nothing short of brilliant. each serves the other. all profits from the retreat center go to the Chandler Sky Foundation, (the parent organization of Casa de Milagros), the groups that come here often go and visit the orphanage, hang out with the kids, and wind up supporting the project in some way. Ricardo, one of the first children ever to live at the Casa, is now 19 and in a 2 year cooking school that Kia is paying for. When he finishes in a year, he will come and cook at Hanaq Pacha, so he will have a great job (which are very hard to come by around here) and Mama Kia will have a great cook. There will be more jobs for other “graduates” as well, as it all continues to evolve and expand in tandem. Just observing how it has all been put into place, with so few initial resources, is unbelievably inspiring. any real sustainable system will perpetuate and evolve itself naturally and efficiently.
Just this morning, Kia and I were sitting in the sun (after i did my laundry by hand for the first time in i dont know how long) going through old journals of hers and we found this one book from about 25 years ago, that was filled with morning pages, the ubiquitous 3-day exercise assigned in The Artist’s Way, which she was doing at the time. There were pages and pages of her setting intentions for the future, practicing the craft of manifestation. Over and over she wrote about a children’s home in Peru, a soup kitchen, co-created gardens…all of which now exist, and were nowhere near existing when she was writing this all down. These intentions were surrounded equally by expressions of profound gratitude for everything in her life (even the challenges) and by affirmations of her own self-worth and potential, which had been severely damaged by an early life filled with abuse. It was so inspiring, to see irrefutable evidence of the real power of clear, focused intention and perseverance. The book we are working on even showed up in those pages, and though it may have taken 25 years to happen, here we are, together, manifesting the very thing she wrote about. this book is quickly becoming not only a memoir, but also a handbook for creating a life of miracles (and for creating third-world children’s homes as well). She is a living, breathing, beaming example. ANd an example of the need to balance service to others with taking care of ourselves as well…her physical body is in pretty rough shape these days…please include her in your prayers.
I miss being around the kids all the time, but we are getting a lot more writing done here, and i can not complain about the surroundings. Even the walk down the mountain and the bus ride into Calca to send this email to you tomorrow will be its own adventure of novelty and beauty. In the meantime I will go stare at the stars for a bit, bury my nose in some truly shameless flowers and sing a small song of wonder and gratitude to whoever might be listening, hidden in the darkness. I trust that somehow, that song will get caught up in some trans-continental wind and eventually find its way to your ears, which, if tuned for quiet voices as I know they are, will then allow that song to enter you, and feed the dormant dreams sleeping in the secret pockets of your being.
fruta y alas…
eve
Lamay, Peru
written this morning, just after sunrise
just a small taste, from my lips to yours…
The Sacred Valley.
You feel how old history is here. And how life is so much older even that that. Before we wrote down events and began to conceive of time in a linear way. When time still moved in concentric cycles, when the earth lived inside layers of time unfolding, when time was magic, really.
When magic was how each day unfolded inside its place in the cycles–of rain and wind, of sun and moon, of the death of the year and the inevitable re-creation of the world that follows.
I would offer myself to that time.
I would offer the cycles of my own being–these small cycles of egg and blood, of breath and dream, to synch with those larger cycles, and even to serve them with whatever energy they carry that might serve some cycle larger than my own.
As though each breath might feed the winds that carry seeds to untamed fertile soil.
As though each blood might enter the earth and nourish the seeds.
As if each dream might rise into the night and lend its wings so those seeds might rise to feed another day.
I would live simply inside this just to be a part of its impeccable intricacy.
What else am I here to do?
Surrounded by the daily clamor of 33 children at work and play it is impossible to get lost inside my own small cycles.
Here is life–triumphant and common and free.
Here I am–a part of it, undeniably.
Lima, Peru
right now i am sitting on the floor in the nearly deserted Lima airport, right in front of the checkout counter, near the only electrical outlet i could find in the whole place, while the electric floor cleaner buzzes around me. its ’round midnight here, and i am halfway thru my 10 hour layover, waiting for the final leg of my journey to Cuzco and Casa de Milagros.
I have never done the large group email thing before, but enough of you asked for stories from this journey that i decided to go for it. i know that my desire to speak with eloquence to all of you will help inspire me to set down my experiences in writing more regularly. let me know if you dont need more clutter in your inbox and i will happily strike you from the list, no worries.
as most of you already know, i am primarily here to continue working on the memoir of Mama Kia, a legendary character who currently runs an orphanage in the Sacred Valley of Peru, about an hour and a half from Cuzco. Over 30 children currently live at Casa de Milagros, from babies to teenagers. I will be living there for the next month or so and living life as fully as I can, in order to have worthy stories to relay to all of you.
this has been such a wild year, with the simultaneous loss of so many beloveds, and the birth of so many new kin. the sheer numbers of both births and deaths requires us to expand our frame beyond any single human story, to recognize the larger cycles of life’s infinite ability to reinvent itself with each turn. it is in honor of all of those stories, and of course Heidi in particular, that i offer up this journey and this work that brought such meaning to my life in a time when i felt so deep in the mystery.
it’s a wild time to be leaving the country, such upheaval and uncertainty. and yet what else can each of us do than answer the calls that are real, to offer our entire selves to the work that fills us like water in a vessel, ready to nourish thirsty seeds.
airports are the ultimate liminal space, everyone here is in some sort of transition, nobody stays for long. here in Lima, the airport workers grin at me crouched against the wall and indicate i dont need to move, they can mop around me. here i am just another stranger on my way from one place to another. it feels good to be on a solo mission, especially because i have all of you to speak to, scattered over the globe. thanks for being my muses, more soon, i promise.
nonquitt, buzzard’s bay, massachusetts
it sometimes is an ocean night like this cracking the sky open with its electric unavoidability. sometimes it goes like this the yawn before the moan the creak before the groan my mind is empty of evidence my heart filled to bursting with the ditritus of a thousand unlived love affairs what else is there but this in a moment such as this or that or another i can not give anymore of myself until the crows come to pick my bones as i live and breath this feast of breath does fill and empty me eternally i drive forward through the night on a vehicle of salt and fumes the darkness cloaks my naked form and i disappear into the landscape of my own dreaming only to reappear unrecognizable.
am i such a known entity?
what is it that thrills me eternally?
novelty.
that blessed curse that keeps the world spinning on its axis and will not let me stop moving even for a moment, i catch my breath in between gasps of unfamiliar air, chasing after my own ether.
either this or that.
where does inspiration come from and to where does it return?
i walk in a daze through the days of my life catching glimpses of brilliance between cracking open and sealing the seams with dust and petals and brine.
i am nothing without a muse. unfocused, unmotivated. the desire to create desire. the desire to transcend desire. the drive to move beyond such human cycles. releasing desire in the name of true pleasure. perhaps.
how undeniable subtlety can be
and how subtle, undeniability…
how immediately the moment goes molten
and only salt remains…
The noun of the self becomes a verb
eternally in fluid flux
yet solid in its flow.
mfp, san francisco
this is the time when your breath becomes the weather pattern of a hidden world
when the strength of your back of your spine of your purest imagination
truly discovers its own power to create a life
as your own heartbeat divides in two and recreates itself to be brought fresh into this world
i am with you
my breath is yours through every dimension
my spine’s own strength i give to you
in humblest gratitude for your willingness to birth our teacher
to cultivate the seedling sprouts of a new day
you are pushing now
from halfway around the world
i can feel the force of your will
and of the larger will that surrounds it
as the ocean surrounds the mermaid’s fallen tears of joy
when she discovers her first pearl
we are with you
this wild family of ragamuffin lightkeepers
our candles are lit in the shrines of remembrance
in this moment all death is renewed
and fertilizes the seeds of life
using invisible antlers to hold up the burning coals
burning cedar, sweetgrass, tobacco, copal
the smoke of my prayers surrounds you in grace
you are the earth’s own power
you are an instrument for the song of life to sing through
your radiance blinds each of us into a deeper seeing
half way around the world
i feel you pushing
i am with you
you are surrounded by a circle of candles tied with red string
you are embraced by the blessings of all our ancestors
and all the ancestors yet to be
i am breathing with you
pushing with you
we are with you
ubud, bali
I am born with the light into a world i can not remember dreaming.
I rise with the day inside an unfamiliar song.
I am inside a body, inside a family, inside a world.
I ask for nothing, yet receive so much, my palms overflowing with salt and flowers, ash and fruit.
An electric buzz of insects rises steep from the density of green that surrounds me and just as quickly fades away.
I am still here.
Shadows play upon leaf tops, beloveds intertwine beneath, the river charges towards and away, life is so undeniably real.
I would dissolve into an offering of smoke and song if it didn’t seem so true that I am more of use in solid form, dissolving hard knots of human story into another sort of offering.
I am still here.
Even as Death catches me from behind and sweeps me across a grand dancefloor of cracked bones and burnt hair, even as i stare into the empty sockets of everyone’s final lover, even as a red river runs in rivulets over my skin–that skin is warm, and holds a quickening within it.
I am still here.
Even as the solid forms of a known world dissolve in the flames of the funeral pyre, somehow I am still here.
And so are you, beloved opal keeper, feather finder, nectar seeker.
You are all around me even as you are gone you are not gone.
Even as I feel myself dissolving I am still here.
I hold a rose quartz skull in my right hand and a golden serpent in my left. The ochre of a homeland I do not posses spirals across my palms. The fire is being built, the songs are being sung, somewhere in the world there is a blade stained with innocent blood. Somewhere in the world are the hands that wield it.
Each pair of hands holds different work–mining the opals, sifting the bones, painting the ochre, ringing the bell, fanning the flame
but the hands that wield the knife–how is that work given?
How is that work placed sacred into a human vessel to wreak its havoc upon our world?
It is not for understanding.
Bring me those hands and I swear I will wash the blood from them.
I will offer myself to the resolution of this pain.
If such a thing can be called into the world, I will raise my voice in supple power to create a song of truth triumphant and justice compassionate.
I will drink the salty labor of forgiveness until the water runs clear.
And if those hands never come to me for washing, somehow I will remain.
Somehow each day will still rise through me into dreaming.
ubud, bali
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.
by Mary Elizabeth Frye
February 10th,2008
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At any moment your hand might unfold me into the full possibility of your own uprising.
At any moment our eyes might open into each other and one can be the crashing wave and one can be the shore and then -blink- we switch, as the jagged edges of our young shorelines are gradually softened into the arch and curve of a landscape undisturbed by its own impermanence.
At any moment the rains might come and drench our fierceness for a quiet rushing moment and ten thousand thousand tiny pounding blessings might explode against our skin, tenderizing the meat of these awkward exquisite animal forms we are momentarily trapped within.
At any moment the seething winds might spiral undeniably around us stealing our breath to feed its own shaping and you and I, breathless, might surrender these bodies to the storm and rise inside its eye towards something other than this separation that contains us.
At any moment words might fail me.
As they do when the space between us disappears as the equation of possibility collapses to zero and pressed together within the singularity, the space where words might be is only one breath we share and the chasm that we usually stare at each other across is suddenly filled in on itself and at any moment we might cease resisting.
At any moment time might unwind our tension’s ticking and the muscles of our determination might release into wings.
This now, this now that is not quite yet, I ponder it between my fingers, wondering whether or not to call it into being.
At any moment I might impregnate myself with your elusive laughter and incubate the impossibility this inside myself, growing larger with the secret of what we dare not speak aloud.
At any moment you might fill me with your emptiness as I might eat your hunger as you might drink my thirst as we might dance each others stillness, invisible to any eye.
And at any moment we might turn away, we might remember the availability of forgetfulness, we might turn this page and clear the air and allow the world to come rushing back between us. But across the chasm, your eyes’ depth reaches me still, as my fingers caress the arch and curve of moments yet to be.