Moonwalker, Chapter One

I can’t say when it was I started to follow butterflies--if there was an actual moment when I was entranced by the promises of broken flowers and fractured light. I can’t pinpoint when I was seduced by pollen and mirrors, or when I became hungry for the golden promises I glimpsed in still water to be fulfilled. I do know I was afraid of the moon from the very beginning.
This is how my mother tells the story:

Each month, as the moon swelled, I cried in my crib in the room down the long hall where I’d been banished from her breast after one month. Nobody breastfed back then except hippies and my mom was definitely not a hippie, even though she sang along with the Mamas and the Papas on the radio. She was in the Army and didn’t know that Bob Dylan was the voice of her generation until I told her, and I’m pretty sure she’s never smoked pot, although I’ve never asked because then she’d feel free to ask if I had. Even so, I’m aware that I could have chosen the less emotionally charged word wean instead of banish, which conjures up images of orphan girls expiring on snow-covered stoops like the poor Little Match Girl. Well, at least it does for me, but my imagination might be more fanciful than yours, although I prefer to see it as more mythically attuned because that makes me seem special instead of paranoid and damaged.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always searched for the meaning behind the meaning. I haven’t found it yet, which could account for my lifelong depression which everyone else I know has medicated or explained away with therapy. Call me crazy, but I know it’s more than just a chemical imbalance that’s caused me to sleep through a good two-thirds of my life, instead of the usual half of the rest of the population. Then again, I don’t see sleep as the proverbial waste of time you always hear people saying it is, because sleep is when we dream, and in dreams I pace the top of a tor in a swan-feather cloak that catches the breath of the moon that lifts me off the dense earth to soar on currents of starlight that I know will carry me to the truth—the reason beyond the reason that has called to me even before I was born.

Of course I always come crashing back down because like everyone else on earth, I have to breathe. The one therapist I saw (I was forced to go in high school when I got caught crawling up the front stairs drunk) said I must be afraid of death, but I knew it was life I feared. I didn’t tell her this, because I was afraid of her, too. She said I had “mothering” issues, which might be attributed to the fact that I wasn’t breastfed. She actually told me that one month was probably worse then no boob at all, because at least if I hadn’t had it I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. This didn’t come close to satisfying my curiosity to know the reason beyond the reason. I took her prescription for Prozac and never filled it. When she called to ask why I hadn’t kept my appointment I didn’t answer because I was in bed and didn’t plan to get out for at least a month.

Really, it was strange she breastfed me for even that one month. It was even stranger that I remembered. I even remembered how she cried as much as I did because her breasts ached and overflowed. I asked her why once--why she stopped--and she said because that’s what everyone did back then. I never asked her why she started, which was the really interesting question.

My mother was a southern belle who’d grown up in the segregated south who’d entered the Army after high school and served in Vietnam, although she didn’t talk about this phase of her life. She’d go on for hours about her favorite childhood dog that ran away and was never heard from again, about how she and her friends dressed up like Beatniks and had a party that scandalized the neighborhood, about the time Robert Mitchum came to town to film a movie and hit on her BFF who was only fourteen years old, about how her mother used to make her father flip over rocks and shoot the imaginary snakes she were sure were lurking there—you know—the usual stuff which makes up a life, stories we tell over and over until they become the myths that define us. Most of us don’t realize the gods and goddesses are no different than us. They don’t want to look too deeply into why they blasted a village off a mountaintop with a bolt of lightning or sank a flotilla of ships with a tidal wave. Not to say my mom killed anyone in Vietnam. She was a nurse. She was supposed to heal people who’d almost been killed. I’m sure some of them died, but she didn’t talk about the bullet holes or amputations. She liked to start the day with Good Morning America and a bowl of Honey-Nut Cheerios.

The only thing I knew about her time in the Army was what I could glean from the photo hanging on the den wall of my dad swearing her in. She’s wearing her white nurse’s uniform with those starched white caps nurses used to wear that made them seem both more risqué and more professional than today’s nurses dressed in floral print scrubs and crocs. You can clearly see what my dad is thinking as he administers the oath.

Within a month they were married and she was pregnant with me a few months later. Her only reference to the war that carried them overseas to the mythic jungles of Vietnam was, “Those were turbulent times. We made decisions that may have seemed a little rash.” I always wondered if I was one of those rash decisions, but didn’t have the heart to ask. I was here, that’s all that mattered, but I couldn’t forget the sound of her crying as her breasts overflowed.

I remembered. I swear I did. I remembered my mother wriggling out from under my father’s arm and running down the hall to my room. There she found me, pinned on my back by the moon, pierced by white light, slashed to the bone.

She picked me up and unbuttoned her nightgown, cradled my head with her hand as I latched on to her nipple, even though she wasn’t supposed to. I still remember the taste of that milk, sticky and sour on my cracked lips. I still remember the moment my mother’s breast became the whole world. I forgot the months of weeping as I lost myself in suckles and murmurs, eyes wide open to the glow. I emptied one breast, then the other as my mother finally got some rest too, nodding off as the moon sunk beneath the earth’s horizon and the sun rose to trace the outline of her cheekbones, and the shadows which had gathered there as she’d listened to me weep. I remember this. I bet if you try, you can remember things like this, too.

We went through whole lifetimes together, watched the sun cast shadows on our surface as we waned in the sky which didn’t seem so empty any more, played with the rabbit and the man who lived there who passed his time holding up mirrors so the stars could see how beautiful they were.

We accepted we were half of what we once were; then a quarter, then a crescent, then a sliver of ourselves, until finally there was nothing to us. We couldn’t even reflect the sun anymore. It was a relief to let go of mirrors.

And then, the mirror broke, shattering the peace between us, ripping us back into the instruction manual which said I was supposed to be weaned before I could walk so that I could grow up to be strong and independent like the astronauts who that very night—July 20, 1969--walked on the moon.

Riding the Vision

Why do I feel like I have to wait till I have something really important to write here? Is it perhaps, due to the public nature of the blog format? Is it because I feel like I should only write when I have something important enough for public consumption? But isn't that the whole point of a blog? To share information and thoughts with the public? Or at least your friends who are interested or pretend they're interested to "follow" you?

These are rather neurotic thoughts and not really what I want to express in the world. However, I think it's sometimes necessary to move through these thoughts to get to the truth on the other side of them. The truth is always much quieter than these loud thoughts which take up so much space in our minds until we release them. Quieter even if they are really loud, like ocean storm waves. A friend who I sent some poems to recently gave me what I consider the ultimate compliment. She told me that I had bypassed the intellect in my new poems. I felt such a sense of accomplishment because, now, looking back at the poems in my last book, Apocalypse Diary, what I don't like about them is the voice--how chatty and brittle it sounds. I know it sounds that way because I was brittle, and that chattiness was a defense, a pose that the reader was supposed to move beyond....and some of the poems do go there (the ones no one ever comments on. The strange poems dealing with past life memories from soul retrievals!). I suppose this voice bothers me so much because it is no longer my voice. Like all humans I have an ego to help me forget the part of myself that is divine, and that ego wants to be "truly" seen, not mistaken for someone else! I guess I just feel so close to everything I create that I assume everyone else will assume that the poems are me--which they were, but since that's not the case I am neurotically worrying that anyone who actually comes across the book now will think I am still that brittle, wounded voice.

My point here as I prattle, is that sometimes you need to move through the intellect in order to get to what really wants to be said. Not what you want to say.....although sometimes the two intersect and that is when the most beauty is released into the world like the hatching of a bouquet of blue morpho butterflies. Truth and Beauty are abstract, best known in images. What are your images of truth? Of beauty? How does your voice want to be known in this world?

I may have begun writing this blog thinking I had nothing important to say, but as always happens when I surrender myself to words, my voice (the song beyond words) manages to rise up through the cracks in my intellect and entwine itself around the beams of my house, pushing its way out the windows and growing up and over to cover the roof with a soft, green canopy of vines and moss that is the perfect nest for butterflies and birds. I lay in my room in CT, still recovering from this illness and listen to the birds and wonder if butterflies in their cocoons can hear them. What's more important than that? Tell me. I really want to know. I suspect your answers will involve moments where trees whisper to you, where peaches moan in pleasure just before you take a bite, where you walk into the ocean at dusk and welcome the rising moon into your body.

It may be a crescent moon, it may be full, but it's always a reflection of the light within us all.

I want to finish by saying how excited I am about my new manuscript The Secret Language. I look forward to sharing the poems with you when it's finished, which is still a secret to me. I don't have a plan for anything these days, let alone for how to manage and control poetry! I was advised by a wise sage f a teacher last year (Fran Quinn for those of you who know him), that I was riding a wild horse of a vision and the best thing I could do was stop worrying and just hold on! The poems would take care of themselves if I could do that.

Well, the thing about riding a vision that I've discovered, is that you can't predict how long the ride is going to be. The trip may just be a few hours, but the way it plays out in your life afterwards is impossible to predict. I am referring to both psychedelic trips here and to the experiences in your life that just happen without ingesting psychotropics, which is pretty much all the time once you cross a certain threshold.

This can be a good thing, or a scary thing, depending how you roll with it. i had no idea my experiences with ayahuasca in Peru two winter ago would still be affecting me so deeply, but I can clearly see now that this past winter on Hawaii was a deepening of the vision I received in Peru. Madame Pele, goddess who destroys in order to create, tore through my body. I know that this illness is a gift from her that will completely purge me of all the negative (wounded) emotions that have stopped me from sharing my full radiance in this lifetime--if I can ride it all the way out. Right now it is a fine line between medicine and faith for me. I feel like the medications are stopping me from fully surrendering to the faith that I am the authority of my body and all I create, but I'm afraid, for numerous reasons, both physical and social, to stop taking them. I'll admit, now that I've come close, I don't actually want to die now. I'd like to keep it at a metaphorical stage--a beautiful image of a deep indigo butterfly disintegrating into a sky big enough to contain the silent song of its wings.

What is your song? Where are you flying?

Descent to the Underworld

One of the greatest teachers in my life has been the island of Hawaii, the largest of the seven in the archipelago, and the only one with a volcano that is still active. Right now as I write new land is being created near Kalapana where liquid fire from the earth’s core is flowing into the ocean whose cool touch soothes and sculpts it into a landscape that mirrors the chop and heave of a stormy sea. Though this land looks like water, anyone who has walked into a lava field knows that, unlike water, which gives way when we fall into it, here there is no mercy. This is raw land, razor-sharp, not yet worn down by wind and wave erosion, and the mind, if one is open to this land, becomes equally sharp, manifesting its intentions with the same focused flow as that lava who will not be stopped from reaching the ocean.

And so I find myself again here on Hawaii after fifteen years, not expecting to be on this particular island, since I swore to myself that I would stay on Maui this time--but Maui—who could complain about Maui? Maui--was too soft and mellow and a little moldy from all the rain that made the flowers grow, as well as covered in a far more substantial swathe of concrete than when I was last there. So my abhorrence of Walmart and Costco combined with my fear I would molder, caused me to flee Maui within a week of arriving, flying over to the Big Island, secretly acknowledging that it was the reason I came here. It had been calling me back, and I had answered. I was afraid, but I had to go.

Fifteen years ago I wandered around this island as a hitchhiker taking rides from random strangers and ending up wherever there cars wanted to go. I had a vague and secret intention of finding a story—something I could write about, not believing that my suburban Connecticut upbringing, a fairly tame sojourn in Paris as an au pair (although the hedonistic month in Greece I tacked on at the end of that sojourn was certainly fertile territory), and four years of college where I read so many books I ended up with a major and a minor in English Literature before abandoning my one attempt at a real job (college professor) by dropping out of grad school before the semester even started because I realized I wanted to be a poet, was enough to write about, or at least nothing special. I had no concept of my inner landscape because I had no feeling for it. Without going back to the source of it here, I can only say, in short, that I was completely numb, though I had a flare for drama that made me seem I felt more than everyone else.

This numbness, an inability to feel, is a spiritual disease that has become a cultural epidemic manifesting in the form of addictions of all kinds, physical, mental and emotional. In my mind, addiction is a substitute for ritual. The soul must be fed and the spirits must be acknowledged, maintaining our connection to the earth’s cycles as our own. Since the Industrial Age, these connections have been severed, although the desecration of the feminine aspect of ourselves occurred long before that, somewhere around the time that written civilization arose around 5,000 years ago. If we don’t feed it, the starved soul, craving sustenance in the form of reverence for the gift of life in a human body, and devotion to our own inner growth, begins to devour us in a desperate attempt to make us notice it. Addiction becomes a substitute for ritual. Instead of feeding our souls and the unseen with prayers or offerings of tobacco, we are driven compulsively to alcohol and a host of other mind-numbing drugs: to sex, food, violence, television; and the mental addictions that keep us trapped in cycles of thinking that manifest in an endless feedback of negative experiences which convince us we are not in control of our lives. Addictions are emotional as well, such as addiction to romance/love, which keeps us seeking over and over for someone to fill the holes in our sad and tired bodies that we can only satisfy with acceptance, gratitude, and self-love.

My journey to these realizations began on Hawaii. Fifteen years ago, thumbing my way towards a story, however passively I was going about it, I encountered a force in this land that was far more powerful than anything I had ever experienced before. One of my rides brought me in a circuitous manner to Waipi’o Valley, the mystical home of many Hawaiian kings and warriors, where people still talked of beings like the Night Marchers and the menehune as if they were real. I was enchanted by this place where people talked about mythical beings in their everyday conversation and resolved to go live down in the valley, which was only inhabited by a few taro farmers who mostly drove the mile back up the one-lane road after work. I would have the whole place to myself.

In about two days I had a Hawaiian boyfriend through whom I slipped into local culture, an invitation not readily extended to many haoles (white-skinned people with no breath, no mana, or spiritual force). I have written about our story at length other places, and continue to do so as I am more able, year after year, to express what I went through in that valley, so I will not elaborate on it too much here. Through him, I witnessed firsthand the degradation of spirit and culture that has occurred to the Hawaiians as a result of the loss of sovereignty experienced when they were annexed by a cabal of businessmen backed by the U. S. Congress who turned the guns of their warships on Queen Liliuokalani’s palace. The Queen, rather than seeing her people die, surrendered, though the loss of spirit had been well under way for the century before as the whalers and missionaries streamed toward the island with their different, but equally exploitive visions.

However, this is not a tirade about victims or a call for political sovereignty for the Hawaiian people. It is a call for anyone reading these words to accept that each one of us is responsible for the reality we create as individuals and as a collective force. What mystics have always said has now been proven by scientists, providing us with the proof necessary to convince a materialist world that we are creatures of spirit first. Our physical realities are created by our thoughts, and most importantly our feelings. If this seems impossible to accept consider that many--maybe most of these feelings are unconscious and that we are unaware of them--all the more reason to focus our attention on them so as to create from a place of clarity in order to receive our heart’s desire and reveal our path of service in this lifetime.

But there is also something else at work here—the soul’s desire, which is often at odds with what the ego wants. The soul, our link to the divine, must annihilate the ego, the part of us that has forgotten it is divine. In our materialist paradigm, it is logical that this annihilation will occur at the material level—that we will be stripped of our possessions, beaten or abused, struck with cancer, or by lightning, lose our loved ones in mindless, wasted deaths through war.

These are difficult ideas to accept if one is in an abusive situation, but in my case, it was just this that led me to an awareness—through many years of suffering after the actual experiences occurred—that I wrote myself into a story where I was physically, sexually, emotionally and mentally abused; in which I allowed myself to be degraded and violated my own belief in the sanctity and goodness of life in ways I never would have thought were possible, or that I was capable of.

In a culture stripped of ritual, the most important one being that of initiation, my soul guided me to do it on my own. Viewed from my current perspective, I think I couldn’t have chosen any wiser. Waipi’o Valley is literally known as the gateway to the Underworld in Hawaiian tradition. In the safe container of conscious community, facilitated by elders who have been through the process, the descent into the underworld, while dangerous, and very often painful, is one from which most initiates return. In our time, many do not. They are lost, like many I have known, to heroin or alcohol, dying on bus station floors or alone in apartments with the shades drawn on closed windows. I, too, came close.

Our parents usher into this world, but it is up to us to rebirth ourselves as fully embodied souls who take on the role of maintaining the links between the spirit and material world that create healthy communities of people who abide by the Hawaiian principle of pono, of integrity; who want to live in balance with all of creation and make decisions based on the greater good of all our relations: animal, mineral, plant, here on earth, and with our star families beyond it.

In this time of massive transition on our planet, as the old paradigms of control collapse, we each have the opportunity to become sovereign, in control of our own boundaries, conscious co-creators of a collective vision founded on reverence for life, and devotion to the soul’s path growth toward full realization of its divine origin. To this day I am amazed I survived my unconscious descent into the underworld, and that I made it through the many years after where I numbed the pain of that time with alcohol, food, drugs, and many other mental and emotional addictions like depression, vacating from the present moment, and co-dependency. Over time, as I became aware that I was going through a process of initiation on my own, I was able to let go of my addictions, which, is far easier than these simple words sound. The years of self-abuse, then recovery and healing after my descent in Waipi’o were in many ways more difficult than the original trauma I experienced in the depths of the valley.

It is my hope that those of us who went and survived these traumatic self-initiations will speak out now and share their experience and wisdom with those on the brink of descent into their own underworlds. Not to stop anyone from descending, for this terrifying descent is a necessary part of the journey to becoming a fully embodied human, but to provide markers, breadcrumbs on the path, say, for little lost birds in need of a sustenance so they can keep flying.

Haven't written here in over a year. I feel like I'm writing to myself.....maybe I am and I could just act naturally and share my secret self. Here on the Big Island on the lovely Hualalai, in a house in the trees, land sloping toward the ocean where the dolphins hunt all night, and they will swim in to Kealakeakua Bay in a few hours as the sun comes over the ridge and warms the mountainside. And I will roll down the hill to meet them. That's about all I have to say. Life is simple here, or maybe it's just beyond words like this.

Sea Change, A Journal of Reflections and Waves

Full fathom five, thy father lies,
of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding dong, Hark! Now it hear them.
Ding dong, bell.


William Shakespeare, of course, sung by Ariel, I believe, in The Tempest, one of my favorite of his plays. For those of you who know the quote well, I'm aware that the punctuation is a bit off. Perfectly functioning keyboards are a bit of a rare commodity in Peru. This one doesn't do anything but type arrows when you try to use the upper symbols on the keys.

In any case, I can correct them when I return home next week to the States! Hurray! The exclamation point works at least!

I had the idea last spring to start a journal called Sea Change, A Journal of Reflections and Waves that would focus on the subject of change on Block Island. I want to include all aspects of change, both the good and the bad. How it affects our life and how we want to affect change on both a personal and collective level. For me, specifically, I see this as an opportunity to focus our intention on our ability to create the world we want through our emotions, on both a personal and political level. I am interested, as Martin Prechtel puts it, in awakening the indigenous soul of Block Island. You may remember the Manifest Manisees Manifesto I created last winter. Some of you were in the beautiful ceremony with me at Jill Helterline's house last Lammas....Groundhog Day.....where we spoke our wishes for the island aloud as if they had already come true. In case you want to review it, or to read it for the first time, go into the archives on this blog for Feb. 2007. It can be read there. And if you have anything you would like me to consider adding, please leave your suggestions in the comments or write me personally at jenlighty@hotmail.com.

Why Sea Change....

Well, obviously, we live on an island and are surrounded by the sea. There are few places on the island where you can't hear it, unless the wind is very still, which happens rarely. We sleep to the sound of the sea. We don't need lullabies, or we are haunted by the sound, kept awake, confused by our dreams. I want the journal to be a call to clarity. A place where we examine the different reflections that death takes in our lives, and a place where we envision reflections we would like to see. We live in a paradoxical time, participants in a dying culture that is also coming vibrantly to life. My recent experiences with ayahuasca have helped me to actually go through the process of death. It was both terrifying and beautiful, peaceful and full of contentment, a quality I find is missing so often in contemporary life. To be content with change.

And what does Shakespeare have to do with all this....

In this little song from The Tempest, Ferdinand's father is dead. The father is associated with the patriarchy, a system controlled by men based on domination of the feminine earth which scholars say has governed most of our planet for the past 6,000 years or so, I believe, replacing the matriarchal cultures, which some other scholars say, was more peaceful and egalitarian. This is misplaced thinking in my mind which continues to place the blame for our current ecological crisis on someone other than ourselves.....each of us is responsible for what we have created through our emotional bodies, whether we be in a male or female body. Truth be told, my teacher Maria opened my eyes to this erroneous and accusative way of thinking, turning my whole thought process around when she informed me that all of acts of creation are female. All acts of creation include the atomic bomb and chemical weapons. It is time to look within ourselves and heal the schism between the male and female which has caused us to project our unresolved anger onto a world that is patiently serving our needs.

I don't believe the world is in crisis. Dead eyes become pearls and bones become coral, which is a living organism, filled with thousands of miniscule polyps sharing space like a colony of undersea bees, working together to sustain life in all its wondrous mystery, rich and strange. And sea nymphs, of course, are notorious for their ability to seduce. That great explorer Ulysses survived them only by strapping himself to the mast so he wouldn't throw himself into their arms when he sailed past on his way home to Ithaka.

It is time though, perhaps, to throw ourselves into their song. To let ourselves die and be reborn as naturally as waves breaking on a shore who are pulled back into life by a force they can't see, something beyond eyes, something hidden but fully known the way a pearl inside an oyster is sure of its own beauty.

See Change. It didn't even occur to me until after I'd come up with the name for the magazine. So obvious it slipped by me, through the song of my unconscious to my fingers who began typing, letting the ideas come in clear currents that will take us home when it is time for us to get there. It doesn't matter when, really. That bell that's always tolling isn't doesn't have to be marking time past, or time remaining. It could be the siren's have decided against drowning, or maybe they want to teach us to breathe underwater, to bring the darkness into the light and let them play, rolling on the surface like otters.

What do you see......

Southern Cross

Wherever I go in this country I keep meeting people who tell me (or imply) they know more than me, like the woman this morning who told me the poverty here doesn´t bother her because the poor, like all of us, are choosing their own reality.

I feel you stirring within me, the rage that wants to lash out and tell her she´s full of shit and I don´t believe for a second she´s as disconnected as she claims to be.

Also, I am tired of people telling me I must become more unattached and that I should ¨do¨more ceremony, as if surrendering was as easy as taking a pill or a drink, or a weekend course on shamanic healing taught by a wrinkled old man who wants all of your money, and I understand that I am attracting the old women who keep following me around asking for money, like the one the other day who followed me halfway up the mountain I wanted to walk alone because she knew I would give her money just to get rid of her.

I just want to be seen by these women and by the cabdriver who keeps trying to sell me condor feathers I suspect are fake. I haven´t seen one condor in this country. How can there be so many feathers for sale? They are either not from condors, or the vendors are killing the giant birds to get them, because I know, as a feather collector, that there are just not that many giant feathers lying around on the ground waiting for cabdrivers to walk by.

I suspect vultures in every sense of the word, surviving off the dead, though there´s nothing wrong with that, or with killing to eat. It´s the deception I object to. I want someone to tell me the truth in this country. Then I get angry at myself for attracting all these negative experiences and want to smack the smug new agers who tell me that is what I am doing.

One thing I am good at is feeling. I feel the judgment coming at me. It is not a projection of my own feelings, although it is a reflection...I feel what people are thinking and it hurts me. I have also been attracting people who say hurtful things to me in a passive aggressive way. Like it´s funny to tease me about how sensitive I am.

I know my reactions are my own and are what I need to grow from right now, that I need to learn how to respond instead of react, but right now I am lost in the hurt and don´t know how to get out of it. Part of my personality is to admit my weaknesses in conversation. I think I genuinely want to talk with people, but I keep attracting people who judge me when I do this, so there must be something I am missing here. Maybe it is just that I, who admit my weakness, am stronger than I think.

I don´t want to ask my feelings to leave me alone, but would like to transform them into something a little more serene.

I could resolve all this with some fakery. Call in a condor to drop his feather´s at my fet, but I want you, right now, to see me. How ugly I am in the middle of all this beauty. Green mountains and fertile clouds seeding the fields of maize.

Medicine Poem

This is the beginnings of a poem I wrote after my first ayahuasca ceremony on New Year´s Eve. I thank the plant for the insights it gave me and offer my words back to it in gratitude for the beauty and knowledge it shared with me.


Medicine Poem


In the round room

with our backs to the red adobe walls

we prayed to our own darkness,

flowers torn apart by fear

and the losses caused by the lies we´d been told

and all the betrayals necessary

on the path

to becoming whole.


Gunshots cracked above us

like blessings from the king of lightning

on the earth below

who held its breath and wondered

if our prayers would be enough

to keep the darkness between stars

turning.

It was New Year´s Eve,

most of the world stumbled

under fire

in celebration

but the dogs knew the bombs

weren´t far away

barking as the sun flamed

in the black sky

and then collapsed in a fan of colors

that tickled their closed eyes

when they fell to the ground who shook

with fear at our blindness

unable to understand why we wanted

to give our eyes away.

And the fire fueled itself

with shattered eardrums and severed fingers

while the water waited to see

how we wanted it to fall

ready to answer our prayers with drought

or drowning

flowing toward open mouths

with all the answers

and more questions to keep us spinning away

from the sound

then toward it

so close to God

we forgot ourselves

rushing past our ears
like waterfalls.

My death happened

without my knowing

the shape of my life arcing like a rainbow

between two black holes

a raindrop held by a leaf

that breaks as it falls

crushing butterflies and demons

with their own blindness

reborn on the other side

equal and unknown.


A leaf falls, releasing the song held

in a raindrop

and a woman gives herself away because she knows

she is always full

and the silence after is as gentle as an old doe

at dusk

who bends to drink at a mudhole

torn apart by love

immersed in the dark between stars

greeting the wolves.

Tsegihi ( Navajo Cantinela Noche)

This is my translation of the Navajo Night Chant, recited in the ceremony of the same name of the Dine´. I translated it for my new friends who live at Alonso´s. They are very interested in the prophecy of the eagle and the condor and in North American indigenous culture.

If the phrasing seems awkward, it is because I followed the phrasing in the translation from Navajo to English by N. Scott Momaday. If anyone who knows Spanish better than I catches any glaring errors, please let me know! And last, but certainly not least, Walk in Beauty, as the Dine´say.


Casa hecho del aurora,
Casa hecho de la luz velada,
Casa hecho de la nube oscura,
Casa hecho de la lluvia masculino,
Casa hecho de la neblina oscura,
Casa hecho de la lluvia femenina,
Casa hecho del polen,
Casa hecho de los saltamontes,
La nube oscura es a la puerta.
La trocha irse de este nuba oscura.
El relampago zigzg se levanta alta le sobre.
¡Dios masculino!
Una ofrenda de tuyo yo hecho.
Yo prepare´una fuma para ti.
Restaura mis piedes para mi.
Restaura mi cuerpo para mi.
Restaura mi mente para mi.
Restaura mi voz para mi.
Este dia mismo saca el hechizo de tuyo para mi.
El hechizo de tuyo se aparta para mi.
Tu le sace´ para mi;
Lejas se fue.
Con la felicidad, yo recubro.
Con la felicidad mi interior se pone fresco.
Con la felicidad yo se voy.
Mi interior sentiendo fresco, puedo caminar.
No mas largo doloroso, puedo caminar.
Imerpemeable al dolor, puedo caminar.
Con los sentimientos animados, puedo caminar.
Asi´le ser hace mucho tiempo, puedo caminar.
Con la felicidad, puedo caminar.
Con la felicidad, con las nubes oscuras abundantes, puedo caminar.
Con la felicidad, con los aguaceros abundantes, puedo caminar.
Con la felicidad, con las plantas abundantes, puedo caminar.
Con la felicidad, puedo caminar.
Asi´le ser hace mucho tiempo, puedo caminar.
Puede ser hermoso delante de mi.
Puede ser hermoso detras de mi.
Puede ser hermoso abajo de mi.
Tal vez es hermoso sobre mi.
Tal vez is hermoso por todos lados de mi.
En la belleza se termine´.

Sea Squad South America

To my esteemed fellow members of Sea Squad, and future members, I am pleased to report from Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. The lake it truly immense, and when on it, seems like an ocean, complete with rolling waves, although no tides or surf breaking on its shores.

I am currently writing from Puno, the largest city on the lake, which is the home city of BI honorary member Aymar Ccopocatty. Aymar, being from North America a well, is highly aware of the pollution problem that is developing here and is documenting the algae blooms due to nitrogen overload close to Puno, caused by dumping raw sewage into the lake, on film. He is doing his best to educate his people about this problem, but reports that it is frustrating because the people don´t really have a concept of pollution yet. I am happy to report that the pollution only seems to be in Puno. After a two day excursion on the lake, I can report nothing but pristine water and thriving cultures on the islands I visited.

Becky Hogan and I set forth from Puno with an international motley crew on a boat that looked like the one from Gilligan´s island. Our goal, Amantani, the island of the magenta, bell-shaped Kantuta flower, 15 miles out from Puno. First, however, we made a stop at one of the legendary islands of the Uros, a pre-Inka people who escaped into the totora reeds when the Inkas came to conquer the area. Eventually they began to build rafts to survive on, and the rafts became islands. Today there are still many people living on these floating islands with a unique language and culture. Many of them subsist on tourism, so it was a bit depressing to visit because there were many requests for money, but some are anchored deeper into the reeds and do not receive visitors. The totora reed, like our native cattail used by the Manisses and other New England tribes, supplies them with many building materials, including reed houses and boats. We took a ride in a reed boat which was quite stable, although some of my fellow passengers seemed a bit nervous that we were going to tip. All the island children jumped on the boats with us and entertained us enthusiastically with songs in Aymara, Quechua, Spanish, English, French, German and Japanese! They passed around their hats after, of course, but I was happy to give them a couple of sols. Our guide mistakenly told us that one of Sea Squad´s heroes, Thor Heyerdahl, learned how to make reed boats from the Uros, but I didn´t correct him, not wanting to appear to be a know it all in front of the very attractive and hip Uruguayans. Heyerdahl did learn the technique from some legendary Aymara boat builders from the lake, however, and proceeded to sail them on the Ra Expedition which began in Egypt, I think, and went on to Asia? Any Sea Squad members know? Our guide also informed us, correctly, that another Sea Squad hero, Jacques Cousteau, discovered the worlds´ largest frogs when he explored the lake.

I wasn´t lucky enough to see any frogs, but I was lucky enough to spend two nights on the stunning island of Amantani. While there I was privileged to dine on one of the four native species of fish remaining in the lake. The other 32 have been wiped out due to the introduction of trout and kingfish. The fist looked like silverfish and were fried whole, which means they had eyes to look at us. I didn´t mind the eyes so much, but Hogues did. I, however, was not so keen on the taste. The remaining fish were quickly scooped into napkins and carried down to the lake as an offering to Neptune. Hopefully the seagulls had a party. We were staying with a local family and felt it would be an insult not to eat the fish, especially because our host was so proud to serve them up.

Amantani was an inspiration in so many ways, and we on Block Island could learn much from the way tourism operates there. The island is about the same size as BI, but has no cars. Everyone walks up the very steep stone pathways, often carrying heavy loads, to work in the terraced fields of potatoes, corn, beans, and quinoa. The island operates communally. A 5 sol ($1.50) fee is collected from all tourists which is distributed equally among the 4,000 residents, and tourists are rotated among the families on an equal basis so everyone gets a little income, although I think in Peruvian terms it is probably not so little. Of all the rural places I have seen so far, Amantani has the highest quality of life. All the houses were large in Peruvian terms, with tin, not thatched roofs, and had beautiful gardens and bright green outhouses out back. Also, the town had a windmill and many houses had solar panels for electricity. With no cars, no dogs (and their wastes), no internet, and no phones, Amantani is the most peaceful place I have ever been. Becky and I hiked up to the two highest points on the island, Pachamama and Pachatata, where there are shrines to mother and father earth, and also circumnavigated the island during our stay. I know that I will treasure those two days there for the rest of my life and feel so lucky to be sending this report to my fellow members. See you in a couple of months when the water is warming up and the stripers are starting to run!

Whitewave

On the Bus

Riding the bus is quite an experience in Peru. Becky and I decided to leave the Cusco-Sacred Valley area for Lake Titicaca a couple of days ago. We decided to take a tourist bus because it would be more comfortable than the local bus, but somehow in the confusion at the station in Cusco, ended up on a local bus. Local bus means dirty. Local bus means you can´t go to the bathroom for 6 hours or so. Local bus means lumpy seats. And strangest of all, local bus means anyone who wants to sell something can jump on the bus at anytime and do so.

The first was a teenage boy who played a scallop shell like a washboard and sang some songs for us. He then walked up and down the aisle holding out his shell for money. Next stop he got off and on came a very clean and well dressed young man who proceeded to stand in the middle of the aisle halfway down the bus and address us passengers with great powers of elocution about the problems of alcohol abuse in Peru, and of how important it was to talk to your children, explaining that many parents never talked to their children because they worked so hard, and encouraging them to talk for just 15 minutes a day. I thought he was a Bible thumper, but he never really got too into Jesus into the converation, although it turned out one of the things he was trying to sell was mini Bibles, good for using when you needed something to talk to your children about. He also had a cd and booklet for kids with educational material in them and a book of ideas on how to make money. The very quiet and polite man next to me bought all of his stuff (10 soles, about 3 dollards) and I looked over his shoulder at the kids´book, which looked quite good and interesting. It made me remember how my friend in Lima told me that Peruvian schools were really bad, so maybe material like this is really needed. For awhile I thought the schools were so bad the kids were never in them until I realized they are on summer vacation now!

All kinds of food vendors jump on the bus when it stops, selling bread, empanadas, choclo with queso (corn on the cob with hunks of cheese), and sometimes popcorn. They yell out the name of what they are saying over and over as several of them push up and down the aisle, riding for awhile and then jumping off at the next town. I had seen a lot of sellers like this riding the bus in the Sacred Valley, but had not yet encountered a woman carrying an entire roast pig onto the bus until this trip. She and her friend, who looked to be about 20, got on the bus in the most obscure town, way out in the middle of nowhere with the pig which they proceeded to hack into pieces with a cleaver and sell to hungry passengers along with potatoes. They were also selling apple juice in plastic pags, but I couldn´t figure out how to drink it without spilling it all over myself! In any case, more liquid was not a good idea since going to the bathroom was out of the question.

Last, but certainly not least, was the very well dressed, very clean, very handsome young man who got onto the bus (wearing a tie!) and proceeded to address us about the nutritive benefits of maca, an Andean plant that has caught on big as a supplement in the US. I think Becky and I might have been the only people on the bus who knew what he was talking about, which was one of the points he made. I was very impressed with the way he spoke and with his political awareness of how important it was for the people from his culture to know what treasures they had, and to use them for themselves. I thought it was interesting that he had to explain the medical conditions he was explaining the plant was good for, like osteoporosis, and gave him a lot of credit for jumping on that bus trying to sell his maca powder. I was thrilled to buy some since I have been under the weather, but he didn´t seem to sell as much as the Bible guy.

Finally, we were approached by Oligario who was touting hostels on the bus. I hate to say that I´ve become wary of people trying to sell me stuff, but I have, so I was kind of discounting him until he pulled out a pamphlet for a really nice looking hotel and told us we could have a special deal. It seems like my aloofness payed off. He thought I was trying to bargain! When we got to Puno he found us a cab and escorted us to the hotel, which is quite nice . We are paying ten dollars each for a room in the US that would cost about one hundred. Puno, while rundown, and lacking the colonial charm of Cusco, is interesting to walk around in, cheaper, and filled with very friendly people. I think most tourists spend only a brief time here before jumping off somewhere else, so we have the city to ourselves as far as gringas go.

Off to the island of Amantani tomorrow for two days, then back to Puno for the Festival of the Virgin of Candelaria, one of the biggest of the year!

Feeling the Silence

I drank ayahuasca again last Sunday in a very beautiful ceremony. I was much more prepared mentally for the experience, although I was still scared before the ceremony began. Alonso, the ayahuascero, said he is always scared before every ceremony, which makes sense, and which makes me respect him even more. At this point I can say which makes me love him even more. He is such a beautiful being who lives from his heart, who sees from the eyes of his heart and from what I have experienced, acts from his heart.

A friend of mine from Block Island came to the ceremony with me, as well as two other people I have met here. It was small this time, only the four of us, three apprentices of Alonso´s, a man from Taray, Alonso and his wife, and their one year old son. Before I went I wrote down the things I wanted ayahuasca to help me with, although I was prepared to experience whatever I needed to experience, since one of my intentions was to surrender to the divine I AM presence inside me, which sees beyond the needs of my ego to what my soul wants for me to grow into a deeper being.

One by one we knelt before Alonso and drank, then walked back to our seats on the ground in the same round room as the last time. Alonso began to play his music, which is so sublime. I settled into the ground and breathed and let my mind relax as the music washed over and through me. I could sense the medicine moving through my body, and then after about an hour it started to affect my consciousness. It is hard to describe what I saw, or at least what the ayahuasca dimension looked like, but if you have ever seen ayahuasca art with its geometric patterns and swirls and colors, then you can get a good idea of what I was seeing. However, the feeling of being in contact with beings from another dimension, very powerful, benevolent beings, divine entities, was more powerful to me than the way things looked, up until a certain point when I felt one of these beings "operating" on my third eye, one of the things I requested. This was not painful or scary, I just felt pressure in my forehead and knew that this being was helping me and I thanked it. From that point on I remembered that my friend Aymar told me that once you become experienced with the medicine it is possible to direct the journey, so I continued to ask the entities to assist me. All of the things I asked for were addressed as best as the plant could do at that point for me. One of the particularly painful things I asked to be released from was not resolved as fully as I wanted it to be, but the message I got from the ayahuasca was that the result I wanted was what my ego wanted, not what my heart wanted, or what my soul knew was the truth, so that I was going to have to continue to accept this condition and learn to open my heart despite the pain that it causes, and it is true, I know, that pain is one of the most powerful ways to learn about love, that I was being given an opportunity to fully accept all the ways that love can live within us without the attachments we so often insist on as conditions or definitions of what love is. All these messages came through me in images and feelings, very beautiful feelings of love. I was crying silently almost the whole ceremony at the beauty of what I was experiencing and at the love radiating from Alonso´s music, and from the others in the room. I had a powerful vision of Jesus Christ, and then a vision of myself with him in a past life. I also had a vision of a North American Indian man dancing who I knew was my husband in a past life. I asked to see myself with him, but looking back, I think I didn´t because I was looking for myself how I look now, not how I did when I was with him. I had many visions of animals, and also an incredible energetic transference from the earth in which I received energy streaming up into my first chakra.

The medicine also worked on us as a group as a whole, bringing up a social issue that is difficult for me. I was feeling uncomfortable and responsible for the people who I brought with me, which was also the case the first ceremony. Both times I actually only asked one person to accompany me, and the others just sort of came along, although I told them to call Alonso to make sure it was ok they came. Anyway, one of the conditions of participating in the ceremony is that you cannot leave until it is officially over. While we were still in the dark, someone came in with a flashlight and went up to Alonso, who stopped playing his music and came over to me and said that one of the people who came with me not exactly invited was leaving because their was something wrong. Alonso´s son had discovered him and came into tell his father. Alonso asked me to accompany him outside to talk to him. Needless to say, this was very disrupting to the energy of the group, both because the circle was broken, and also because the lights were lit at this point. I walked over to the house with Alonso, amazed I could and asked this person what was wrong, if he was ok. His answers were terse and fairly rude. Out of respect for his experience I do not want to reveal them here. Alonso asked him to come in for just an hour more. We told him we were worried about him and I asked him to come sit next to me and try to sleep, suggestions that were not met well. Finally Alonso told him that he had made a commitment and needed to come back in, which he did. I was able to walk back in and recenter myself as Alonso continued to play, and to my surprise, I realized that no one in the room was holding me responsible for this person´s behaviour. Alonso asked me to go because I spoke English and because he thought I would want to help my friend, which I did, even though he rejected my help. So he came back, although he left after about 20 minutes, before the ceremony was over. The rest of us continued on listening to the beautiful music by candle and firelight now, meeting each others´eyes and hugging each other until Alonso closed the circle and people drifted home to sleep, although I slept there on the ground again. I think what happened to this person was that the ayahuasca, which he had drank many times before, worked on his dark side and brought it out into the light, maybe in a way that he didn´t expect, because it sounds like his medicine ceremonies in the past were more hallucinatory in nature. I think this is a testament to the power and purity of Alonso´s use of the medicine, however. The disruptor was angry because he wasn´t tripping hard enough, which I think might have actually been the medicine he needed to bring him into a state where his dark side came out and he had an opportunity to integrate it within the ceremony in a way that he might not have expected.

In the end, it is surrender that is required, and surrendering to the heart, as I¨m sure many of you know, can be very painful, because our wounds must be faced, and felt again sometimes. I feel so grateful and blessed by the beings that helped me in the ceremony and for all the humans in the room with me, and grateful for having the strength to go back for another ceremony.

Many of you who read this appeared to me in the ceremony, everyone shining and in a state of love and grace, and I prayed for all of you and for the earth who allows us to walk on her belly, and for my Uncle, who has crossed over into the stars, too. I saw his face so clearly as he was in life and felt his peace and contentment with wherever he is. I thank all of you for journeying with me and look forward to deepening our connections as we all grow into what we need to be.

Las Turistas

I´ve been a bit of a tourist lately. A friend from Block Island has arrived in Pisac and we´ve been touring the Sacred Valley sites, which is good since I was getting in a bit of a rut here in Pisac. Paz y Luz is great, but it is hard for me to get in a creative flow living around people--my issue--I know that if I really want to create then I will raise my fear and move myself to a place where I can get in the flow that writing requires. I have been considering my willingness to live in this repressed state, wondering what it is inside me that is willing to tolerate the very uncomfortable feelings that arise when I don´t create. Is it that I don´t believe in myself enough? Could it be that I am scared of where my creativity will take me? The rut is safe. It is an easy place to be. Could it also be a message that a part of me is still willing to sacrifice myself for others by being too accomodating to their needs? Probably it is all of these things and definitely I should get out of my head and just be for awhile....

Which is why it is good to have Becky here, as she motivated me to change my scenery and shift my mood. We went to Cusco last week, in the car with Gray and Eva. There aren´t a lot of priate cars here, mostly buses and taxis, so it was fun to drive around in a big American SUV. Cusco is an international cultural tourism oasis, which means it can either be fun or horrible, depending on how you choose to see it. My first time in the city I was enchanted by the way it looked, but horrified by the hardsell to the tourists. Everything from fingerpuppets to massages. The second time, with three friends, I like the city more. We ran errands for Paz y Luz and bought cheap bootleg cds an ate Indian food and walked up to San Blas to eat dark chocolate--hard to find here as all the Peruvians seem to eat is milk chocolate.

A couple of days later Becky and I traveled down the valley to Ollayantaytambo, a very quaint town off the carretera that is still built on its Inka foundations. Becky toured the ruins which required a ticket, while I, who had alreay been there, walked around the quiet streets of the town, different from Pisac, which is all adobe or concrete and built by the Spanish as a grid. On the far side of the town, opposite the main ruins, I noticed a little sign pointing up to a path that ascened up toward another set of ruins, which I followed and had to myself high above the town. I sat on the ramparts and watched the people below and the waterfall pouring through the town towared the Rio Urabamba and felt quite content and impressed with myself for climbing up there, although I am finding the altitude much easier to handle.

Afterwards Becky and I met and had lunch at The Two Hearts Cafe, run by a 76 English woman who arrived in Peru with two suitcases and hasn´t left. She runs the cafe as a charity to help indigenous women and children in the area. She runs a kindergarten and a health program, which seems to be sorely needed. According to doctors who recently visited the school, all of the children were malnourished and all had parasites due to drinking infected water, and many of the women had severe gynecological problems. I have particularly felt the difficulty of the womens´s lives here. For all the talk about Pachamama here (mother earth), the women are treated like work animals and seem exhausted and from what I can see, not very happy, although this of course, is my perception and not necessarily true. The talk of Pachamama is definitely for the tourists sake and not embodied in the daily life of the people who I have seen, which is also evidenced in the lack of respect for the earth seen everywhere in the form of garbage in the rivers and sewage emptied into the sacred river. Becky witnessed a dead dog being thrown in the river the earth the other day.

I am aware that we from the ¨civilized¨nations have infected this culture with this disease, but this does not mean that we cannot all be held accountable for choosing a different way of relating to the earth. The infected and the spreader of the disease are in a relationship together, much the same as an alcoholic and a co-dependent. We all work together to create our individual realities an collective lives with every choice we make. Perhaps our task as the infector is to show(not tell) the infected how to live in harmony, thus spreading a new way to live, while at the same time learning from those we have infected, cocreating through the intellect and the heart, as the prophecy of the eagle and condor says we must do to reestablish harmony on earth.

The pain of the women was really brought home hard to us yesterday as we drove down from the Inka ruins of Moray, on the rolling mustard yellow plains above Urubamba. Once again in the giant SUV, we stopped to pick up an old Indian woman who flagged us down for a ride. In obvious pain, she was on her way to Urubamba below to have her last tooth pulled. She could barely speak Spanish, just Quechua, and when she showed us her tooth to explain what was wrong she started crying. Her pain and exhausting was overwhelming in the backseat with Becky and me. She was so tiny in her skirts and bowler hat, her face etched deep with wrinkles. Her whole presence just hurt so much. She kept wiping her eyes with the hem of her skirt an when Becky offered her a sip from her water bottle she very carefully wiped her mouth on her skirt first. We dropped her off halfway down with a Qyechua woman who said she would get her down to Urubamba as we were going on the salt mines at Salinas, but after that it was hard to enjoy anything, and I was having a hard time being in that big car with a bunch of chattering, well meaning people...I don´t know if it is that I am too sensitive, but I just kept sinking and sinking and not wanting to be anywhere, letting the past affect the present, but maybe I was being called so strongly to change my present reality that I could not, and should not have resisted this feelings-

Which sums up how I am feeling in general after being a self-indulgent tourist for a few days. If I am going to be here as a privileged person, at least materially, I have to work, to follow the call of my heart with discipline, whatever that call may be. I thought this meant I had to volunteer at an orphanage, or some such thing, but really when I feel my heart the call is to write, even if no one reads what I am writing. It is my call, the way to open my heart to be of greater service, and I feel such gratitue that I am in a position to be able to follow this calling, a feeling magnified by seeing how most of the women live in this country. Who knows what goes unexpressed in the lives of the women, and the men, in this country? I know from Peruko how hard it is to be different, how hard it was for him to follow the call of his soul to be an artist in a survival culture, and I admire him even more seeing where he came from.

So there are mountains to climb and rivers to praise, and there is work to do on the physical and spiritual planes. Both are vital if we want to live in harmony.

Day by Day

Lest you think my life in Peru consists only of scaling mountains and drinking medicine, I must reveal that most of the time I am simply enjoying the pleasures of being human in a beautiful place, surrounded by sympathetic and inspiring people who share a similar desire to explore the depths of our souls, as well as living in cooperation. Currently at Paz y Luz, there is only Eva, my incredible mountaineering Swedish friend, who at the age of 53, after giving birth to 6 children, put me to shame on our hike to Viacha--although she is far too kind to look at it that way. She just keeps telling me it is just that I am not used to the altitude, and Grey, from California, who is the new manager now that the owner has gone on a two month vacation to Argentina. The three of us have formed quite a little family already, sharing food and shopping duties, and enjoying each others company around the fire at night. It is wonderful to be around such positive people who share similar desires, something which has been lacking for me for a long time on Block Island as I have moved through letting go of my various addictions, first physical, then mental and emotional.

So daily life is full of ease and pleasure, although I can feel the mystical in it all. It has been interesting feeling the effects of ayahuasca on my thoughts and feelings since the ceremony eleven days ago. For example, it was very clear that ayahuasca wanted me to write that last blog describing the ceremony. However, I dont feel possessed by any entities. It is more like I have formed a relationship of mutual beneficence with the plant. It helped me with my need, which was to open my heart unconditionally to the experience of being human, and I in turn help it by spreading its message of forgiveness through my words and by embodying this quality. Of course it is a constant process. I am far from perfect, but feel myself moving into greater awareness of the pattern of my own thoughts everyday more and more, noticing how my judgments limit me, becoming aware of who or what irritates me and wondering what the underlying reason for these feelings are, seeing everything as an opportunity to grow.

One of the things that has been difficult has been reconciling the knowledge I have received of this spirit within the earth, a spirit of the underworld, where the past lives, with the energy I have been working with through the Ascended Masters for the past two years. This energy comes down from spirit, not from below, and is far different in vibration than the earth energy. Ive been wondering how they can all coexist, they seem so alien, but I know from my experience, that ayahuasca, too, leads to love, so I am following that love as it unfolds in such a beautiful and now, gentle, remembering. I have been very drawn to stones. I bought a turquoise ball and rose quartz egg, and I have my Manissees hand tools from Block Island with me, and when I hold them, I feel their energy working on me in even more powerful ways than before. In the past, I wanted to know what was happening when I held stones. Now, I am just grateful that something is happening. This shift feels like such a relief==not to long for something more all the time. Whatever comes to me is what I am supposed to know, although I will keep fulfilling my calling by working, by developing my own medicine powers in order to serve....

Yesterday I made sopa de quinoa, walking out into the rain to pick chard and cilantro and parsley from the garden. The mud here is thick and red and I had to scrape it off on the grass, and even then it didnt all come off so that I had adobe feet when it dried. Eva and I walked into town to buy fruit and bread and fresh yogurt, and stopped to chat with Francisco, a shopkeeper here who makes flutes and is an incredible musician. He is going to custom make a quena for me with a low tone, and he and I are going to trade music for English lessons. The quena is quite difficult to play as the mouthpiece is totally different to the bamboo flute that I now play, but Francisco assures me I will be able to learn if I practice, which is true of everything I suppose. He is quite suave and infatuated with Eva, which isnt so great since his wife just gave birth to their fourth child three weeks ago. He told her that he heard Swedish women were legendary lovers and wanted to know if she was interested in a dalliance with him. Fortunately he does not seem interested in a dalliance with me. Eva says she and her friends have goddess names for themselves back home, and she is Aphrodite, which makes sense considering the sexual attention she attracts. I suppose I connect most with the goddesses of the underworld==Persephone, Isis, Ishtar. Not so many are interested in dallying with death and the transformation it requires, which is just fine by me. I prefer to pass unnoticed until I choose.

A friend from Block Island just wrote and said she is actually in Pisac right now. Seems so strange and unreal. Off to find her now, and I wish you all well. I just looked at the new site for the Block Island Poetry Project, which is going to be extraordinary this year. Have a look at the site www.bipoetryproject.com, and I will see you there in April.

Ayahuasca Medicina

Ayahuasca..........the name has the sound of serpent within it, a creature of beauty and ancient, instinctive terror for many, a poisonous creature who can kill, who can wrap its body around ours and strangle until their is no air left in our lungs, who is total annihilation......a creature who waits under rocks, who blends in with the trees, a creature who is sliding toward you right now in the long grass or in the muddy brown water, a creature that wants you.

Ayahuasca is known as the vine of souls, the vine of death. It is a potent medicine from Amazonia that has been used by jungle shamans as a medicine to heal the soul. Ayuahasca is a spirit that speaks through a plant. Ayuahasca is the medicine of forgiveness deeply rooted in the consciousness of the earth, the underworld where our past wounds are stored until we retrieve them, forgiving those who wound us, forgiving ourselves for being wounded, forgiving the wound because we know that it was necessary for us to realize we are whole. Ayahuasca has been calling me for several years now. Calling me to shed my skin. Calling me to reveal my shining beauty in the sun on a warm, flat rock, unafraid to be seen, calling me to awaken the serpent energy within to connect earth and spirit in the middle realm of my body. Ayahuasca, ayahuasca, ayahuasca......the name a rattle on the mountain, the hiss of a forked tongue, a shaman's rattle in a round, dark room.

I wanted to make this connection. I needed to make this connection. I moved toward this connection with instinct and inevitability like a river winding its way through thousands of miles of dense green jungle to the open air of the light anointed ocean. But I was afraid of ayahuasca, afraid to alter my consciousness because my beloved guide Maria had advised me that it was dangerous to do so, and I had stopped using substances to alter myself five years ago. No alcohol, no marijuana, no LSD, no mushrooms, and no real desire for any of them but ayahuasca, the vine of the soul, the medicine of forgiveness calling me to South America, to the land of the emerald hummingbirds to shed my skin once again.

But I have grown much stronger in the past five years through my work with Maria, both less and more vulnerable. Less vulnerable to having my consciousness overtaken by other people or entities, more vulnerable in the sense that my heart has grown deeper. I have more compassion for myself and others, and more clarity. I knew that it was my heart that was calling me to ayahuasca, not my mind, which I have seen is often the case with people who are not content with ordinary consciousness. They become spiritual thrill seekers, "trippers" who live for the next vision, and if they are not careful, they lose pieces of their soul bit by bit. It is necessary to have a strong container, a guide, a round basket to hold the snake while the music to awaken it gently enters the dark space with an invitation to dance, the energy slowly building to the moment we all want to know, the moment of the birth of our soul, the moment where the Milky Way is born, the moment where the universe uncoils itself, and the moment when we drop through the black hole in the center of our galaxy, the relief of death, the reassurance we know in our bones of its aweson and utter beauty.

I found the container through a friend in the U.S. His name was Alonso del Rio, an ayahuascero who I knew I could trust to guide me as soon as I heard his beautiful songs on a CD I bought from my friend, who frequently journeys to Peru to work with Alonso. On New Year's Eve I made my way to his home in a gulch not far from Pisac, where a waterfall pours off the mountain in a great torrent, cleansing and blessing the land and its people in a continual flow. At six o'clock I took my place in the round adobe room with a conical thatched roof. There were close to forty of us. A huge number for a ceremony. There was an altar built of adobe in the center of the room lit by candles. One by one we prayed our heart's desire and walked toward Alonso and knelt, who handed us a small glass of the medicine with reverence. I drank it, nervous, and walked back to my seat to lean back against the earthen wall. When everyone was done the doors were closed and the candles were blown out. We were in total darkness with nothing to hold onto, but we had Alonso's songs, which permeated the dark as the spirit began to wind through my blood and cells.

I had prepared my body by eating very little for four days before the ceremony, and for fasting on the actual day. Ayahuasca is a purgative. Its medicine works by causing one to purge negativity, or shadow energy. Sometimes this happens on a physical level. I was afraid of throwing up, of losing control of my body. We were each given a little bucket which I set in front of my feet to vomit in if the need arose. I was afraid, but sure I would not vomit. I would not lose control.

My intention was to open to being fully human and grounded in the earth. To experience unconditional love for the state of being human and for all humans themselves, something which I have struggled with my whole life as a sensitive person who has so keenly felt the imbalance and sickness of our world.

Alonso's guitar and voice sang his heart and the hearts of us all, and the hearts of the hummingbird and of the waterfall. He sang of shattered souls and of broken mirrors, and within his voice was the promise that all could once again be whole. I felt myself beginning to lose control, the medicine rushing through me like lightning, like a locomotive, something so strong I knew I could never control it and I began to panic a little, and wonder why I had done this to myself. I could hear, very close by, in my left ear, the voice of a very ancient woman speaking in a language I did not know, and then...... I was somewhere else, on the other side, but still in the same room, listening to Alonso sing and feeling the journeys of everyone around me. I felt peaceful, no longer afraid, and I realized I had thrown up on myself, but it was only the ayahuasca, a reassuring wetness on my chin that let me know I was still human.

To be human, that it was I had asked for. For the rest of the ceremony I sat in the dark filled with love, allowing Alonso's songs to soften my heart until I had no needs left to be fulfilled. I could tell the people around me were having far different journeys, seeing the visions I had expected to see, and my disappointment faded, too. After about two hours, Alonso lit a sparkler and said Happy New Year to everyone! The light was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, until his wife relit the candles, until the fire in the center of the room was kindled and we could see each other in the circle, cleansed, having forgiven whatever each one of us needed to become a little more whole. The music continued, more from Alonso, and from the people in the circle. Gentle drums and flutes, a song from Sweden, laughing songs, birdsongs, whalesongs, humansongs. I have never been so content in my life.

As I listened to the songs, more clear and lucid than I had ever been in my life when I had expected to be more confused, I felt so glad that I had overcome my fear and come to this ceremony, and so proud of myself for asking what was in my heart, instead of what my mind wanted, which was more knowledge. I felt an ancient, tribal connection to everyone in the room and remembered what it felt like to be at peace with myself and the earth, remembered what it felt like to have knowledge of the whole world without leaving the safety of one room because I was connected to everything outside of it, as were all those inside with me connected to all of creation. I felt such love for everyone there, and a little shy in my loving, like a young deer tentatively walking out into a field from the cover of the forest, called by the love within her own body.

Maybe I am not one who is meant to see visions, but to feel them instead, and to embody them in all of my actions from taking a breath to buying bread or smiling at a stranger when I walk down a street I don't know. I slowly allowed my body to sink down onto and into the packed earth floor as the circle began to grow larger, people walking out into the night, heading for home. My friend who had told me about Alonso was there that night, but we couldn't speak or make eye contact as he was on a month long retreat, but he knew I was there, and we fell asleep on the ground next to each other in the womb of the mother, and I felt his peace become a part of the peace that I was, and always will be, even if I forget. Ayahuasca, medicine of forgiveness, vine of our soul.

There are many here in Pisac and its environs who drink ayahuasca regularly, and who were ready for the next ceremony, and there were those more experienced than I who said to just listen if ayahuasca was calling me, then I would know when the time was right to drink again. I felt right afterwards that I did not want to drink again soon, maybe never, and slipped back into the fears of the mind right away, wondering if it was my fear that was stopping me, my own self doubt that has stopped me for so long from wrapping myself in the mantle of power that will allow me to be of best service to the world, a power that comes from the heart, truly earned. For about a week I went through these ups and downs, wondering if I wasn't strong enough, questioning why I didn't see visions, connecting with some of the beautiful people in the ceremony when I saw them around town, all the time calling on my own divinity to guide me to make the right choice. Last night I knew that it was not necessary for me to drink ayahuasca again right now, but I was also told that I could work with the plant in the spirit realm, that I didn't have to go through the violence of the physical ingesting of the plant in order to go deeper into my soul. I realized that I have already done so much work in the lower realm, or underworld, with Maria, much more than I know, and was able to see that many of those who needed to drink on a regular basis were doing the work that I had done with her in this manner, putting back together the lost pieces of their souls. I also received an invitation from ayahuasca to transmute the energy of the earth, to allow the plant to use me as an instrument to purify the darkness which is no longer needed in such great measure on earth because we are entering a time where we will no longer need to learn through contrasts, to return it home to the light.

We have learned so much from the darkness, but it is time to release this way of being on earth. We no longer need to suffer or sacrifice to learn. This does not mean we don't have to work, only that, if we are in alignment with our souls, that the work will be a pleasure, something that feeds us and others as well. My work today is to write these words to you, to share the medicine of forgiveness and the peace in my heart, and to show you my vulnerability, the tenderness inside me for each one of you, my compassion for myself, my ability to love my wounds and yours, my intention to embody the unconditional love that Jesus seeded on Earth two thousand years ago, which if flowering now within all of us. We no longer need a savior, we are the light, the flaming heart, the waters of forgiveness, the air beneath the wings of the eagle, all contained within these bodies whose feet are welcomed by the giving and forgiving Earth.

Ayahuasca, allow me to continue to let go with grace, to shine, to know, to love, to be an ambassador of peace. Mitakeye Oasin.....To All My Relations. I honor you. I love you. I am you.

Voyage to Viacha

Hi Everyone,

So much has happened since I left only a month ago for Peru. I miss you all and thought I would write a little about what I have seen and experienced here so as to share with you and to process all I am learning about a very different way of life.

I am now in Pisac, a small village of about 2,000 people a little less than an hour from Cusco. Pisac is in the sacred valley of the Incas, carved out of the spectacular green Andes by the Rio Urabamba, and there are spectacular Inka ruins above the town.

Anyway, I got the idea when I was on top of the ruins that I wanted to visit the tiny Quechua village I saw in the distance across the air on top of another mountain. I was hiking down (in the dark without a flashlight, another story) I could hear people blowing on conch shells high above us and became even more determined to visit.

A couple of days later my new friend Eva told me she had met a man in town who lived in one of those villages and invited us to stay there for a night with his family. Eva´s friend Otarunga (Jaguar!) who owns a small and very special store in town featuring shamanistic products told us we must bring gifts for the family and that we could pay them by buying their handicrafts when we got there. He told us we should bring flour, sugar, oil, candy for the kids, and a lot of coca to pass out to everyone we met.

We set out early in the morning with heavy backpacks for our rendezvous with Saturnino, but he was not there. Otarungo informed us that this was normal, not for him, but for people in general in Peru, so we decided to start hiking up the trail toward Viacha ourselves. About 15 minutes up we ran into Saturnino and his son Freddy on their way down to meet us so we all turned around and started hiking up again. I figured the hike would take us about an hour and that I would have no problem at all, even with my heavy backpack, but as I am learning quickly, the distances in teh mountains are far greater because you can´t get there in a straight line, but have to switchback across the mountains and that the trails wind around and around until you can no longer see where you started or where you think you are going! Also, the Peruanas always underestimate how far distances are. They either really want our money, or don´t realize how hard it is for us who are not born in these mountains to hike the way they do.

Pisac is at 10,000 feet, the ruins at 11,000. Once we got to the height of the ruins I started having a hard time breathing. We stopped at a little hut where Saturnino´s father lived, totally alone, with a burro tied up in the hard next to the house. All the houses are adobe with thatched roofs in the mountains. The inside was a total hovel littered with garbage, and I will have to admit that I was horrified that he lived there. We gave him a fat bag of coca leaves which seemed to make him happy, but he seemed a very unexpressive person. WE could only tell he was happy because he began shoving handfuls into his mouth. I figured since we had reached his father´s hut that Viacha, Saturnino´s village wasn´t much farther, which Saturnino and Freddy confirmed. However, not much farther to them, was much much farther to me, who found it increasingly harder to breathe as we ascended. Also, it began to rain quite hard and the paths, which are always rocky and uneven became slippery. I discovered that the best thing to do was not to look at anything but the path, definitely not down! I was breathing so hard I lost all pride, my breath so loud little Freddy became concerned for me and wouldn´t leave my side. I don´´t think he had any concept of altitude sickness and thought I was having a heart attack. We stopped a lot and they showed us many medicinal plants along the way, and finally Saturnino said he would carry my pack. I refused at first because he was carrying a pack, too, but he said he was used to carrying very heavy loads, especially since he was a porter on the Inka trail, and he was not exaggerating, for he seemed to have no problem at all with the load. Eva, who has been here longer than me, had no problems with the altitude, or so I told myself! On a side note, Saturnino told us that the work conditions of the porters on the Inka trail are very poor. Very little food or sleep and terrible pay, so if any of you who read this ever go on the trail, please remember to tip the porters as generously as Saturnino treated us.

Up and up, we walked, far past the original villages I saw from the Pisac ruins. It got rainier and much colder. Even without a pack I could barely walk for about the last hour of teh three hour trip. I had to literally go one step at a time, getting lost in the rocks and the plants and just wishing we would get there and it would all be over!

Finally, we reached the village of Viacha. Freddy had run ahead and told his mother Luisa we were coming. The house was a bit of a shock. I knew they were poor, but to be inside a very poor person´s house is different than looking at it from outside, which has been hard enough for me in Peru. The house was about the size of a small cottage, with two semi-walls dividing kitchen and two other areas. We went into the kitchen and unpacked our gifts and met Freddy´s little brothers Javier and Alex, who made a mad grab for the lollipops and stared at us in utter amazement. It turns out we were the first people to ever visit their house! I don´t think the little ones spoke much Spanish, just Quechua. They were very shy, unlike Freddy who was quite an extraordinary person, I could tell. He had one of those personalities that would flower anywhere, I think, bright and funny and so kind, as was the entire family.

The kitchen was also the home of 15 cuy, or guinea pigs who scrambled all over the floor and competed for space by the hearth with a couple of cats and two lambs. We drank mate de coca and they made us a delicious thick soup with vegetables and beans and we warmed up a little before exploring their beautiful garden and the plain where they lived. Freddy was thrilled to show us the plants he knew and picked munu for us to make tea with (mint) and told us that tomorrow he would take us up even further to the lakes at the very top of the mountains. The views were absolutely spectacular. We could see many lush green mountains as far as the eye could see, with mist weaving in and out of them. The clouds were just above our heads! I think we were at about 14,000 ft.

After dinner Saturnino played his flute and Freddy accompanied him on a drum made out of coke bottle. When it was time for bed, they tried to give us two beds for ourselves, but considering their were only three total for the seven of us, we refused. Eva and I took one bed, a twin, the three boys another twin, and Saturnino and Luisa the other. I was glad to sleep with Eva as it was very cold. I kept hoping that we were the only ones who felt the cold because we were´n´t used to it, but they were cold, too, because they huddled up to the fire shivering, especially the two little boys. I kept wondering why they didn´t build another fireplace in the sleeping room. It didn´t seem like it would be expensive, since everything is built with adobe from the mud around them. Maybe they could only use firewood to cook with, as there were no trees around except for some eucalyptus further down the mountain. I don´t know, but it seems to me that many of the people are somewhat defeated by their poverty and the legacy of violence they experienced at the hands of the conquistadores, combined with the current racism they experience now. I can see how much of an American I am in my solution oriented way of thinking, in my belief that there is always a creative solution to any problem, and also how privileged I am to be white and American, even though I am at the bottom of the economic scale in the U.S., it is by choice, not because I have no choices or education.

Needless to say, it was very hard to sleep, accustomed as I am to comfort and privacy. Even worse was the fear that I would have to go to the bathroom in the night, which would require a trip out to the muddy yard in the pitch black darkness, in the rain. When Eva asked where the bathroom Freddy pointed to the yard. We thought he was joking at first, but then realized he was not. I would have been fine with an outhouse, or even a hole in the ground, but they really did go wherever they wanted, and no one used toilet paper as far as I could tell. Actually, I don´t think it was a common thing for anyone to ever remove their clothes. I understand now why the women always wear skirts.

In the morning, Freddy, Eva and I headed up towards the lakes. I, however, knew that I could not make it, and told them to go on ahead. I was exhausted and needed to be alone. I fell asleep on the ground and rested finally and woke up to the most beautiful silence. I don´t think I have ever been somewhere so quiet in my life. Even the cries of the burros and sheep seemed a part of the silence. I walked up to some great rocks risng out of the groudn and watched the animals walk up the hill toward me, slowly grazing. Llamas, alpacas, sheep, and burros. A woman shepherd came by with a baby on her back and another child in tow, spinning wool in her hands as she followed them up the mountain. She seemed shocked to see me. I really do believe we were the first foreigners to come to Viacha. I was feeling so sad there. I don´t know if it was the altitude or the lives of our new friends, but it hit me strongly. They live such a hard time. Saturnino and Freddy walk all the way to Pisac and back every day to work and hardly make any money. I turned belly down to the earth and asked Pachamama to absorb my sadness as fertilizer, as I read the Quero shamans advise, and I really felt a surge of energy move through me as I lay there. After awhile Eva and Freddy came down from the lake and we left for Pisac after buying some beautiful bags and mantas and belts they had made. They invited us back for Carnival in a month to dance with them, but I honestly don´t know if I have it in me emotionally to go there again. It was just so sad and hard to be there, which I think is the case because they seem to know hard their lives are, too.

I forgot to write that Eva and I became godmothers to Freddy and Alex! There is an Inkan custom that when visitor comes to the house they must cut the hair of the children and give gifts (now a little money) for their future and education. I cut Freddy´s hair and Eva Alex´s with some very bad scissors and the hair was put on a plate with many flowers and 10 soles each (three dollars) and wrapped in a manta. The children were so thrilled and I really did feel like Freddy´s relation afterwards. He and his sister who was so shy I never learned her name walked us back to Pisac, which was almost as hard as walking up because of the leg strength required, although this time I could breathe. The sister picked handfuls of munu for us the whole way down so that when we stumbled into town we had it stuffed in all our pockets and smelled quite fragrant!

It was an incredible, eye opening, and most of all heart expanding experience and I feel such a combination of emotions when I think of it all. Gratitude and sadness, and an awareness of how fortunate I am, and of how much I desire to be comfortable. I realized I am not as strong as I thought I was, which is good to know. I have so many other thoughts and reflections about this experience, but am tired of looking at this screen now. Perhaps if some of you write me back, either privately or on this blog, I can discuss more, but for now I say I miss you all. Suerte! Jen

How to Heal Toxic Thoughts, by Sandra Ingerman

I thank Sandra Ingerman for sending me a copy of her excellent book, How To Heal Toxic Thoughts, to review. As many of you know, I have undergone a huge transition over the past several years. At the core of this transition is healing the toxic thoughts that were limiting me from being content with who I am, from loving myself, and from fully participating in the joy of creation. I was fortunate (and still am) to have a wonderful guide in my life, but for those of you who don't, I recommend this book.

The especially great thing about Ingerman's book is that it is so simple. So many self-help books are overly complicated and give support to the illusion that we must go through years of hard work and suffering in order to come back into balance. I have found that many spiritual texts from the past operate the same way. In the old paradigm, knowledge of our divinity was hidden in an esoteric way for the "true" seeker. We are fortunate to live in a time when this is no longer the case. The truth of our existence is available to all. In fact, it is our moral obligation to recognize this truth within ourselves, and, as Ingerman writes, to shine this truth outwards in every-widening circles. The beginning of our healing our planet is to heal ourselves.

I send you all love and gratitude on our shared journey.

Manifest Manisses

Manifest Manisses

Manifest Manisses envisions an island culture based on sustainable values and the cultivation of joy. A heart-centered, visionary place where we use the power of our collective intentions to create abundance and radiant health for all who dwell on Block Island--people, plants and animals.

Our hope is that our embodied vision will have a ripple effect, moving through all who set foot on Block Island, spreading our message of positive affirmation of life across the entire globe, just as the waters of the ocean touch every shore.

We will use our collective will to transmute the destructive energies that have poisoned our land and bodies, remembering that we are created of these elements. In our remembering, we will awaken others.

Manifest Manisses knows that fear is a tool to open our hearts further to love, and embraces fear, giving thanks for the lessons being offered.

We know we are the creators of physical reality, the custodians of Earth, and take responsibility for our individual and collective creations.

Manifest Manisses adopts a position of non-judgment, knowing that every contribution is important and essential to growth--each one of us is a mirror for the other--we are all one, and the more clear we become about this, the more clear our reflections will be. Our creations will radiate Source energy as we remember our higher purpose here on earth as individuals and as a species, preparing to become multidimensional beings able to access more levels of reality that will enable us to lead richer lives, founded in love for ourselves and all of creation.

Manifest Manisses is dedicated to helping everyone uncover their sou’s purpose and channeling that purpose for the greater good of all beings.

We celebrate our return to awareness and welcome the joy to be had in every moment as we walk through our fears into fields of praise, waves of love and gratitude moving through the water that surrounds us, and into the air as it evaporates. With every sip we take, we give thanks.

Manifest Manisses invites all who are ready to remember into our circle with open hearts, grateful for the gift of life. Dedicated to the moment, we sink into the earth, lift our eyes to the sky. We know we that heaven on earth exists right here, right now. We remember our own divinity and give thanks.

Musings on Abundance

I'm in a funny state, really believing in the law of attraction, that I, through my thoughts and feelings, am the creator of my reality, but unsatisfied with what I am creating. It is winter on Block Island and I am once again broke and without prospects. I am in a different state than in any of my other 9 winters here in that I have lots of enthusiasm and ideas of what I have to offer the community, except that nobody out here is interested. Well, a few are interested, but they are not willing to pay me for my efforts. Maybe it is not working out for me monetarily because our financial institutions are going to collapse soon, and I am being guided away from participating in capitalism so that I will be less affected when it fails. It really is a Catch-22--I am doing my best to feel abundance, but when it does not come my way I can't help but feel my lack, which keeps me in a state of non-abundance! It is exhausting, stressful and humiliating to be poor and I want to change this state, but it is hard when nothing around me supports my belief that I can change this state through the power of my intentions. I am searching for the block within myself that is keeping me from allowing abundance into my life, trying to come back to the moment over and over again by asking myself what my vibrational offering is on a moment to moment level. Do I want to vibrate stress and fear or love and hope? All I can do is keep trying and keep asking for guidance, I guess, but I will admit to being discouraged and feeling unsupported, for the most part, by my community. So I call my community to me now! Reveal yourselves to me! And I call the land to which I belong to call me.....

Give Me Liberty

This is the first poem in my new book, Bluebell: The Apocalypse Diary. www.lulu.com/jenlighty

Give Me Liberty

It began on a Saturday night
when I took what I wanted.
I was a drunk, so I had no problem
saying hi, you wanna come home with me?
I kept meaning to be a vegetarian,
but the food at the bar was free.
Barbecue ribs and buffalo chicken wings,
licking the preservatives off my fingers
by instinct. I've heard pigs will eat anything
that lies on the ground showing no sign of life.
It wasn't his fault.
I was just bored with everything.
I pushed him off and faced the wall.
It was finally ready to speak.
Yo, ho, ho, the wall laughed at me.
You brandish your drink like a buccaneer
from the seventeenth century,
when you've really been waiting
for the highwayman to sweep you off your feet.
You don't care where you are going
as long as it's at a gallop.
You think you are Cathy
sobbing on the moors of Wuthering Heights.
My sister Emily loved the moors.
Flowers brighter than the rose
Bloomed in the blackest heath for her;
out of a sullen hollow in the livid hillside
her mind could make an Eden.
She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights;
and not the least and best loved was--liberty.
I have wandered the moors of this island,
stripped bare and bleeding--
(really I was drunk and lost in the bushes
on my way home from a late night.)
How did I end up an outlaw,
hand cocked on hip,
brandishing a cutlass
at all who dared to look at me?
What did I seek in the shadows,
drawing violence toward me as if
there were no limits to what I could take?
For years I hid behind a can of beer,
wearing a coat of smoke I refused to shed,
even when it was hot enough
to melt the ice cubes
in my Stoli raz & cranberry.
I laughed too loud.
I thought my teeth flashed brazenly.
In the mirror that's behind every bar
the truth careened toward me.
The truth tied me to the stake.
When I reached the calm center
at the heart of every blaze,
I cut my own throat,
so I could finally speak.

New Book!

Hello friends,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book of poems, Bluebell: The Apocalypse Diary. Five years in the making, The Apocalypse Diary documents what I call my internal apocalypse--a process I went through, triggered by fear of a global apocalypse.

I dreamt a tsunami swept over Block Island. I felt the earth beneath me weep. I was haunted by the ghosts of the trees who once covered Block Island.

And I surrendered to my fear, letting go into it until there was nothing more to hold on to.

When I passed through, I found myself in a place of peace, and I am doing my best to stay there.

I have found that I am a "mover," someone who has to move physically to stay grounded and connected to Source energy. I discovered this through Toni Bergins' JourneyDance, which I first experienced at Kripalu. I fell so in love with JourneyDance that I became certified to teach it this past October! I am currently looking for the perfect spot to teach on Block Island and am confident it will appear soon. I am interested in teaching JourneyDance workshops anywhere they are needed, so contact me if you want to dance!

To order my new book go to www.lulu.com/jenlighty. I thank you for your support and hope you find sustenance from my journey! I love you all!

Jen