Building relationships while depressed or struggling

In the blog world, there are a number of mental health/ other health blogs. I am always touched when a number of people visit my blog, and then I go to their blog to reciprocate their kindness for liking one of my poems, and I see an individual or group of individuals who are pushing through their emotional challenges, and being a ‘presence’ online so that others have the awareness that they are not alone. Some people visit as teachers or those who would like to offer services, build their business outreach and exposure, but many like to visit to just say “hello” and “touch base” with a “like” or a kind comment.

So many of our relationships often can be built around sharing our inadequacies and our challenges, in ways that uplift one another. Likewise, many build support relationships where we can all celebrate the success of those in our network who we are attentive to, and who we contribute much our time and our interests, as we build relationships, as we surf our interests on the net during our day.

What I see is a sort of bottom line is the challenge that is met with blogging to put one’s internal experiences into words. Sometimes words however are not the best method for delivering information, and yet we all understand through words and build our basis in connecting. Though there are many authors who write to offer their creative talents and inspire others to use creativity as a solution to their busy, ready, and curious minds. Whatever the mission out there, there’s a huge diversity.

Depression can be a real challenge and a drag in the reciprocity department. The desire to give and to receive is human and innate. We all want, I believe, to use our lives to enrich the lives of others. At least that’s what I see, I see people wanting to enrich the lives of others as an innate, human need. In fact, I can’t think of a trait more “human” than the desire to relieve the suffering of others.

Please know that your efforts, your vision, your place in the world is valued and acknowledged. There will always be an audience for your message, even if your message shifts as your mood changes with time. Please know that you always have help, and there are always people willing to be part of your life.

Wishing you all, dear reader, a good day, and a good weekend, week ahead. May all your best dreams come true.

pastry donut, uniqueness

I am filled with a million thankyous
and while that number is imprecise

I am leaking wishes for everyone of
you who touch me every day

with your focus and dedication
Your talent, your trust

Life is unbreakable while it is
fragile and the thankyous are squishy

awarenesses, that are part of an

experimental soundtrack, traveling towards
everybody’s Heaven as one.

What I do today I will not do tomorrow
but something different and something new

For I have found a way to encounter
unexpected happiness after turning troubling
corners,

And I’ve decided that I don’t need any talent to continue, all I need is the blessings of another day, with all its lack of permission. I’ll take the breath! I will make my own way, without a direct line,

instead I will carve out my path, one line at a time, and wait for no celebration to greet me but the one that naturally arises,

when I realize that I’m breathing deeper than I ever have before;

so something’s working well enough,

for me, to continue getting lost in love.

:: bows::

Current Transits: Questions for you?

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Hello there,

We are currently under the observation of the following transits. Though there are endless notable or discussable topics, my curiosity is about these:

Venus and Saturn are forming a conjunction within the same sign in Capricorn (quite close to Pluto!), and Uranus and Mars are paired up in different signs at 29 Aries for Uranus and 1 Taurus for Mars. Mercury and Neptune are coupled at 11 and 15 Pisces. These pairings could correlate with a number of manifestations, inner experiences, etc.

I’m opening up the floor for comments and curiosities, many of my readers and/or followers have already expressed interests in astrology, no matter how deeply or superficially.

Have you observed your life running along any of the themes “governed” by these transits?

* Venus/Saturn (in Capricorn)
* Uranus/Mars (end of Aries/beginning of Taurus)
* Mercury/Neptune (Pisces)

With Venus and Saturn we might be looking at values, resources, relationships (Venus) and experiencing longevity, limitation, consolidation (Saturn).

For Uranus and Mars we might be looking at spontaneity, unpredictability, surprises, technological innovations (Uranus) with assertiveness, intensity, passion, action (Mars)

For Mercury and Neptune we might be looking at thoughts, siblings, short distance trips (Mercury) with poetry, visions, art/film/photography, vision, confusion (Neptune).

Do angels?

do angels really hold up the world
or is it built on Science

and the zillions of moments of
quantum observations

that build these intricate
network systems, and

when you observe this in nature
in its complete perfection

not one human can emulate
the symphonies of color in a field
of wildflowers,

nor compose all the universes that
we mathematically deduce the vector
of, as we move through space,

too.

there’s no stopping us.
we are angels,
and angels are we,

and still there are more angels
unseen.

And, yes, there is Science,
and it’s wonderful.

Full healing

I dedicate this poem to the full
healing of a beloved:

Let time and space open,
and bring wholeness into your being
May you be filled with light
and balancing energy,
May the air you breathe recover your
spirit, and bring you into union,
so that your whole body is completely
healthy again.

Blessed be.

May this be the beginning of a deeper
healing for many, that joins us all together
and brings greater peace and joy for all.

Practical Materialism

fixing the bed,
making it soft.
deleting batches of emails,
joyous with
less electronic clutter –

time off from internet,
browsing, Click “erase”
instead

deleting old contacts,
acknowledging time and space
and re-imaging relationships

washing the dishes
with love

this is the stuff of poetry!

you want more passion?
how about: find it in clarity?

moving energy on out
picking it up
dancing,
for a moment,
and then, waving goodbye.

curtain draws

resuse, recycle, renew
regift,
reemploy

the plants don’t wait for their
water, they make use of what they
have

tonight is a new night
yesterday was a different story

review, renew, receive.

Happy New Year of the Pig!
Venus transits Capricorn

discovering the gentle

in this breath are kingdoms
made of small passage ways
giving freedom
of transit
moving through the illusions
of social dominance, social
hierarchies, the haves and the have nots

i want a simple life,
a small life,
just a few reliables,
and a lot of freedom

in this breath is so much more
than what I ask for.

it’s the witness of what lies
beyond the terror and the fear
that modern day living
activates.

*I’m just experimenting with words…

Mark Nepo: Loving Yourself

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Ka Malana Photography, January 20, 2019

I really wanted to share a meditation from Mark Nepo’s, “The Book of Awakening,” p.29., 2000. I’m relating back to my precocious friend who told me about Martin Buber when I was about age 14, as the beginning quote below is from him. I find Mark Nepo’s own words to be incredibly poetic when he draws the analogy of the “clear bird.”

This passage is a meditation on what is not seen by others, and at the same time is full-circle and inclusive – not unlike viewing an eclipse in its unveiling/veiling moments of transformation. There is no dichotomy here drawn about self-love, from that of any other kind of love, or from even existence itself.

Loving Yourself

I begin to realize that in inquiring about my own origin and goal, I am inquiring about something other than myself… In this very realization I begin to recognize the origin and goal of the world.  –Martin Buber

“In loving ourselves, we love the world. For just as fire, rock, and water are all made up of molecules, everything including you and me, is connected by a small piece of the beginning.

Yet, how do we love ourselves? It is as difficult at times as seeing the back of your head. It can be as elusive as it is necessary. I have tried and tripped many times. And I can only say that loving yourself is like feeding a clear bird that no one else can see. You must be still and offer your palmful of secrets like delicate seed. As she eats your secrets, no longer secret, she glows and you lighten, and her voice, which only you can hear, is your voice bereft of plans. And the light through her body will bathe you till you wonder why the gems in your palm were ever fisted. Others will think you crazed to wait on something no one sees. But the clear bird only wants to feed and fly and sing. She only wants light in her belly. And once in a great while, if someone loves you enough, they might see her rise from the nest beneath your fear.

In this way, I’ve learned that loving yourself requires courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world–our own self-worth.

All the great moments of conception–the birth of mountains, trees, of fish, of prophets, and the truth of relationships that last–all begin where no one can see, and it is our job not to extinguish what is so beautifully begun. For once full of light, everything is safely on its way–not pain-free, but unencumbered–and the air beneath your wings is the same air that trills in my throat, and the empty benches in snow are as much a part of us as the empty figures who slouch on them in spring.

When we believe in what no one else can see, we find we are each other. And all the moments of living, no matter how difficult, come back into some central point where self and world are one, where light pours in and out at once. And once there, I realize–make real before me–that this moment, whatever it might be, is a fine moment to live and fine moment to die.”

Small note about astrology: I am relieved to see the end of the 18/19 year eclipse series with the eclipses in Aquarius/Leo (Tropical zodiac). This last Leo eclipse was in Cancer/Capricorn nodes, but it was symbolically the end and the beginning of another chapter.

a poet understands

Mary Oliver has passed
and her memory goes on,
like a fading song, too soon.

that gently when the lyrical sound
gets turned down,

you reach for her words
as this is what she gave you,
not her essence.

her essence belongs to the
great beyond and the
silent moments she helped you
reflect on your own insides,

borrowing her voice,

pointing to droplets of dew on shards of grass,
wind through the wings of Wild Geese,

your own strength.

* * *

Mary Oliver’s
The Journey

Poetry
By
Mary Oliver
The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Writer’s Block

Major writers block,
road block
pathway is a wall
of difficulty,
no climbing tools today,
better focus on what
“can be done.”

Climbing shoes on,
but it’s too hot,
the air is a bit
oppressive. Maybe we
can go home?

But we can’t, have to
keep going.

Rest on the wall, by the
wall, facing the wall.
Seeing the wall,
acknowledging the wall.

Maybe we can unpoliticalize
depowerfulize,
unseat this bad master
that sets us all apart from
each-other?

Or worse, from ourselves?

Climbing that wall,
will have to happen another day…

I only follow my own
assignments,

and one day –
that will get me over
the wall, through the wall,

invisablizing the wall.

de-solidifying, penetrating,
star-gazing away that wall.

Maybe it will dissolve,

get flooded with water, and
revitalized with plants.

Maybe that wall can be decorated
with all the graffiti founded
in the expression
that alleviates all our oppression,

We are united only in our
mutual desire for freedom
of authority. Don’t you see?

We need to be the boss of ourselves.

Fierce Orchid

You carry a riddle in your roots;
your leaves fresh, anterior, alert.
Perhaps a keiki in your future.

How strong you are in your aerial
apparatus, and your submerged green
fresh and fleshy chlorophyll tendrils.

Wrapping is what you are good at,
climbing, living, breathing through
soil, air, elements.

Your home is thick with fog and mist,
and your styles are unique, while full
of mimicry.

I walk forward

No fear in this busy being
of light of hope of faith
of trust

She guides me so effortlessly,
sitting beside the stream
of life of wisdom of
peace

When I listen to her
my mind, my openness, travels
into time into space
into realms into
heaven

She becomes me and
I am her, and you and
he, and we, we are
all together
gathering it in,
this moment of passing

acknowledging all
is beside us, behind us,
in front of us, before us,
ready to be discovered
above us
around us.

Within.

Paused

we are at a pause
while the turning of the year happens;
it’s all fast and slow at once!

her voice is muffled by the clamor
of her audience,
if only she could speak up,
but she’s clearing her throat,

trying,
trying…

why don’t i just rest
in this happy place,
where all is safe from any applause
or from too much importance.

there’s something about deaf
ears, that can inspire us, help
us find all the courage to

listen to ourselves…
and, it’s working well.

I honor the dark

I honor the dark I walk through
in order to reach the other side.
so many dark roads, cold and gnarly,
so many whispers and whisking suggestions

I celebrate the path of pathlessness
that marks the dark, lonely nights
so I can find the cabin in the woods
with the hearth and those places in me

with undying embers.

I value the strength of the seasons
which mirror the elements that
shape the snow
and give it life.

the breath of crystal
the voice of clarity.

Now I rest and I break from all the
fullness of life, to hear the most silent moment of the darknest night.

I watch it move through me with reverence,
because I understand how it gives birth.

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4fWyzwo1xg0