The Wheel

A few weeks ago a friend told me that love was like compost--it grows, it breaks down, and then it regenerates energy and life.

Hmmmm.

Since then I've been rolling that concept around in my head and analyzing it, feeling the truth of it but not being able to tease it into words. It's always just below the surface in what I write these days: endings and beginnings, regret and hope, the sense of time marching on and a desire to know it's all going to be OK in the end.  As Wendy says, life at this stage is all about planting for a second harvest.

Late at night, I let John Mayer's music do the talking and I did a bit of art in my journal in response to the song and my friend's comments. Go ahead and listen to "Wheel"   and you'll find the compost idea peeks through the lyrics, along with the promise of second harvest, and the belief that good things come full circle. 

"I believe that my life's gonna see

the love I give return to me."

Retreat

I felt it before I saw it:

The air thickening

My skin cooling

An ache behind my eyes.

I felt the change in atmosphere

In my chest.

And then I heard it:

Your voice shifting

Words being blown away

The bang of the shutters

The sound of a gate swinging shut

A long sigh of regret.

And finally I saw it:

The way it had to be

The way it might have been.

I’ve stood in this place before

My feet rooted in stone

My fists clenching air

Waiting for a different ending

Waiting for a new beginning.

September 25, 2007

© 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.

Time Zones

Oceans separate us

Timelines divide us

Our lives are bound together

But out of sync

When I was awake

You were asleep

When you woke up

I was already gone

Starting another day

Leading another life

Leaving you behind

Darkness falls

The stars shine

We steer by the same constellations

But you remain beyond the horizon

Always out of my reach

As the sky turns above us

And the earth shifts

Subtly beneath our feet

The sun and moon smile on us

Worlds apart

Still together but

Out of time

September 24, 2007

© 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved.

My Life in Quotes

Di, my writing, photographing, wandering soul sister and friend, always leads me to the best quotes:

"To be creative, you must be brave and allow yourself to take risks. You must also be a little crazy. But have an appropriate degree of perspective. Reassure yourself that by doing a watercolour or throwing a pot you won't set off some chain reaction that destroys your entire universe. The whole reason you are feeling any sort of need to be creative is because you, as an organism, feel some need to adapt to changes in your environment. Your job may be too restrictive. Your relationship may be showing you new possibilities. Your daily paper may be reshuffling your deck. Your body may be changing. Or you may just be more sensitive that those around you, a canary in a coal mine, bellwether to changes that others don't yet sense.

Under all those conditions, creative change is no longer a risk - it's an imperative. Give yourself the chance to experiment and reconfigure your life. Start today. Before the volcano erupts or the meteor hits the earth, before you get hit by a bus, or your candidate loses, or your boss makes a cutback - before the changes erupt, and it's too late.

It's time to stop being a dinosaur and start figuring out how to be a bird."

Danny Gregory, The Creative License page 78.

As Meg Ryan said in the famous deli scene from the movie When Harry Met Sally: "Yes, yes, YES! YES!" Y'all get the picture. This hit the spot, so to speak.

September 20, 2007

Soul Gardening

(For K, TB, and Amber--fellow soul gardeners)

It takes courage

To swing the hoe,

Bite the dirt,

Overturn the earth,

And face what lies below

The surface.

A world of darkness:

Stones that bind

And block our roots,

Sightless grubs that writhe

When exposed to the light,

Insects that panic and retreat.

Worms that bleed

When they’re cut.

It takes strength

To dig deeper

When blood and sweat

Tempt you to stop

When tender hands blister

When your heart aches

With the effort.

Dare to keep turning and

Soon you’ll smell not dust and dirt

But rain and renewal.

Glimpse a fertile world laid bare

Teeming not with vermin

But sweet life.

Ready to be freed

To grow

To bloom

To be

Kissed by the sun.

September 19, 2007

(Note: I borrowed the title Soul Gardening from TB--it's the name of her blog.)