Walls Around Hearts, Waiting to Be Torn Down

It's been 25 years. 1 death zone. Divided people. Misery for the better part of 28 years. The 2 concrete barriers, dividing sides, with the infinity of an 8 turned upwards toward one sky; imploring faith to step in and end the divide. It kept people away from their brethren and kin, entrenched in a place without many choices, on both sides of the walls. The walls kept hearts apart, with the empty zone between; leaving a rent in the fabric of one people. And so it was, for 28 years, until one person misspoke and spoke; stating everyone could pass through the wall. Just after that statement, many did. It took just one sentence to end the divide in a moment of confusion; becoming a new clarity of reunion. And the walls came down. In chunks, slices, fragments, blocks; falling away from the hearts of so many people. Spaciousness entered and expanded. It is expanding STILL.  

To find that clarity of expansion is to feel the beat of our hearts in movement and to know the barriers we create around its chambers. It is to sense the rhythmic surge of our own life force and to spend moments feeling the blocks we hold within each of our hearts. To let the blocks loosen into the pulsing rhythm so they can support that rhythm to its fullest potential is every person's task. Take a moment to feel the clarity of your heartbeat. Take another moment to sense a block of your own prejudice. Let the beat carry the block within and feel the newness of that relationship. This new sense of moving is the foundation of compassion. This new feel of support is the rhythm of PEACE.

Celebrating the way barriers, break apart to open hearts to new ways of being. An iconic fragment of the Berlin Wall in Simi Valley, CA-outside the Reagan Library. The butterfly soars towards the above of sky.  Take a moment to break down your walls, open your heart, and BREATHE.

See the speech writer's intention, developed at: http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/summer/berlin.html

In The Time Of Starry NIghts and Phrensied Days-Collected Births Emerge

The dog days of summer are upon us until approximately August 24th. In the large dog constellation, Sirius-the dog star rises, and to all of us befall "burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies;" according to the Clavis Calendaria of 1813. So bright is the starlight, we become somewhat mad per ancient lore. Our gentle souls awaken and flare bright like the Perseid meteor shower in the night sky. We glow hot, and then cool with the shorter days. The heat of this time seems magnified in our current Western drought for the soil is parched. Everything is dry. It seems an unlikely time to plant and grow a project, yet I am planting one anyway, in community, with a hope of growth. 

I have begun an anthology project, suggested by a fellow author, on the process of how we become human. For some of us, it is at the time of our births. For others, it is the time of our near deaths or other moments of intense soul awakenings.  This project sprung out of the serial, nonfiction project called En Utero: Stories of the Womb, which won first prize for nonfiction work in March on the writing platform jukepop.com. I gave an update on this work for the 6 word memoir project hosted at SheWrites.com, stating I was: Birthing poetic womb stories, serial style. That statement birthed a request to do an anthology, so now there are 12 of us, along with a developing infant; working on themes of birth, conception, misconception, labor, delivery, partum and postpartum, adoption, miscarriage, gestation, birthdays, rebirth, transformations and other concepts. The sky's the limit here, so consider the topic possibilities as endless. 

Please join us in this work-whether you create in word, image, song, or even dance. If you're interested drop me a line in the comments section below, and I will share specifics about the project. You choose whether to opt in or opt out. The work will be shared among us and then perhaps, go public. You can opt out at any time along the way. 
Collected Births: An anthology of how we become human awaits You! Join in. You may like what you learn about yourself on your journey. The dog days of summer filled with phrensies is a great time to start.  

You can read and find En Utero:Stories of the Womb here: http://jukepop.com/home/read/1993.
In the meantime, you can see its amazing graphic cover design by Linnea Mielcarek and Leonardo da Vinci in the viewing pane on the right. 

Voice Emerging - Still Submerging

Years ago, I had a light and laughing voice. Then shame hit and blasted me into some state of petrified mortification. When my voice returned, it returned obsessively; reciting words repetitively late into the night, while my hand copied them over a page across hours.  Even snails could write faster.   My rhythm had been altered. I had lost the movement of my original expression after being shamed by a teacher. Years later, my voice emerged, abruptly with the coaxing of a master hypnotherapist and storyteller in a crowd of others. Its emergence shocked me to the core, so it took another few years before it came out again. Now it is almost impossible to stop.  Words come in floods and phrasing in snippets. It just keeps coming.

This is the true rhythm of birth, a surging flood of expansion and contraction with a great deal of breathing and tremendous push. This is how stories come into being and how they evolve a word at a time into books.  Creation is a labor of love and an act of faith-most necessarily in the self, the author of the work that is struggling to become.  Given this struggle, imagine my delight when I found a shareware tool that takes words from passages and turns them into textual images with a few taps on icons. Creation made simple in the form of a tagxedo.  I don't know whether I like the donate model or the actual product more-Donate to keep tagxedo free-the site says. So, I donated and made a tagxedo called The Bluebird of Happiness to put in a book project I am birthing.

I chose to tagxedo a poem called Soul Birth since the birth of my voice is the awakening of my soul. I wrote soul birth for doulas to chant aloud. May mothers, fathers, doctors, healers, family, and doulas all say some combination of these words to bless babies as they come into the world; heralding and inviting the arrival of the next generation of being.

Sending wild applause out to the creator/s of Tagxedo for giving us such delightful word salads.
Make your own creation here at: http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html

Moving Out of Stuck

Sometimes, we get stuck. In relationships with ourselves, with others, and with life. It reminds me of the sticky quality of biscuit dough, when it keeps gluing our fingers together, even after we wash them well. It takes a lot of scrubbing movement to free ourselves from the goo. In my case, the goo is a blend of my authentic experience coupled with some historical shame that has limited the use of my creativity.  So, I have begun the scrubbing movement of launching a creative project called Resume Box, which is a collaged box made from a recycled paper box and images that contains my original voice in resume form. I posted the box to show its current state, where it has been stuck for about 3 years. The intention was to place 3 of my original writings in the box, then put it out into community for others to add their written voices. It was planned as a collective work of healing and mastery. I was unsure of how to track its progress.  I could not guarantee that it would succeed or fail in attracting the participation or even the interest of others. I could not guarantee that any of the offerings would be read or relevant or even kept safe from plagiarism, theft, or inappropriate inclusions.  So, I decided that taking a risk is the better part of life, and I posted the start of the project here. 

My resume offerings will reflect some personal life experiences that include both a blessing and a curse from my childhood as well as a new beginning that expresses my voiced desire to seek a career in the ephemeral creative.  My hope is that others will place their creative writings as "resumes" in the box, that express in some way their desires to seek new ventures in their life. I would like the box to be passed hand to hand to encourage still others to drop their "resumes" in or simply read and consider, "Who it is" that we readers all truly want to be. I seek to invite original, creative writings that express hopes and desires in an authentic and safe way. I want the writings to be freely shared, original, honest, friendly, and considerate to reflect the heart's desires. I hope to launch the box soon and blog about its progress as a collective, community verse of hope and desire for meaningful lives. Just consider for a moment, if you will, Who it is that you really want to be!

Shouting Out: To Kat Kirby for fantastic teaching of a 13 layer collage process.
See her work at: http://2katstudios.com/