She was headed cross-country. I found the tape in the backseat under a Mexican blanket soaked with beach sand. She was picking up a basket of freshly picked veggies from a neighbors porch and I couldn't take another minute of bluegrass. Handwritten in the white stripe across the top, it read: A little soundtrack for…Read more Mary’s Soundtrack
Dreams
The Watchtower
He teased me about being scared of heights after I'd refused to climb any higher. The sky turned from cornflower blue to dove grey as storm clouds rolled in over the pacified Atlantic; the geography of dreams have no lat or longitude. It wasn't fear that stopped me but rather that I saw no value…Read more The Watchtower
Love Notes
This is not an invitation to ‘good vibes only’. Choosing to actively Love, as a verb, is the hardest work we, as spiritual beings attempting to have a human experience, will ever do. Turning each other into verbal and physical punching bags through jokes, passive aggressive insults, degrading comparatives, volatile threats and reactive headlines is…Read more Love Notes
Dharma Snacks
My therapist said I looked like Carole King today. (Therapists have therapists.) Now I can’t stop singing, ‘I wanna be home again and feeling right.’ Is enlightenment ‘home’? Are we ‘home’ if we rent? Is home a person, place or thing? Listened to part of a dharma talk this morning on Right Desire...repressed wants and…Read more Dharma Snacks
Mal Nuit
The smell of the sheets gave her away. She's a stripper. (I love my sisters) Why are we in her bed? There's no where else to sleep. It could hardly be called a bed, though this was sadly, infuriatingly familiar. A mattress pad on the floor of some glorified closet. Had I learned nothing? Had…Read more Mal Nuit
Drop in the Ocean
Hue manatees See cows? Think you can break my art With horror stories Of motel swine exchanges For ass and cash The please we leave behind paintings, Suicide notes Of still lives Harbors Resentment Rent the price we pay For fear of never becoming who we were destined to be I will be the answer…Read more Drop in the Ocean
Imitating Art
Healing is the process of exchanging one kind of pain for another. Here's to celebrating the pain, warmth, grief and love of the blinding light; birth, death and resurrection. Kyle and I spent the day recreating this painting: "You didn’t understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure. I am essence. I am…Read more Imitating Art
Good Mourning
I used to get so mad at Buddhism and obviously still fight with most of my daily devotions. Buddha and Jesus, just laughing and taking naps while the world is killed to death by assholes and germs. Incidentally, those two things appear to be closely related. Hey guys! What the heck are we supposed to…Read more Good Mourning
Blue
Anyone else plagued by waves of shame and guilt? Like you did something wrong, you’re in big, big trouble but you don’t know what you did and also, you’re not 5 anymore? Yea, me too. It’s normal. One of the many joys of surviving complex trauma is fearing punishment for crimes we didn’t commit. The…Read more Blue
Lean on Me
Two weeks ago we said goodbye to one of Ratchet's legs; legs that had run and hiked miles of trails all the way from Astoria, along the coast of the Pacific Northwest, the mountains of the Cascade Biway, the city streets of Portland and Seattle, even right down the center of Extraterrestrial Highway. Those…Read more Lean on Me
Born in Providence 