Paper Marigolds

Day 77 ~ 12/16/10

All I want to do these days is sleep! Very tired, calm and relaxed. I have not been going out much, being a hermit at home feels very good. I remember when the holiday season meant shopping at malls and decorating for Christmas. With all the releasing and dissolving of stuff recently, I don’t even want to shop! Do I just stop altogether, not getting anything for the kids? We ended up buying a guitar for DJ and a friend of ours has agreed to provide lessons (maybe I’ll take lessons too!) For Emily, because she just does not care about stuff, we are giving her the gift of our time, a special day she can redeem for herself with just mom and dad.

Dakar and I went to Reno while the kids were at school. We took some more stuff by the thrift store, and I found myself still wanting to attach myself to it. I cleaned out another bag full of kitchen plastics in an effort to change over to stainless, ceramic, glass and cast iron to eat from, filling our bodies with even less plastic toxins. In giving away some serving platters, I thought I should distribute them to the schools, here and there. Why? Why do I care where the stuff goes? As long as I am not holding on to it anymore, I feel like it shouldn’t matter, but my practical side wants to continue to sort things out in an orderly fashion. AAAAHHHH! Life is too practical! Too reasonable! Too predictable! I let it go and forgot all about the stuff.

I ended up making calendars for our whole family, using photographs I shot we felt it would be nice to share this with our families. Emily and I wrapped the calendars, and as we were doing so, I felt like this was a simple way of taking a little bit of time to think about each family member, to send some of my love to them. Feels like moments of sharing just by sending a card or gift of any kind. Instead of being such a scrooge about gifts, getting caught up in being judgmental about the greed and consumerism, I stepped back and started changing my perception, changing the value I place on giving to another. It’s about connecting with family and friends because I want to share, not buying them something because that is tradition and I think that I have to.

All of this and I am finding myself having to slow down just to function. My eyes ache from straining and it is hard to see straight (or see like I used to, maybe I am now starting to see straight for the first time!). I was looking at a set of numbers and I couldn’t relate to them. I could clearly see that they were numbers, but I forgot how to say “four” when I saw “4”.  I had to breathe and remember how to read numbers! This is not the first time, but since the transmission into the Black Light a few days ago, my world is rapidly changing. I went into the market for bananas and avocados, and more than a simple brain fart, I stood in the middle of the store, not sure where I was until an employee asked me if I was okay. I looked at her, smiled, then remembered where I was.

In scrolling back through my journal, I saw a poem I had copied last year when I was taking a writing class. It was a very random, abstract and beautiful poem, no rhyme or reason, just writing what was flowing through to the paper. I wondered why I had not written the author’s name down on the paper after the poem. I searched the title “Paper Marigolds” online, even typed in some of the context of the poem trying to figure out who wrote it. I spent more than an hour pouring over the poem and researching it before I realized it was written through me last April 2009!

Paper Marigolds

In this fandango

There lies a tree

Once a great guardian

Now a watcher on the ground

A medley of children

Laughing, screaming, playing

They climb the tree

Looking for ants and worms

The skinny one prompts the round one to suckle the juice of the insect

Sweet nectar! This is what I’ve been missing

The syrup glaze trickling down my throat

The watcher’s gaze as the clouds change formation in the sky

Paper marigolds placed where
I lie

It has come to this

The place where I fly

Generous circles

Incomplete in their rings

As spirals come through

Completing all things

Concrete platforms

On which zombies stand

The simple grass of spring

As I slide down the hill

Nozzles from hydrants

Cleaning the air

Bees form a tight line

As they buzz over the water

Long lines and laughter

Imagining frogs and turtles

Stacked atop one another

See the rainfall on the TV

Beware the house on fire

Beware the goats bleat

Beware the costume changes

Beware of your own feet

~ Gaiel  04/09

Namaste