Category Archives: 0 Fallow

Once a Muggle, Twice a Witch

Hello friends. Instead of waiting for the Big Spiritual Passion to return before writing, I thought I’d share what it’s like waking up from a long stretch in the mundane. We all have fallow seasons. Why not honor them?

Much love,

Tasara

The waiter at the 24-hour diner is in a good mood. He is chipper. It’s too early in the morning to have any customers yet he’s waiting for me at the door, menu in hand with a smile on his face like he’s got a secret. This makes me happy.

I hope it’s because he woke up next to the right person this morning. But now I’ve heard him giggle. He might be on the spectrum. The wonderful spectrum where the stars are brighter and innocence is somehow ever-present. 

I tell him that it seems he really likes it here.

He says, “I sure do! It’s like my second home.” 

I tell him I am looking for another job and he says, “You should apply here.”

I half laugh, then cut the knee-jerk condescension I sensed in myself, hoping I did it before he noticed and say, “Maybe I will.”

The cook is bitching about another one of the cooks that doesn’t show up. His campadre, an older woman, is trying to remind him to be grateful for having a job. He doesn’t want to hear it.

Each time she cuts in with advice, he says, “I know. I know. I know.”

But he’s really mad.

She says, “You have to focus on your own work because if you don’t, someone else will take those hours. They’ll take that money.

He says, “You’re right. You’re right. You’re right.”

The waiter yells under the heat lamps, “She just doesn’t want to work here!” And he laughs. I’ve been having my meal and he’s come over with the check because his shift is almost through.

“Ohhh! ” I say. “You’re tired!” I was trying not to assume that a waiter at a diner is taking drugs.

The morning crew is showing up and the rhythm of the diner is kicking in. The cooks have switched from English to Spanish.

I get my to-go container and it’s the most horrific thick plastic. I tell the waiter I think I might be going to the third circle of hell for it. He tells me I’ll be okay.

I’m stalling inside my car because he’s come out of the store and I want to know more. He gets in his car and I resist the urge to follow him. I’m behind him at the driveway. He turns left and I just miss his bumper sticker. It has the words We are witches.. but I can’t get the end part so I don’t know if it’s a joke or if he’s really a witch. I could go back tonight when he’s back at work and read it. I don’t think he’s autistic. He might not even be on drugs. He’s just a really incredible person. 

It’s easier to say these things without knowing the details so we can enjoy the story – without getting so deep into it that we run into trouble. 

There is a lesson here for me in how fucking condescending I can be. I should take an example from my elder. He never gives advice to me even when I’m trying to pry it out of him. One should never give advice unless solicited, is what they say. If he wrote it (which he would not), it would sound like One should never give advice. He even joked about it yesterday and said to me , “If you’re ever looking for advice again, now you know the person not to call.”

In case you’ve wondered why I’m up so unspeakably early, it’s because the Spirits told me to go watch the crows this morning. It’s two days before Summer Solstice and I’ve been saying again and again that I gotta go out and see the crows because it’s off-season and I want to know how many there are. I tried to go back to bed, but I got a kick. I said out loud “Really?”

And then I hightailed it to the roost. 

As I was getting into my car, I was noticing that it was my gut that was directing my decisions. It wasn’t a mental projection I needed to manifest like everybody’s yelling at you to do. It was instinct – and this is the first time I’ve enjoyed writing in over a year.

I love the edges of things. Twilight, back roads, off-hours. Lots of people stay up late for the same reasons, thinking they’re special but us morning people, we get it. It’s not just wildlife that becomes more pronounced. All creatures come out. Human personalities reveal themselves. There’s more magic, more to discover. 

I’m at the beach and it’s practically raining, just the way I like it. Now that I’ve watched all the crows disappear from their roost, I’m back closer to the city and there they are, yelling, continuing on their morning. These surfer shoes from Hawaii are perfect for walking on Pacific Northwest rocky beaches and getting your feet wet.

“It doesn’t have to hurt to be good, Jen.” 

I had a manager tell me that over twenty years ago and it’s still there like a billboard in my mind revealing more layers of the same truth. I think when things are hard, it makes me feel more proud when I accomplish them. But the same things that I worked so hard on before, I can just do. Life without drama is some kind of peace.

Progress Note #1:  There are some things that I just do now, instead of making it a big deal and having to win a victory, so I can tell myself I did a good job.

I might be too hard on myself with this one. It may have truly hurt before. What’s missing now is the passion in the completion. My notion is that I will have passion about different things and these will become menial tasks. I’m mostly talking about work but I also noticed this in the house. For instance, cleaning the kitchen.

Progress Note #2:  When I have a new thought or meaningful experience, I don’t assume I’m the only one having it. I think of all the other people thinking the same thing. This is important not only because I feel less alone but because it takes me out of that special club of people that think they are better than everyone else.

Progress Note #3:  There is a new glimmering shiny revelation that has arrived. I can even touch it. It might be possible that instead of either being attracted to or running like hell from addicts, I am merely not triggered. Perhaps I could even appreciate them and love them in a different way and not be pulled underwater.

People are starting to show up in the park. Meaning that there are eight cars here now and the parks department guy is finishing his chores. Time to go. Time to go back into the house. It’s true. I’m driving out. But still, there’s an older couple waltzing in the parking lot. I’m not kidding.

I’m home now, 9am, drinking the rest of my glass of wine from last night, and my wet jeans are warming by the fire. When I was at the beach, I was seeing dragons and I wanted to fall on my knees and weep to feel the magic again.

You see, the Spirits of Kindness beached me in the mundane a few years ago and left me there. I accepted the mission and I’ve learned things about myself and behaving in the world that was a long time coming but I was starting to feel a little bit abandoned. The long haul is not over, I know. I can’t jump into the flow of a passionate vocation just because I’ve completed my studies, because that flow is no longer there. I don’t even know what the vocation is anymore. I’ll have to walk a little further.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s about the long game. In the meantime, I’ll treasure every speck of magic that comes my way.

Tasara

You’ve Come So Far

And She said,

“There will be times in your healing process when you will be reminded that you don’t need to fight anymore. You don’t need to endlessly scan the land, looking for trouble, as you once had to. Each gate you go through, there will be a clear sign of certain dangers falling away. You will forget those signs and need to be remembered.

But here’s the clincher. In the lack of danger, there will be a void that will seem as frightening as your life was before. You will feel like you are floating out into space, into the unknown.

Remember your mantra, ‘If lost, return to self.’ 

There is always something to hold onto. It is you. The gorgeous light you have found inside yourself. Sing your song. Kiss the blessed earth and don’t forget to enjoy the garden you have cultivated within. Survival skills do not understand gratitude practices. They seem ..not very useful when things need to be done.

Walk into this terror. Feel it enliven your body. It is the first good terror you’ve come across. Remember the gates. You know what you have survived, what has left you and what is still to be mastered. Trust the truth of what you have accomplished. Trust the changes you have already made in your life. 

This work you have done – you have earned your own trust, so use it.
What does life have to offer when there is not imminent danger? It is not what they tell you. Go find out for yourself. Go make the life you wanted when you were held down.”

Final Reprise

PART ONE:

When the warrior finally reaches the green pastures and sunny meadow,
when the warrior puts her weapons down,
she feels the heat rise from the ground beneath her and lies down to rest
under the high grass,
smell of lyrical flowers.

Further no purpose, no quarry in sight, she dreams of battles
and then when she rises, all comforts greet her body
and she sighs, and she sleeps again.

When the warrior has found her way out of the darkness
into the light of her own heart
there is no longer need to strive

for arrival is come
and the land is still.

There is nothing left to seek,
yet the song still awaits,
and she waits for the song.

Soothe the jagged remembrances of evil.
Remember the misplaced soothing of jagged affairs.

Awake she is, like never before and
like never before, she draws from her sleep,

every fiber,
her being whole now,
glistening and listening to the holy voice within.

PART TWO:

I asked, “Once the debris has been cleared, the demons faced and transformed, what is left in the sacred vessel, in the shadow within us?”

and I heard the reply,

“That which one is connected to
but has no words for.

That which gestates and must not be disturbed,
lest it be damaged in the process.

The Great Mother, who holds us, who nourishes and weeps and cheers for us.

This is also the realm of the White Raven, she who has been burnt through and still lives. She who is Grace with a thin cloak of iron unseen and unshakeable. She who is container, soft as feather, hidden power capable of those very things she yearned to do when in pain but put down as soon as she was able. She is Death, she has seen and understood every aspect of Death and yet she has no need to bring on Death. She holds forgiveness, her compassion gently touches us with the naked light of presence aware.”

Once the stagnation is broken in the sacred vessel of shadow,
once the river is flowing freely,
dreams of the Gods quickly,
our journeys clear in the slipstream of their inspiration.

Then when we tell, we tell from a place of the Gods.

This is all I know and I pray for.

Time in the Lady’s Cauldron

The orchid will bloom in her own time.

The dirt will lie, perfect patient receiver of the rotting life. It will change slowly as pungent passes and chaos reorganizes into readiness.

Then she will lie down, too, and listen as everything passes by her.

She will dream her dreams and sort through all the possibilities of what to be. She will listen and listen until she remembers and then she will yearn with all of her might, her yearning the only power within her purview. Her yearning can only be truly answered by that which makes orchids, so any wrong turn, any receiving of haphazard medicine will shape her asunder.

photo credit:  thank you Hans Partes

So, patience, patience.

She yearns, her little mind filled with orchid visions and of the sun kissing her buds.

One day, in delight, she realizes that her yearning has burst her shell and she has become a seedling, thrumming with tender excitement. She dawns in her stretching and she ever reaches. Her intoxicated wonder bursts forth with her bloom and then dances a wild interplay with her new world, filled in the diversity of the cosmos. She receives and receives, sure of her vision under the nurturing great forces of moon, sun, water and wind.

Be an orchid my friends, bide time. We cannot stay forever in the cauldron, but we cannot leave until the Goddess opens the way, lest we run our dreams back into darkness. As decomposition turns to fertility, as the path is etched in dreamtime, each step is a long passage, each a juicy time of medicine to be schooled by and digested.

Our yearning is synchronistic faith and singular force of creation together. The nature of yearning is to birth, to co-create with the Gods. Hold this, my ones. Nothing is more important than the clear, unprecedented arrival of your bloom.

Blessed Be.

by Tasara