Private Journal

Journal, August 3rd, 2010

"Once upon a time there was a woman, who wasn't as young as she used to be, who sat at her table to write. It was very early morning and she had just awoken from a night full of terrible dreams. In every dream she was lost and no one could hear or help her. After each dream she awoke, and thought it was over--but it wasn't--there was yet another bad dream, and then another.

She wasn't totally unprepared for this to happen, for she had seens signs of it coming. Not only was Saturn preparing to conjunct her Sun, Pluto would soon be squaring it, and Uranus opposing it. This is the cardinal T-square, and it was hitting major spots in her astrology chart. And the flood last week, with the waters rising in the basement had permeated her psyche like the mold that was beginning to grow on the walls, and the soggy destruction of her old books and photographs wasn't a good sign. The slow undertow of tears she had forced back in her waking life now began to arise, and she could see that she was indeed entering upon "a dark wood."

Morning Memory

As I lie in bed this morning
loosely pondering the motivation
to awake or remain motionless...
I float between worlds, wandering lightly
amid some nuance of a half forgotten dream
rising from that other world.

I am the beach. It is hot.
The ocean rolls over me
I don’t think I remember how to swim.

I am no longer in that other world
I am instead in this familiar dream
I call my life.
It shouldn’t be so easy to get lost here.
or drown.


The fragments of my life
strewn around the room—
sweaters thrown in corners
shoes tossed
beside the bed
white sheets of paper slithering
across the desk
precipitously close to the edge.

Then the unbidden voices
of uncertainty, critique and obligation
crash in upon me—
forcing
beads of water across my forehead.

I rise in the gray twilight
of this August morning
and wonder--
What will I find today?
A lost ring among the sweaters?
A forgotten place to go among the shoes?
A lost syllable of my life
dropped among the papers?
What forgotten piece of my true nature
—what Zen particle—
Might I find under the stack of books?

I step outside
the kitchen door
to meet another world--
where the gently moving
morning air caresses my skin
and the chatter of birdsong
quiets the night’s fear.

Here the world prepares itself
fresh for a new day
stirring my Soul
with such kind remembrances
of a softer life—
distracting and seducing it
from its long night-journey home.

Here in the garden,
the grasses and flowers
hold no grievance
nor tell troubled tales of what
transpired during the night:
the deer that wandered through the yard
the nesting creatures that tunneled
through the earth—

Here there is no worry
whether sun or rain
will shorten life
or what wild weed is taking over.

The nostalgia of the Iris
And the mystery
Of the wide-leafed weed
Dissolve this morning’s melancholy
Like amber tea
Brewing in the teapot…
Its pungent fragrance awakening
Deeper wells of memory.

The night dreams have passed.
I will not drown.
As the morning mist lifts
the quiet sorrow
that steeped my Soul
in shades of gray
gives way
to this pearly dawn
I rejoice
as night dreams
become day dreams
and I choose again
which story
I’ll live today.

~Isabelle