The moan of pleasure as my lover licks the feminine pollen from the depth
of a dark iris, like a George O’Keefe painting, but without the tongue.   
The balanced blend of pomegranate sour, blood orange bitter, and sweet guava
in our mocktail as I converse with my beloved aunt about spirituality and healing,
and we share macadamia and coconut glazed salmon with crunchy brussels sprouts and asparagus, neither raw nor overcooked. Raindrop jewels accumulating
on the cell phone screen as I hike outdoors attempting to articulate something
more than what is experienced. Then there’s the reality of aging, complicated relationships, a world on fire. As each painful emotion is carved in sand,
let the breath be a wave clearing the beach to satisfaction. I can still read
​the words, feel the heaviness within as the sun scattered sparkles of forgiveness
on the water as if to say, This, too is beautiful. This, too belongs.

Image by Leio McLaren

Three hundred and twenty-eight days.
That’s the time it would take me
swimming from Palo Alto to Melbourne 
just to see you, 
almost the length of a year.
Why not take a plane?
you ask, only sixteen hours 
in the air and you can rest-
a drink in one hand,
a pen or journal in the other.
We’ve been trying to meet 
for three weeks over Zoom
navigating time difference and schedules
instead of ocean or air currents.
After we finally met today, 
it was as if no time had passed
diving in the deep waters of Soulmaking,
flying with our angels of the imaginal.
Still, there is something in me
that yearns for more face to face,
more heart to heart,
more presence for a world
longing to know its own soul.

a thousand
shimmering lights
in praise
of no particular 
occasion
can we be
that bold?

Pigment fading, your shoulders curl
in before you shrivel up and detach
from your stem. I used to find this
unacceptable, resisting the inevitability
of my own skin turning sallow,
shoulders pinned against time.
Blossoms drooping, the sagging of skin -
if we are to be compost
for the next generation
let us not depend on form,
but feeling to seed the next
​embodiment of love.

Image by David Aler

She was a lover of the blank page. In 7th grade Mrs. B unlocked the door
to her swooning heart with a story of apartheid, and her first poem marched
forth in a brave cry for beloved justice and care. Sometimes words would trip
over each other pouring out of a thought cloud pregnant with emotion.
At other times, the landscape of poetic prose was dry, an arid dessert
where every last drop of creativity was squeezed from any life remaining.
She loved the way swirls of cursive ink would decorate the white space
like paintings hanging in an art gallery. The danger was always in judging
the words, revising them multiple times till they were journal worthy
of belonging. What if this is not the final draft, she thought, 
the blank page an open door to something more.

I’m swaying with the music, singing periodically, in tune with the canvas and my own creative potential, as the mind bows to the heart and body below. Sea green and fuchsia swirls begin to intuitively fill a white background, cotton candy hearts reminding me of childhood. The gaps are filled in with lavender. A face begins to emerge, eyes closed in creative contemplation, a crimson lotus at the third eye.

Then the canvas is colored by more crimson lotuses and streaks of ochre, a crimson om to remind me of culture and duty. Something about this feels messy and heavy, yet necessary and meaningful. It feels like I am opening to the design of my life with more acceptance.

When we are asked to paint an image of Ma somewhere on the canvas, I am drawn to the white paint, and try to paint a profile of Her that is worthy, that captures my devotion and profound gratitude for Her unconditional love. Instead, what appears is a small face.

Feeling as if I’ve failed, the energy becomes frenetic trying to paint green leaves and a massive trunk over us both, as if an image of a tree can save the painting and still express my deep love for Her.

I don’t like the painting at all, and wonder about the process. Driving home from Sonoma after a long day, I’m too tired and careful not to juice the experience for significance to the point of dehydration.

The next morning in meditation, She appears as white paint, gentle brushstrokes covering any fixed ideas I have about myself or the painting. I’m struck by Her patience, Her kindness, Her forgiveness. Ideas and colors are born from a primordial white womb of not knowing. They capture expressions, experiences, and feelings at a certain point in time. Are they permanent?

Even these words are an attempt to capture an experience that cannot be reduced to a single cause or meaning. What if we are all in process, blank pages and white canvases with the chance to begin again and give ourselves to the possibility love, however it shows up?

When I hold fear hostage inside the house, trapped in thought bubbles expanding
to burst and tense muscles aching to move, it begs for mercy, for release
into a larger space that doesn’t judge it for being so restless. We go for a walk
in the neighborhood, less worried about being hit by a car or bicycle,
or an unstable telephone pole. The scent of lavender and rose and jasmine
bathe fear in the floral scent of late spring as birdsong and the tinkling
of wind chimes almost displace all worry. Almost. Anxiety is now garlanded
in the scents and sounds of a larger space that welcomes it
as if to say, may you be loved, may you be free.

​In my next encounter with you, you are a dancing skeleton dressed in a salmon and cobalt sari the color of a transitioning sky, with patches of black and white hair matted to your skull. There is a pink flower near your right temporal bone behind where your ear would have been, a blue nose ring suspended from the triangle where the cartilage of your nose once was.

Are you real?

Something about your presence echoes and mirrors the three characteristics of existence, that suffering is caused by clinging or resistance to change and taking it personally. It also has resonances with Jennifer Welwood’s poem “The Dakini Speaks”.

What if you are also not real?

Something about your theater, cartoon-like Dios De Los Muertos quality makes your presence soft and elastic. Your dancing brings a light touch of joy making suffering, impermanence, even death more bearable.

You are a partial answer to the question “Why do I feel like a part of my life force is being diminished by the death or the suffering of another?” You are also unfathomable, irreducible. I will never get to the bottom of you, because my ways of looking will change based on my participation with you over time.

Who am I in the twoness between us?

Am I real?

I literalize the personal idea of empath, the one who gets overwhelmed, the one whose body is breaking down, etc.

What if I am also not real?

You imbue me with a light touch of joy, your theater, cartoon like quality, making me dance, laugh, and not take myself so seriously. I am closer to an appreciative understanding of emptiness than ever before. Causes and conditions have molded me, and malleable perception can melt the mold.

What is the space between us? Is it real?

It’s easy to fill up the space with props, a blank page with ideas.

What if the space is also not real?

The props could be interchangeable, the ideas not static, but changing based on the need moment to moment.