River's Blog

A Jack & Jill Story

"Jack and Jill were out for a stroll one day..."

Did you write this? I love it. It's beautifully touching; sad yet optimistic. Absolutely lovely. Thank you.

Thanks! Yes, I wrote it. ... Or did it write me? Yes, I think it wrote me.:)
 
I want to ask you, would you die for love?

Seriously, given a choice between living a fully loving human life and not, would you be willing to sacrifice everything? All of it?

I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying, Fucking hell yes!

I'd give everything for love.

An arm? No problem -- cut away! Two legs -- have at it. How many eyes do you want?
Here's my tongue, my brain....

We humans, most of us, are poor lovers. We don't want to sacrifice our taste in drapes, in dinner set patterns, in home decor....

People divorce over such things!

A lover is mighty thirsty. Mighty hungry. He'll / she'll take a swan dive into Pure Mystery
for a glimpse of the Beloved.

How hungry are you?

If you want to spend the rest of your life in front of the television, you are not yet ready to love. If you want only comfort and peace in love, you've not begun to travel the way of the lover.

Join with me, lovers! Risk everything! Become your true self.


Beautifully written!
 
My Dream This Morning

I'm sitting on a park bench, holding my wooden walking stick, the one I bring with me on most hikes. Oddly, the stick is up-side-down, with the tapered wood narrow on the top and thick on the bottom. I never carry it this way, of course! But here I am with a dream-generic friend, sitting on this bench. My arm extended and held high above my head, holding this up-side-down walking stick.

My friend asks me, touching his own heart, "So, you are becoming completely undefended?"

"Yes," I said, somewhat surprised and filled with wonder.


Comments On Dream

My world is turned up-side-down, and so being turned upright again, since the world has been quite up-side-down. (This world where hearts are defended rather than openly and freely expressed.)

Shiver on skin in saying this ... agrees.

Praise the Mystery!
 
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My impression:
I think that your sitting down in the dream means you feel able to relax, no need to push forward on a hike with your walking stick. You have reached a place of being comfortable where you are. You're saying, "Look, I can turn things upside down (even the very things I lean on), and I'm sitting right here, okay with it all." You're not chasing anything or running from something -- you're side by side on a bench with a friend! Yes, undefended, and also willing to be with what is. How nice!
 
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nycindie,

Wow! That's perceptive. I hadn't thought about the sitting and the stick as such. Thanks!

My life is now so full of joyful magic and wonderful gifts falling into my lap out of the blue that, indeed, I'm very happy to sit and relax and just be here, or go for a hike..., or work..., or play....

I'm just so amazingly happy! I've been so unhappy for so long that it's surprizing. I've been knocked down hard in the past; I mean hard. And I am emerging with more resiliency than I thought possible, with the happiness and resiliency and magic growing a little each and every day. It is just so good to be alive, here in the Milky Way, on/in Earth. - - - Just like that Beatles song where it is sung, "It's getting better all the time". And I have less silly chronic fear each day, and less anxiety, and more peace and openness and joy.

I'd wish this on anyone! Well I do! I wish it on everyone!
 
You're saying, "Look, I can turn things upside down (even the very things I lean on)

You know, I was just telling my far-away (but in my heart, close!) Sweetie how
happy and joyous I am to be so in love and have it be so little about me-getting-something-out-of-or-from her -- how much I want to give, to give love rather than to get her/it. It feels very grown up and adult:eek::D I'm not leaning on her at all. That old energy has been turned up-side-down.

She's thinking of enrolling in a master's degree program way up North where she lives, more than a thousand miles from my home. I could be self-centered about it and tug on her (the old me woulda) to come study down here (since I cannot relocate), but I'm feeling this awesome trust that everything just has to work out perfectly so long as I keep my heart open wide, and wider each day.:)
 
Do you know that you are awake?

I fell asleep last night before Kevin came to bed, and then awoke -- sort of -- and sat up in bed when Kevin came into the room. I was in some sort of neither-here-nor-there consciousness (having just received some deep bodywork)..., when Kevin looked at me and asked with a soft sort of urgency, "You know you are awake, don't you? Sometimes people are awake and they don't know that they are awake. Do you know that you are awake?" (Later, explained that my eyes were "glassed over".)

I was stunned by this whole announcement and question, rattled to my core. What is awake? What is it? I don't know what awake is, but surely this must be it. Maybe, because I don't really know what awake is I am somehow more awake than I'd otherwise be? Maybe because a question like that can shake me to the core, I'm quite awake?

One day I was visiting my friend in Kansas and we were playing pool in this greasy spoon / bar sorta joint, when suddenly the lights came on. I had been in some kind of fog, and it cleared and I could see/feel/know the intense wonder and stunning wowness of being there/here. Right then, I was quite awake, I think. And I was sort of asleep before the lights came on.

Awakeness sparkles across my life, bubbling up here and there in myriad shapes, sizes, textures and colors. There is so much to wake up! Maybe (probably) my heart is between a quarter and a half of a fully awake heart? How wonderful to have a heart at all, even if it isn't yet as full and round and whole as it might be, down the road. Being happy with where I am on the journey of awakening is quite an awake place to be. The path is the destination. Every moment along the way is saturated with wonder.
 
The sands of time....

Derek! I love/d him with all of my heart. It was almost half a lifetime ago! When all is said and done, the facts are: He's alive; He is well, very well, indeed!

I'll always love him with all of my heart. Such is the nature of hearts.

He's middle aged now, just like me. (Is this really him!?! in this photo on the "internets"?) Yes, it is!

Still beautiful. Still cute. Still just what I knew he was destined to be -- a healer, a teacher, a mystic, a lover....

Oh, it's such a long and short story!

Infinite love is the glory of my life.

Suffice it to say, I love him with all of my infinite heart. I always have.
 
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Talking with myself again...

Here in this world with mosquitos and rattle snakes and ticks and stinging insects.... Here where it is sometimes too hot, too cold, where there are wars and diseases, where death sits on our shoulders and waits.... Here where rose bushes have thorns, ... Right here in all of this grows the most tender glory, the most ecstatic freedom, the most awesome joy....

Say an unequivocal Yes! to life, and watch what happens! Say it often. Live this Yes.
 
Taking Rest

You get up from a park bench
And you walk away
And you stop
And look back
As if something -- what? --
Had been left behind

It was nothing
Just a bit of myself
As if I were a snail
Leaving a trail of myself behind

The day has opened
And my hand has opened
And the poem opens
Where the heart opens
The loss of the fear
Of falling

The falling away of death
The opening of death
The embrace of the dark
The hello to light
To shadow

This love is bigger than I am
It cannot go on carrying
Myself around
As if I knew myself at all
As if I need needed
The busy
Inward mirror
 
This One Takes The Cake

So I told my new far-away-nearby SweetiePie about Derek, who basically pushed me away so very long ago, Derek who it was impossible not to love, to fall in love with. I had gone to visit with him in San Francisco, where he lived, and I was so in love with him. I had travelled far to be with him a while. (We were little more than puppies way back then, about seventeen years ago. Wet behind the ears puppies.)

... Anyway, he was something of a cold fish toward me most of my visit. We shared a bed and he would not hold me or be held. I did get some kisses at a restaraunt, though!:) But, overall, I was being rejected. Pushed away. And it broke my heart.

We had met up in Oregon some months before, and there is where I fell in love with Derek. And I got to hold him there bunches and kiss and sleep with him ... spooning....

This was so long ago!

Anyway, after talking with my SweetiePie about Derek I decided one more time to see if I could track him down and make contact with him. This time I was successful. I learned where he lived and how to contact him, and sent him email. He responded! We're back in communication! Wow!

He had a drug addiction problem, he had told me the last time I'd seen him, after he'd pushed me away in San Francisco. He had it bad, and cried with me as he said that it would kill him if he didn't kick it. People push people away when they are hurting and scared. Shit, we were both hurting and scared wet behind the ears puppies (and cute!) back then. (He's still cute!)

He told me yesterday that he loves me. He wants to talk on the phone next week (He's on vacation away from home and we're communicating on FaceBook and email.) He said he'd like to come visit me here in Santa Fe. (He lives on the East coast now.)

After much confusion and tears and sobbing I came to realize that I've never stopped being in love with Derek. It's such an amazing thing! All of these years I have been in love with Derek. I will, in fact, always be in love with Derek.

What sort of relationship we might have? I sure don't know. Maybe we can be in love and not see each other often? Maybe we'll "date"? Maybe we'll be close friends? Maybe we will be lovers and romantic partners? (Gawd! I already have two! (And one of those lives in freaking Minnesota!) Is the universe being too generous?!)

I never dreamed I might have three loves all at once.

I'm going to have to cut this off at three, Ms Universe! Are you hearing me, Goddess!? I can handle a maximum of three Great Loves right now. Please stop sending me abundance in this particular realm of my life. Don't get me wrong, HeartOfTheCosmos, I'm much appreciative. I have much gratitude. But I am human. So knock it off, okay. Give me land to build a community on. Give me a briefcase full of cash. Heal my heart and soul some more. But no more lovers, okay! Thank you so much! I love you! You're the best. I'd do anything for you. You know that.:):D;)
 
Melody

Can you hear the melody
Arising from the fantasy
Arising from the common sense
And breaking down the self-defense?

You come to them with poetry
And listen to the mystery
They oblige sincerity
And offer up a yes indeed

Deeper still than garden seeds
Fuller than those garden weeds
Tending to your deepest needs
They know that you've been always free

And what if it's a dream bouquet?
They echo what you've always said
They know where you've been always dead
The palace living in your head

The world is just a dream machine
Or so it is on tv screens
The river flowing in your veins
The moment living still remains

And so you give them all you have
And pray the rhyme will be less bad
The way you dance across the floor
As if you're sure there's dancing more
 
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Glad a special person came back into your life, River.
 
Thanks, Magdlyn!

This is so amazing and wonderful, even if all that comes of it is some talking.
 
I'm going to be needing that cash for travel expenses!

Have any of you ever met up with somone you loved after a very, very long time with no see and no hear?
 
July 15th. Seems like as good a day as any to begin. For the rest of July I will not have even a single drop of alcohol, nor will I smoke a single cigarette. And I will sit in meditation twice a day, morning and evening, every day -- no excuses. And I will eat only food that is healthy and good for my energy.

My pattern is to drink in the evenings. I'm not an alcoholic, but I'm a lazy sonofabitch, and drinking every evening and having one or two or three cigarettes, also only in the evening (except when Russell comes over, sheesh!), is a lazy cycle for me that leads to further laziness and a general 'ah, fuck it' attitude.

While we're at it, I'll not watch half as much television as I have been, which has been very, very little anyway.

All of these things I will be doing without beating myself up at all, nor will it be motivated by shame, guilt, fear, or any other useless delusions.

I am going to breathe my heart into fuller wakefulness. Or, rather, I will be held in the loving embrace of spirits, elves, dwarves, starlight, fresh spinach leaves, carrots, my dear friends and loves/lovers of the human kind, and the general freaking mystery of it all.

I welcome metta from you, dear reader, as well. (Google it.) Hold me in your loving thoughts and sensations. This should be sensational. And just the beginning. For August is looking pretty juicy, too.
 
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