It’s sometime in the mid ’80s.  I drive to the foot of a mountain somewhere west of Morrison, Colorado, to meet friends for a Blue Moon Ceremony.  I’ve only had Grandmother Drum a few years and she wants to be there on that mountain top.  People start to trek up the steep path as I gather up my bag of ceremony, a blanket and Grandmother Drum.  I follow along in the late day light, the last in line.

Grandmother Drum was never so heavy.  She is a big Taos drum that I bought at the pueblo from drum maker Red Shirt.  She likes to be in circle with people honoring the Earth and the Sky.  I trudge along, readjust the bag on my shoulder, feel the bite of twisted leather as I grip the drum handle.  Red dust scuffs my shoes as I weave through the underbrush, no longer able to see those ahead of me.

Drought dry leaves crunch beneath my feet.  I stop, change hands, shift the bag to the opposite shoulder.  When I look up I see Scott’s long legs headed back down the mountain, a grin on his handsome face.  He reaches down and takes Grandmother Drum as if she were an illusion.  My bag becomes lighter.  I follow his long stride up and up and up around curves and still I cannot see the others.  Finally the path opens to a flat mesa.

Everyone is settling into a circle as Father Sun bows down to Grandmother Blue Moon filling the eastern horizon beyond the twinkling lights of Denver far below.  Magic flows in on a breeze and an owl calls out blessings.  We smudge.  I pull Rune Stones from my bag.  Each person pulls a stone , returns it to the bag and passes it around after the reading.  Everyone has the same Rune. 

Tonight I will drive down to the lake at moon ise and watch Grandmother Moon splash across the waters and listen for owl and coyote.

What blue moon do you remember?

I go to the Lynden Fair with my belly dancing class, not to perform but to help wherever needed.  I arrive Capricorn early and wander the crowds watching people with corn dogs, funnel cakes and dripping ice cream cones.  Blasting hiphop with jet fast words, aisles of vendors, screaming children run under a spray of welcome water and people smile from wheelchairs.

Without knowing it, I head for the Sheep & Goat Barn.  Inside the dark barn, I stop still with emotion, my throat tight, water blurring my vision.  Heavy dusty air laced with the fragrance of hay and the bleat of a discontented ewe.  Rows of penned goats.  Llamas too regal to face the admiring crowd.

I have not been to a fair in six summers.  I had been over-faired.  Over fiften years ago, I said NO MORE FAIRS.  I did four that summer.  Our grandson lived with us and joined 4-H with a cashmere goat he entered in the local fair.  Then he took a ribbon at state.  I entered handspun and handknit items in two fairs, that year and many others.

Then I became Superintendent of the Wool Barn for a couple of years, dividing tasks with other fiber freaks.  Valerie and I became Superintendents for the new Handspun Fiber Arts division.  We both did that until we each moved out of state.  Summers of heat and hot fiber and dust.

No more fairs seemed only reasonable.  The wheel spins, the sasons change and there I was in the Wool Room at the Lynden Fair watching people spin, checking out  fleece, thinking I should warp my table loom.  Fairs always inspire me.  I contemplate a new knitting project, forgetting all that are in progress.

I lean into a Nubian pen, let her sniff my words as I speak of the beauty of her slanted eyes.  Big black faced closely shorn sheep, perhaps Suffolk.  Blanketed girls, Merino or Correydale or some other fine fiber.  Just as I can no longer bare the heartache and joy, a pen of three Icelandic ewes.  I turn to their pen, tell them what stellar beauties they are.  That old feeling surfaces:  desire.  I could covet these sweet sheep in a minute.  Is that why I race from the Barn with a head full of memories galloping over my eyelids?  I forget to see if I can buy an Icelandic fleece.

And the Bellydancers of Bellingham delighted young and old, truly the beauties of the fair.

February 2012

Looks like a salad bowl, sings like an angel.

Marilyn Rinn and Annie Reynolds of Sound Snacks will present a Crystal Bowl Concert tonight, 6:30 PM at the Barn, co-sponsored by Sudden Valley Tai Chi.  Donations of non-perishable foods or a check made out to Whatcom Food Bank will be accepted.

The white ones look like a large salad bowl. Crystal healing bowls infused with earth minerals glisten with the promise of unexpected sounds.

Sudden Valley resident Annie Reynolds and her musical partner Marilyn Rinn, known as Sound Snacks, will introduce a collection of sounds and their healing potential on Tuesday, February 7^th, at 6:30 PM in the Dance Barn.

Sound Snacks and Sudden Valley Tai Chi will collect food donations to be given to the Food Bank. “People usually give at Christmas time but the need continues. We invite people to give food donations,” said Annie. The donations will be delivered to Whatcom County Food Bank as demand continues to excede supply.

“It’s Valentines and we invite people to give from the heart,” said Marilyn.

Crystal bowls are an outgrowth of the computer industry. Each bowl is 99.9 % quartz crystal which is melted at 4000 degrees, spun in a centrafuge and formed into shaped bowls.

“People are familiar with Tibetan metal bowls,” Marilyn said. “Most cultures in the world have used sound in healing in some fashion.” The tones of the bowls flow into the body, inviting healing. “The bowls harmonize the body and dissolve blockages,” she said.

Each crystal singing bowl holds a specific note that rises when tapped with a wand. The tones are aligned with each of the eight chakras, also known as energy centers, that align vertically along the torso and one above the head.

“Alchemical bowls add additional minerals,” said Annie. The bowls incorporate a variety of minerals including indium, emerald, iron, amethyst, citrine, charcoal and rose quartz. “Each bowl has a slightly different personality,” she said. “When our bodies vibrate in disharmony, it is called dis-ease. The bowls bring us into harmon and we feel the shift.”

I shall not look back or forward but inward.  Gray skies, soft rain, helleborus blushes the year’s first flowers…and where have I been?

Fingers to keyboard, eyes weary bleary with the edit, the zillionest edit, the final nit pick of my novel “Canvas Angels” to be published this year.

And it is sent, off through cyberspace to land in other laps and undergo the next process.  For now, I take a deep breath.  Poetry simmers in a chapbook kettle.  Next…

Of course I have another novel that would love the attention that “Canvas Angels” received in the editing process.  One of them calls out.  Do I have the sitzflesh?  Or is Haiku my partner for the rest of the year.

More will be revealed.  Until then, whatever it is that captures you, sparkles your eyes, wakes you in the night with new inspiration, follow it, no matter how tedious.  Reach out and embrace the next step.

My day begins at night as the full moon gives in to waning. I hold my bud tight under the stars, unmoved by the hoot of midnight owl.
Content with the pre-dawn breeze, I sway beneath cedar and fir.  Just a rose.  A yellow rose who catches First Light like a mirror.  Reflect the sun hold it deep into the petals of my heart as I begin the stretch.

The yearning to open overwhelms.  After so many cold and rainy days when I slept, eyes wanting no light.  My bud content with gray.

Now, the lure of sunrise seeping along fern swords dappled between maple leaves, I shiver awake knowing heat will fill my destiny.  I prepare my skirts for the sun dance.  When He , the Sun, is high overhead beating down on my fragile first dance, I submit.

I let my skirts drop and hear castanets as I begin to twirl in a madness of passion.  I reveal a side of myself I did not know.  Now it could not be better even if I were red.  I am perfect yellow, better than, buttercup, dandelion or daffodil.

I grab Sun rays, let them play along my satin panels as if I could dance all night.  But he pulls away, settles deep in the western cedar boughs.  I  am cool and exhausted.

I smile at my unfolding and remember now my first visitors, the butterfly, monarch orange against my pale petals, the tiny chartreuse spider tickling my dancing toes.  Then the bumble bee danced with me for mid afternoon tea.

Twilight I wonder if it is possible to open further, to embrace more and I rest content with memories of the wild sun pressing my tender flesh.  The passion of the day must give way to the cooling promise of moonbeams stroking my still body.

Moonlight and moondark have tended my growing months.  I am one with Moon, sharing the softness of her muted colors soaked with grandmother spirit.  The night birds twitter stops as darkness and stars appear and waning moonlight arrives late.  I rest, sensing no rain in the coming day, only the promise of another dance with the sun god