Dark Matter

A murder of crows..

A murder?  Who thought of this?  Who decided to name these avian historians such a dark and angry name when they group, as if the fault is theirs?

These crows, they fluttered, feather askew, ruffled by the capricious wind, flapped and fluttered like ragged scraps of Death's cloak torn free from his regalia and flung skyward with little heed for up or down or any compass points.  Scattered into the dusking sky, harbingers of another soul parted from form.

Soul, or spirit?  What's the difference?

It was a deer, doe, unwary, perhaps not understanding the huge and forceful mechanical monster that bore down on her with speed she couldn't comprehend or calculate, catching her mid-leap then tossing her aside and roaring onward with no consequence save maybe a chipped tooth and a shaking driver who has somewhere to be, can't stop, stupid deer should've known better, on a timetable, dammit I hope she didn't wreck my front end.

The crows are brave, hopping to the side of the road and then back to her bounty.

Soul or spirit?

She's an animal.

Ego would have us believe that she has no soul, for animals are dumb in more than one sense.  But spirit they may have, for spirit is that little bit of the divine that all living things carry.

Soul, well, soul is for humans, only for humans, only for us because we are thinking, reasoning, self-aware, and more than that, aware of what is beyond us, of the indefinable.  We are uniquely able to see through the light into the heart of darkness, if we dare.

Beautiful dark.

I love the dark,

I hate it.

Cold and slick, it slips around me with sibilant whispers and intimations of what should.

What should?

This and that and anything that isn't.

I love the dark, the night pierced by stars and streaming light and the inexorable dance of the planets into entropy's embrace and the music that dayfolk tremble to hear in all its ecstasy.  Fearful, beautiful, loathsome, beloved dark.

I love the crows.  Tell me a story, cousin.  Harsh cries of "Aww!  AWW!!" back and forth and sometimes they land and turn their heads this way and that, staring at me and wondering what I am asking, what I am trying to tell with my hoarse, coarse mimicry of their tongue.

The crows don't know what should.  They only know what was and what is.  Something dies and they feast and remember and tell the tale and it carries from generation to generation from beginning to end, and in the end when the final darkness folds itself around everything, it will be the collective "Aww!  AWW!!" that rolls out and slowly dies into a near imperceptible vibration that shakes the single point loose and bursts outward into the new being, rooted in the old and ringing with that corvid call.

But we're the ones with souls, I'm told, immortal souls that mark us as more and better and other and all that, and certainly the deer was beautiful in her life, and graceful, but I with my clunky motion and graceless form am the better?  She provides life even in death and what do I do, in life, that is her equal?

I'm surrounded by death - dead eyed people staring at me because maybe I shine too bright within my darkness and maybe I don't care what they see with their flat eyes and cold gazes, dead spirited people who claim to have more soul, better soul because they pay lip service to something they don't believe, really, or at least they act contrary to the thing they worship.

All those shadows and shades, they don't like anything that isn't them and they claim soul as theirs alone and curse anything else.

The soul is immortality and so we are immortal, but that deer, she'll live forever in the crow's tales and in everything that feeds upon her carcass, certainly live long past the time the driver who hit her shuffles off this mortal coil and is buried in some vault where his body will never rejoin the whole and his precious soul will find itself astonished at suddenly being a deer wondering what that strange black surface is and if it can be crossed to find sweeter grass on yonder side, and what is that whistling, roaring noise?

Cool Days, Crisp Nights

Autumn is coming on apace here at Casa de Crazy.  The light is changing in duration and color, and we are enjoying a delicious cool spell.  I have no doubt Summer will do his best to muscle into our lives for a brief spate of heat, humidity, and general uncomfortability, but for now we can sleep with the windows open and even eyeball the comforter with a thoughtful air.

I enjoy sleeping with the windows open, especially when the humidity has dropped from somewhere in the breathing-through-a-wet-sponge strata to the breathable-for-humans range.  I loathe feeling like I need to wring out my lungs, and it's nice not to wake up sodden from both perspiration atmosphere!

Windows open also means I can fall asleep listening to the woods-dwelling symphony behind the Casa.

Crickets make up the strings, tripping along their melody line from dark to dawn, blending perfectly together into a sustained whole note.

Then there are the Piccolo tree frogs, each one trilling his part with enviable earnestness, each of them vying to be heard first among the rest.

The bullfrog Timpani is sometimes off tempo, but one cannot blame him for becoming distracted - cool weather means he must turn his thoughts from his mighty calling out for love to finding a place to weather Winter when the season finally rolls through the wood and along the creek.

Sometimes in the darkness the French Horn owls hoot out their lingering notes, long and low, full of longing and mystery.

When it rains, we have the ticking of drops on leaves, a staccato click-tick-splat-hush that softens the rest like an auditory mist.

And the wind.  The poly-rhythmic wind.  Soft it flows from one pulse to the next, gliding from branch to branch, sky to ground, shaking leaf rattles and clacking twigs, ruffling the grass with a hissing, sighing exhalation.

When I lie awake in the deep hours of night, awakened by some unknown sound, I listen to the tuning of the orchestra and the weaving together of the sounds into one night's song, slipping slowly back into sleep and what dreams may come.

Crows

Swirling around the twisted tree, ragged scraps of inky fabric fluttering against the dark grey November sky, tossed carelessly into the wind only to drift to rest in the ancient, gnarled pine.

What news, what news, cousins? Tell me a story...

Cold, damp, cutting day, and they're circling, making a vortex of feathers and caws, wings spread wide, floating in place before diving into the sheltering embrace of the grandfather tree. How will he hold them all?

What news, cousins, what news? History keepers, tell...

It is neither day nor night, but rather some in-between time of no sun, no moon, half-light and rain, of shadows and illusions and hidden things creeping through the gloaming, unseen until they launch from the branches into the teeth of the wind, dodging the pelting rain.

Tell me cousins, what have you seen? Tell, cousins, tell...

This isn't a murder, it's a spree, a confetti of birds ebbing and flowing, blending into the dark places of one tree, leaving his neighbor bereft of inhabitants, limbs unweighted by signs and portents and their dark silence.

What news? Tell...

Yestermorn

Oh, how grey and misty the morning is.

When you don't sleep much, when the dog Insomnia has you in his teeth and he shakes you, shakes you, worries and gnaws at you, it doesn't matter when you go to bed - after a certain time, you wake.

You may try...in vain...to sleep again, but once the dog Insomnia has you in his teeth, your mind begins to whirl, to spin. Dreams are left half done, half remembered, half present, flitting in and out of the conscience, flecks of foam flying from the dog's jowls.

You will eventually give way to the inevitable and rise.

And oh...how grey and misty the morning is.

It is early...so early...too early. Your sleep fogged brain, your sleep deprived body, cry out for mercy from the wan light, from the hour. The dog Insomnia pays no heed, and shakes once more, so you dress, brush hair, brush teeth, slowly drag yourself down the hall to the living room, forgetting that you don't have to be quiet because the child isn't asleep in his bed, so easily disturbed from his slumber - he's away with Daddy and you are all but alone in the house on this grey and misty morning.

You don't want coffee or tea. You want sleep...blessed sleep...

You chance to look out the window and see the softened morning, hard edges gentled by the mist, and you know...you know you must go out into it, into the softness, breathe it, exhale your hardness into it, close your eyes and feel it surround you, explore your face with tentative fingers, brush your arm, your leg, like a lover touching with tender wonder, smoothing the roughness, replacing it with peace, with sweetness that flows through you like honeyed light.

Open your eyes, then, and see the world anew, shining, sparkling with this grey and misty morning.

You may chance to walk to the end of the drive, floating in this new-found serenity, this calm, this peace. You may listen to the stillness, the silence, the day muffled in the grey mist. You may wonder if you have been transported, in those few steps, to some other world.

Tip back your head, then, and look up into the indeterminate light, the light that is playful with your eyes, with your perception, dancing in puddles of itself, the light that takes the grey and makes a shawl of it, wrapping up in the mist, peeking coyly around its edges.

Do you see, in the tree?

Do you see her?

You are not alone in this new place, this other place, this grey and misty morning.

She is there, small, powerful, spinner of threads, weaver of webs, symbol of fate, totem of life, death, renewal.

She sits, quiet, as you watch her sitting, quiet. She knows you are not prey, not predator - rather, she sees you are dancing along your own web, spinning, weaving, creating a new Self of the old. She sits, quiet, seeing you find your way along your slender, shining strand through the grey and misty morning.

You walk out into the cul-de-sac and look toward the head of the street, expectant. Something is coming through the grey and misty morning. Something is coming...




Something...

Faeries in the Lake

North a bit from where I sit...

North a bit from where I am rooted...

North a bit from where Sol and Luna glide in circles around my center...

...there is a lake.

It is a small lake, surrounded by forest and a few homes. Quietly it glints through the trees, reflecting their Summer greens and hinting at deep, cool secrets below its still surface.

In the daytime, careful eyes can see fish, tiny things, darting about, this way and that, silver and flint shadows in the shallows, swirling away at the smallest disturbance - leaf on the water, ruffling breeze, feet dangling down from an overhang - only to rally again after a few moments.

In the daytime, sunlight dances on the wavelets, leaping from ripple to ripple with a hot copper laugh before coming to rest in the forest where it scorches fallen pine needles and sends up the dusky perfume of the Summer wood.

In the daytime, picnickers find secluded places to spread their blankets, lie back and stare at the ever deepening sky, curl into each other and forget the world for a few hours.

But at night?

Oh, at night, it is a different place.

At night, only the wise and wary dare tread the pathways, the wooded places, the shores. Only the brave venture into the silken, black stillness of the lake.

At night...there be faeries.

Slipping through the woods they come, following where the moonlight leads them - down the gentle slope, out onto the ribbon of sand, and into the welcoming waters. They whisper, giggle, splash, float among the reflected stars, pale skin seeming to collect threads of moonlight and weave them into gowns glimmering with water-droplet jewels.

They brook no interference from mortal kind. Let them catch you watching, and they may disappear, wisps fog, vapour rising from the surface; or they may change, flashing lights, screeching calls, chasing you away, up to the road, where people belong after dusk marks the fay's time in this half-wild place. They could call you into the water, deeper, deeper still, down to where the Selkie lives.

Rarely do they welcome an interloper among them.

Rarely do they help the weary mortal out of her shoes, her skirt, her top, and into the blessed, healing waters.

Rarely do they let her float with them, soaking in the song of the night, hair drifting like water weed, limbs relaxed, drowsing.

Rarely do they bathe her in a distillate of moonlight touched with the remnants of the sun's warmth, pouring it over her, into her, at once invigorating, healing, and calming.

The wise mortal leaves behind nothing more than ripples when she climbs out, into her clothing, and back to the road...ripples, and perhaps a small, shiny gift, a sparkling thanks to the ones who truly belong - the faeries in the lake.

Beneath the Bright Moon

The moon is full and I am empty, but not empty. More, I feel empty in a place that was once full, and I am looking for what is lost, or may never really have been there in the first place.
~~~~~
Standing by the river, I watch it flow, swift, swollen, dark mysteries silver beneath the bright moon. I am silver beneath the bright moon. Alone and silver.

I wonder where you are, beneath this same bright moon. Are you in the deep wood, dancing with shadows? Or do you glide along pathways of light, beside this same river, across the water where I cannot see?

I miss you, Lord of my Desire, Lord of my Dance, of my Song, of my Inner Fire. From one life to the next have we been together, so where are you in this here and now?

I am waiting here, beneath the bright moon, her cool light against my fevered skin a blessing, a promise, but her whisper soft touch is not what I crave.

I crave you, Lord of my Desire, Lord of my Dance, of my Song, of my Inner Fire. I crave your fingers trailing liquid heat along my flesh, your kisses arousing and chilling me outward from my Center, your warmth along my length as we swim in the river, ardor briefly cooled by the silken caress of the sweet water beneath the bright moon. I crave you sliding along me, slick, wet, fitted to me so perfectly, half made whole beneath the bright moon.

I am lost here, beside the river, lost without you, able only to flounder in the shallows without you, alone and lost beneath the bright moon.

Hurry, Lord of my Desire, Lord of my Dance, of my Song, of my Inner Fire...hurry and find me again.