Browsing Tag

fire

fire, The Seeker

My Own Fire

August 4, 2013

“In ancient times, the main purpose of nightly Council Fires was to learn how to listen.” – Jamie Sams & Twylah Nitsch

 

Campfire by Don GengeSomewhere along the line and at some point in the past few years, I got lost. Looking around for a steady place to stand, I found only other people’s ideas of what life should be like.

Over the past few months it has come to me very clearly:

I am living someone else’s dream life.

I have mostly done what I should do. Even though I have misbehaved along the way, I still ended up in a place where I can’t see my own reflection.

I have stuff I don’t need. I fight battles that do not matter. I am weighed down by unexpressed longings and unwritten words.

I don’t care about things that other people seem to believe in. I don’t long for the latest anything.

This is not a sad story,

This is my declaration of independence.

I have lit my own council fire, but it is a council of only one.

Through the flames I will look into my own eyes

And know my place.

 

xo

 

Photograph by Don Genge 

Note: This is a re-publish of a post that was lost during my recent web difficulties. The good news is I’m finally back on line!

beauty, fire, Quotes, Sacred Feminine

Words that Enchant – Grammar

September 30, 2011

“Beautifully crafted words have the power to captivate the mind of anybody.” – Sam Veda

 

There are poems, quotes, collections of words that haunt me. I read them once and they take up residence in my head, echoing through at the strangest times. I’ll simply be walking along a street and a specific line or phrase will come to me, repeating itself until I have to whisper it aloud or stop a moment and think it clearly.

This is one of those poems. I have shared it before on my old blog, but it wanted to be shared again. I hope that whoever it is who needs to hear it comes for a visit.

When she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

Some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious…
We’re all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

We’ve all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

-Tony Hoagland, from ‘Grammar’

Brave, fire

And she gets it.

February 19, 2010

“Believe me, the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously.” – Nietzsche

 

IMGP0746_1

I’m scared of the dark.  I’m scared of the dark, mushrooms, violent images, cooking, failing, putting pictures of myself on my blog, and so much more.  But another thing I have been scared of is quotes like the one at the top of this post: quotes that make you think that in order to live a “wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver) you have to throw caution to the wind, bite the bullet, and streak naked through your life.  Talk about scary!

But this morning a light went on.  In the spirit of my red year, I have picked up Sera Beak’s The Red Book again. Nervously reading it (it feels like a streaking naked book!) this morning, I suddenly got it. At the end of the introduction Sera writes:

“Ask yourself: How intensely do I want to exist?”

Click.

Yes.

Crap.

It’s not about causing trouble or being naughty or being dangerous.  It’s not about shaking other people up, or pushing societies’ rules, or reciting poetry in your pajamas standing on your head on a busy street corner while blowing bubbles out of your ass.  It’s about how intensely you are willing to experience your life.  It is about the choices you make in every moment of every day of your very own life.  It’s about being conscious.

I am ashamed to say that I have been consistently choosing the least conscious, and therefore easier option lately.  But is it easier?  In the long run is it easier to choose easy and then live with regret and self condemnation or would it actually be easier to make the more difficult choice and live with self esteem and pride?

How intensely do I want to exist?  How can I live dangerously on my own terms?  What am I going to do with my own wild and precious life?   I’m not sure.  I am going to sit with those questions for awhile and see where they take me now that I am not afraid of them anymore.  At this point even baby steps feel gloriously dangerous.

“Ask yourself: How intensely do I want to exist?”