An afternoon dip in the ocean

 

"An afternoon dip in the ocean". We had about 5 days of very hot weather! I felt like I was at the sea with my feet in a galvanized tub... felt how all the water circles through so many forms and places and carries memory...

A visitation from the heavens

 

Tsultrim Allione has said, “A dakini takes you out of words and Logos into a direct experience, and so define the dakini is in a way impossible, because she is beyond that, and she takes you beyond that. Given that ‘dakini’ means ‘sky goer’… they say that she is called that because she moves through space or through emptiness. She is like a messenger of emptiness. Dakinis can be human beings and they can also be deities, wisdom deities. And there are also worldly dakinis who are not human and they are not wisdom deities, but they are kinds of spirits, I guess you could say, that may be partially enlightened, but not entirely. So there are many kinds of dakinis. What I focus on are the Wisdom dakinis who are enlightened, they are equal to Buddhas in terms of their understanding. Dakinis are fierce, generally, not always, but generally they have a fierce aspect, or a semi-wrathful aspect. To me, that fierce energy is interesting because of the way the fierce feminine has been denied. If you're a fierce woman, you are dangerous. So the way the dakinis have that fierceness and clarity and wisdom, and allow that aspect of the feminine psyche... in wisdom which is always based in compassion and an understanding of emptiness... So, I think a simple way to say it is that a dakini is a conductor or a mediator or a midwife for wisdom.

This dakini, this sky goer appeared in the sky in the formation of a cloud during during a particularly magical and powerful sunset.  I immediately recognized her as a flying mermaid visitation from the heavens.  The light was extraordinary.  And from horizon to horizon there was a call and response of light with streaming subtle energetic lines which I somehow associated with scalar waves.  The way the light was filling the space of the heavens accentuated an awareness of spaciousness and awe. Knowing nothing of scalar waves other than that I had heard the term.  I later looked up scalar waves.

la transparencia

las primeras horas de la mañana

están colmadas de neblina

ocultando los lugares más allá 

de la cabaña de piedra blanca envuelta en hiedra y su jardín

ausente la colina de eucaliptos al otro lado del barranco 

la única forma de saber la diferencia entre la neblina y las nubes

es a través de su distancia sobre la tierra 

sin embargo estas tierras están tan arriba del mar 

como podemos saber la diferencia entre lo singular y plural a estas alturas?

entre la neblina y las nubes? un recuerdo y las cosas sustanciales? 

un vendaval de pensamientos y una tormenta? la nieve derritiéndose y una piedra o un río? 

la fría humedad del aire se siente como si fuera nieve

y el blancor de la nieve y la neblina se hablan 

a través del tiempo y el espacio que quizá nunca han existido

Estoy parada junto a la cabaña

en una cascada de verdes ramas 

una recatada gota que engloba el mundo en su esfera

se forma en la punta de cada hoja del pirul

en la medida que avanza la mañana la neblina se sube por las colinas 

y se convierte en nubes

la luz del sol ilumina la abundancia de hojas en el jardín

es como si brillaran por dentro

cada una de las gotas diminutas se ha desvanecido

tan solo dejando su transparencia 

—Lorena Wolfman (19-2-22)

Web of life

 

I said a few days ago that I wanted to tell you story about chickens, dogs and myself.  Like so many impressions in my soul, when they offer words and the opportunity is not taken, it may be hard to find your way into the magnitud and shape of what was revealed in those instants full of meaning.  But I will try to find the path, by walking it in the retelling of what happened.

I was busy doing something with my hands, touching and moving things that have to do with earth.  Memory, as happens with dreams, has been transmuted into sensations. Perhaps I was weaving more tepozán branches into a fence, when suddenly I heard a chicken making a ruckus from below, near the "bodega del río", as I have named the shed we built of pallets, almost two stories tall, tall enough so it has a "tapanco" that could be used as a sleeping loft.  Immediatey, I recognized the alarm in her voice, my eyes darted to where I heard the sound that was repeated in staccatto pleeing waves for help.  Almost before I could process what was happening, I echoed her, seeing one of my dogs in pursuit: Chaparro!  Chaparro!  Chaparro! I called out repeatedly in the loudest strongest most alarming voice I could produce, a voice that echoed and amplified her pleeing waves for help.  Chaparro had her by the tail, feathers were flying, I was yelling. Too far to strike or intercede physically, I threw my voice with full force towards Chaparro to call him off.  He let go of her long enough for her to scramble in ball hurtled by her fear, over some stones, past a maguey and up a small hill and out of sight into the  brown winter folliage of bushes burned brown by the last week's cold snap. The colors matched her color, and dense nopales also obscured her whereabouts.  

Reymundo, who had come running, arrived, there were feathers everywhere, fine downy feathers, body feathers and long tail feathers, but there was no blood, a good sign.  Chaparro seemed to understand my displeasure and just cowered near the ground under my glowering gaze. Reymundo and I looked and looked and looked.  She was nowhere to be found.  She had disappeared after being attacked when she was scared from her place under a maguey where we had seen her laying an egg earlier.  The roosters were far off on the other side of Mira Uri, nowhere near enough to have come to her aid.  

Reymund, an intuitive Piscean who moves on land with the ease of water, was confident she would come out, and he was sure that the "gallos" would look for her.  And soon they came, calling, the whole gang, 4 roosters and 8 or 10 hens. When they saw the feathers littered across the ground, they could be heard calling out in alarming raising a ruckus, objecting, warning others of danger, but also calling to her... they called and called, and, not right away, but after some time, when we had left them to their business of restoring their tribe, I noticed that there was no more ruckus and there was an air of quiet normality. The tribe had resumed looking for bugs and seeds on the ground and in the earth beneath the trees.  I approached and looked for her, first I saw one of her sisters or cousins, who still had her tail feathers, so I knew it wasn't her... I stood still, and there, rounding the corner beneath some low hanging pirul branches this side of a nopal, I saw her—she had three of her "galanes" watching out for her, keeping a protective eye on things. Calm had been restored.  

I am left with such a deep respect for this interwoven shared intelligence, web of life. How the chickens and the roosters care for each other, sense danger, and restore the tribe's balance after trauma. How a call of alarm, its rhythm and urgency is felt and sung out depths, moving species to species it is understood. Chicken, to human, to dog, the sounds of the song, initiated in an agression, moved through us, each, in turn, adding our gestures, responding to the rhythm with our voices, and completing the dance, our dance on the earth. Each of us learning from the moves of the other... later one of the "galanes" danced before me, cocking his head to side, eye straight on, as though to say, "you, yes you" and he shook his head vigorously, the feathers his neck fanning out making him look so magnificent as he pulled his had back and let out a cry, once, and then then again, and again, acknowledging my presence in this web. Then, he went on about his business.

Before leaving for the day, Reymundo, told me of his plan for the chicken to give her time and space to recuperate.  He would enclose her in the chicken coop's garden, when she could forrage and walk and not be bothered by the rooster's amorous outbursts while she recuperates and grows back her feathers.

transparency

 

the early hours of the morning

are filled with fog

hiding the places that are beyond 

the white stone cabaña and its garden

the hill of eucalyptus trees across the ravine gone

the only way to know the difference between fog and clouds

is by their distance from the ground

yet here this ground is so far above the sea

how can one really know the difference between singular and plural at these heights?

fog and clouds? a memory and the real thing? the thoughts blowing through us and a storm? melting snow and a rock or a river?

the cold moisture in the air feels like snow

the whiteness of snow and fog call to one another 

through time and space which may not exist

I stand just outside the cabaña

in a shower of green branches

a demure droplet encompassing the world in its sphere 

gathers at the end of each pirul leaf

as morning proceeds the fog moves up the hills

and becomes clouds

and sunlight illuminates the abundance of leaves in the garden

it is as though they glow from within

each diminute droplet has vanished

leaving only its transparency

—Lorena Wolfman (19-2-22)

la luz

 

la luz

 

bailarines brazos del sol

mensajera de implosiones internas

sus caminos a mi jardín son invisibles

mientras hace visible   

a cada brote de hoja pálida

a cada extravagancia de las flores desbordándose de color 

magenta blanco amarillo

el verde polvoriento de la piel de la carne túrgida del nopal 

el gris opacocente de la barda de adobe despellejándose 

entre blancos trozos de caliche 

cada cosa define su forma

por la rúbrica de su color 

las frecuencias que suelta 

y las que guarda 

el resplandor está en todas partes 

regalando tantos secretos de la Tierra como las que conserva 

aludiendo a través de la ausencia  

a los misterios aún más profundos 

de los que los ojos pueden sujetar 

—Lorena Wolfman (Trad. 18-2-22)

light

light 

dancing arms of the sun

messenger of inner implosions

its pathways into my garden are invisible

as it makes visible  

each pale budding leaf 

each extravagant flower 

overflowing with color

magenta white yellow

turgid dusty green flesh of the nopal

eroding opaque grey of an adobe wall

littered with white chunks of caliche

each thing defining its form

by its color signature

the frequencies it releases

and the frequencies it keeps to itself

shimmering is everywhere

giving away as many of the earth's secrets as it keeps

alluding through absence 

to the even deeper mysteries

the eyes cannot apprehend

—Lorena Wolfman (Rev. 18-2-22)