finding my voice on this journey

usually i feel i have to write my own words here. but today is mary oliver's birthday and this poem about, the journey, finding your voice, your own unique life, is one of my favorite ever poems. some how my whole life seems bound in these words. today i am in peru and i have lost my voice. in the beginning of this journey i dreamt that to find the light really we would have to clean ourselves thoroughly, drop heavy energy, go through the obstacles, and so the obstacles are presenting themselves and all i feel is a huge SOARING joy.

losing my voice today must have some wondrous significance and so along we go with our amigos and teachers. Lorenzo and Don Martine . and every time we do a ceremony. receive a karpai, we are able to release more heavy energy and let more light in. yesterday we learned that from the Q'uero perspective this is the key . that if all humans work on themselves alone and in ceremony and in gatherings of any kind then when they gather in larger groups the light can really burst through and shine. this is our journey on earth.

if we save ourselves we save each other.

so here is Mary Oliver's poem.

i'd love for you to follow the blog of our filming journey with the Q'uero if it interests you. www.picaflorproductions.blogspot.com

ayanchaykil/sulpayki (thank you in quechua. from one dove's heart to another. is literal translation)

xxxxx

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.

© Mary Oliver. Online Source

The eagle flies with the condor...

in peru i learned about this idea of the eagle flying with the condor. yesterday while digging around in my garden this came to me. the eagle flies with the condor. the north flies with the south. our minds fly with our hearts.

and the hummingbird darts through the entire fabric... spreading joy... whizzing with love.

so i am here... plodding along alot of the time... thinking thoughts like what am i doing here and what am i supposed to be doing and am i doing it this supposed thing? and then i walk into my garden and really am filled with awe.

from the beginning this idea of growing things has amazed me. it wasn't really on my list of things i thought i might ever do. (along with living on a farm) but i planted things and they grew! so my garden was a place filled with vegetables and i grew the three sisters. corn beans and squash. and i felt i should sing to them to help them grow... and then last year andy, a true and deep farmer came and planted the most spectacular vegetables all over the farm and herondale blended with his sol flower farm and my song changed... i planted native plants and medicinal herbs and mostly they are one and the same.. i mean medicine in the plants indgenious to this place... and they are exotic and wild looking many of them... much more exotic than plants europeans have imported..

in the meantime, i read about a miracle place in scotland called the findhorn community where they do more than sing.. they grow astonishing gardens by communicating with the nature spirits .

i thought well if singing makes things grow i wonder what would happen if i really determined to communicate with the nature spirits. and so i stepped into my garden and declared out loud that is what i would like to do. ok you know i figured even if this was crazy it was entertaining and then i let go of the eagle, my critical mind and all the judgements it likes to impose, and climbed onto the back of the condor with my trusty little humming bird by my side and off we soared into the unseen. i asked about everything i planted.. and when i got the feeling i was being answered i did what i was told. i planted with no logic. i chose plants i was guided to and planted them where i was told. and then this year i went into the garden as spring loosened the earth and lo and behold.. a tremendous pattern had emerged... colors all complimentary and lush... purples and reds in a plan more magnificent than my novice mind could have imagined and to top it off two huge hollyhocks planted themselves. they are the correct colors for the gardens design and even they are medicinal... it is just extraordinary... and it is true!

the eagle needs the condor and when they fly together the world becomes a magnificent place!

so last evening i began to photograph... and while i was taking the last images a young hummingbird, just growing it's colors , came to sip from the scarlet bee balm, so close to me i heard the buzzing of it's wings... it wasn't worried about me standing there in my white wings... or my little dog by my side... we just quietly went about our business, the humming bird, my camera, my dog and i...

so here are the photos taken from the condor's back in the land of the eagle.

the garden spirits showed themselves ....

so cool ...

dolphins and the hummingbird...

during acupuncture... i had a vision of a dolphin swimming from some ancient place... like lemuria and joining with the hummingbird of peru and these two became one creature they merged and the joy of the dolphin flew into the sky on hummingbird wings....

the apus, the mountain spirits in the andes, were whispering and whispering and i understood this language in my heart but not my head... it was something to do with simply dropping all the ideas that did not manifest joy...

it was simple...

i feel that this was transmitted to us all on the journey during our initiations...

change the perspective... drop all thoughts... no matter what, drop thoughts that do not bring great joy...

and once again

dance...

that's all...

my iphone is my new favorite camera...

one of the photos is of the night sky and the dolphins the other is the sun coming through the trees always there for us no matter what... even if we can't see.

xxx

peru

Peru keeps on dreaming through me.. I, and the others in my little group were initiated by the Q'uero elders and somehow this has taken us all and connected us molecularly to the moon, the sun, the incas, the stars, the wind, the water....
and so now the Apus, the mountain spirits, seem to be dreaming through me and although i am here in new york in the snow and rain and slush, i am also there, with Lorenzo and Martine and juliana and Lake titicaca and the sacred valley... there are secrets about living here on earth that they have kept close for a very long time and now it seems they are sharing these secrets with the world and once again life has expanded... there is so much more than I ever imagined, and you know, i imagine ALOT, and yet there is more, more than I can imagine and all I have to do it seems is stop my rational mind, open my heart, readjust my eyes and see....
over and over it came to me how simple it is really.. life loves us... all we have to do is breathe and love it back... really...
te amo!
xxx

YOU, FOR US ARE EVERYTHING

FAR AWAY SO CLOSE... WIM WENDERS.

what the angel says at the beginning of this extraordinary movie...

"YOU, who we love. you do not see us. you do not hear us. you imagine us in the far distance... that we are the messengers... who bring closeness ... who are distant... we are the messengers ...we bring the light into the darkness.... we are neither the light, nor the message... we are the messenger . we are nothing, nothing. You for us are everything...

dancing with the sun.

the sun shows it's face around here so rarely lately that when he arrives everything begins to dance!! so to celebrate and honor my friend sage's request the angel appeared and showed her face as well. so the dance began and lasted all the short day!!

it's a mystery.

we watched shakespeare in love the other night. hadn't seen it in so long that i'd forgotten one of my favorite lines, "it's a mystery..."
everything is. it just is. even the genius of tom stoppard and marc norman working with shakespeare and capturing every bit of glorious and bawdy and romantic feeling of the bard and showing what bards they are themselves. they capture it all. the huge giant messy mystery of life!

in the full version of the oxford english dictionary there are two whole pages of a BIG book dedicated to the word.
the definitions at the outset are divided into two categories. theological and non theological. to me they are saying virtually the same thing and the not theological is more appealing so that's where i'm going...

"a hidden or secret thing; a matter unexplained or inexplicable;something beyond human comprehension. a riddle. or enigma."

and with that goes the feeling. for me it's a feeling of tremendous expansion almost as if my consciousness can actually have a party because it has found a place that my small little brain cannot explain. can't reduce to the flat, hard place of logic.

lots of things can trick me into remembering we are all from this giant mystery. and there are places on the planet that bring me right to this place. right into the mystery. two of them have been built by humans to explore this very idea. whole cities dedicated to exploring the mystery. or that's what we imagine. we don't really know because, well you know, it's a mystery...
we get to look at images or actually go to places on the earth like this and feel it. and then carry that home with us and for me everyday i try to remember that place. and more than that i try to feel it. let it take me, that crack in the sky that lets me get between here and there. where it seems the deepest creativity falls from. where real love abides. where we are from. who we are. that's what i feel.

above are two of these places. Teotihuacan in Mexico. the second largest pyramids in the world and Machu Pichu, in Peru. the last image is putacuse (yikes sorry about the spelling) the happy mountain. the mountain of joy. she is the mother and there is a little doorway in the side of her that if you let your brain slip will open for you and you can fly right out into the vast vast mystery. lovely....