LOVER

is it new

Baked a banana nut bread

Made a butternut squash curry with green beans, onions, cashews, coconut milk 

Made a pot of basmati, a giant salad of arugula and radishes, vinaigrette of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, flaky salt

Ate an orange, put the peel in vinegar to make orange essence cleaning solution 

Peeled and cubed a pineapple - exotic tropical fruit! Drank a ball jar of nettles infusion from nettles I harvested last summer with big beekeeper's gloves - the sting! Cleaned 

the kitchen, fridge, bathrooms. Shook out rugs, scrubbed the sink, changed the bed linens. Bed smells like wedding cake and lavender. Played the piano. Wrote five pages, meditated 

Amazed at the quiet 

No m80's exploding outside my door, no anti-anxiety medicine

O the turning of the earth around the sun, o time

Nothing changes on New Year's Day

We are alive, aren't we now

here to go

She wasn't a virgin and they weren't white!

this is gonna light UP! Happy Christmas, Happy Solstice, we live to die, gotta give it away to fly, let it burn

Honor the Winter solstice, the longest night here on the land ... may I digest the nourishment from the seasons we've gone through this year, dropping the leaves of what no longer supports me, so that new buds and leaves have room to unfurl. May the fruits that have emerged against all odds from the focus of the energy that courses through me grow seeds that are vibrant and strong, filled with hopeful seedsongs that will nourish those on the not so distant horizons. 

May I move into my wintering phase to tend my spirit fire in a way that feels within my means, that invites in the deep rest that restores the memory held in my marrow.

May you find that sanctuary, as we slow down into a love poem of collective care.  May all that grieves inside you find outlet into beauty, falling upon snow as brilliant seeds to come.   Blessings to you all in this Solstice season, may you be held and supported  in all the ways that you hold and extend care to others 

bell hooks is dead! long live bell hooks

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.

.......

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

.......

Wisely, Baldwin insisted that we are always more than our pain. Not only did he believe in our capacity to love, he felt black people were uniquely situated to risk loving because we had suffered.

~ bell hooks

 

 

i can't summarize what bell hooks means to me. how her work ushered me through every stage of my being. how she awakened me to systems of domination and oppression, how her reflections on love expanded my experience of what it means to be in relationship with others in ways that are freeing. she was always so frank, humorous, keen - pure spring water, a lantern, the moon. i'm heartbroken. her absence is intergalactic, cavernous. so much gratitude and love for mama bell. may she rest in peace, in power.