Island Forgotten
An erasure poem adapted from an Associated Press article by Meghan Barr about Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy
Do you see
she asked, resignation
two young
brothers swept
from mother’s arms
drowned
a forgotten island
In the shadow
dazed
survivors roam
sand-covered streets
under the weight
of water
fire trucks
scatter
relief
wash muddy
hands
for
salvage
CALL ME
This morning I listened to a replay of Jo Dunning on Healing with the Masters with Jennifer McLean. During her hour-long talk, Jo discussed energy work and actions we can take to clear old energies to make way for the higher vibrations that are coming in for us. Specifically the energies of Love, Peace and Harmony. One simple way to do this, she said, is to go to sleep with Love.
Sometimes I write down my dreams, but lately I have not. Most of the dreams I have recalled lately when I wake, have been mirrors of old anxieties playing out in different scenarios, or simply attachments from the previous day. I have gotten used to reading the messages in these dreams and I know what I still need to release. Of course, releasing is another matter.
Whatever needs to come up for us, will come up in our dream-state. When we have unpleasant dreams, we are being asked to look at what is no longer serving us for our highest good and to release it. One way to do aid this process of reprogramming our thoughts into those that vibrate with a higher frequency, is to go to bed with Love. Instead of playing out the scenes that bothered us from the day in our minds, we can consciously focus on something that fills us with Love. It is simple in theory, as Jo pointed out. One might focus on a pet, a lover, a child or a beautiful landscape. I would add, let your senses play with that image that you bring to mind and create it in detail. Linger on it as you fall to sleep and let your soul take care of the rest.
“The Big Pushback”
an Erasure poem adapted from an Associated Press article by Ramit Plushnick-Masti
Oil has lived
with cattle
across the Texas landscape
nurtured by
pipelines snaking through
the ground
It has snatched land
most egregious
like an arrogant foreigner,
unworthy
“We’ve fought wars for it.”
condemning land is not
unusual
A 78-year old
great-grandmother
whose late husband worked in oil
spent a night in jail after tres-
passing on her 425-acre farm
cleanup is still incomplete.
It is raining again here in New Hampshire, bathing the earth in the element of water, and cleansing old, tired energies. I have come to love the rain and the energies working to lift the density trapped in and around the Earth. Today I stepped out to look for faeries and to offer them fresh melon in gratitude for the work they are doing in my yard. Here they are partaking of my offerings.
This post was inspired by Karen Kubicko, who will soon publish a book on past lives called, Life is Just a Another Class: One Soul’s Journey through Past Life Regression. Visit her blog at: http://karenkubicko.wordpress.com/
When I was in the process of writing my memoir, I discovered a manilla folder stashed away in a pile of memorabilia my mother had kept from my childhood. It was like opening the heart of the five year old girl named Alethea (for Truth) Eamon (for the boy her father wanted her to be). Here, were crayoned drawings of the life I once tried to manifest. A brown shed-like building with black framed windows became a warm home with smoke curling out of the chimney, with over-sized tulips and irises in the yard. In another drawing, a platform of rainbow wood became the play-set my step-father had promised to build me, but never did.
My will to manifest my perfect world at five failed me, I realized as I flipped through the drawings. Already, at five, I was a child wrapped tightly in the arms of fear and secrets. My reality was the reality my parents were creating. We had just moved three thousand miles away from the extended family I was being asked to forget, and the father I was told never wanted me. I started kindergarten that year, shyly befriending the girl with soft brown eyes and Shirley Temple curls, and coveting the perfect life I know she led inside her department store clothes. For the first several months, my new home in New Hampshire was a teepee, my bathroom a hole in the ground, and then an outhouse made of pine.
I won’t tell you about the plants that looked like tomatoes. I won’t tell you about the man I was learning to call “Dad.” Those stories are part of the larger story of The Girl Named Truth. Instead, I’ll tell you about the five year old child with the deep blue eyes that couldn’t hide her sadness. I’ll tell you about the life she held onto.
There is one picture in the folder saved from my mother that fills me with joy. A picture that became a piece of a puzzle that is helping me to remember one of my favorite, empowered past lives. When we are young children, before we completely absorb ourselves in our new life, we often retain memories of our past lives. In the picture I drew, there appears a happy child with pigtails, wearing a wide red smile over a dress bursting with color. Above my crayoned-self, I wrote the words, “Alethea I was a Gypsy.”
I used to have a bright red fabric hat inlaid with embroidered mirrors threaded in the colors of the rainbow. Some days, when I found myself alone, I would don that magical hat and dance inside another world. A world where I was happy and free.
Thankfully, this life has never left me. Growing up I would cling to memories that were like beautifully painted landscapes vivid in their colors and the peace they remembered. As I grew older, so did that gypsy girl. She became a woman with rippling waves of hair secured loosely with a silk scarf. The dresses she wore lengthened and filled the space around her legs as she danced in her world of beauty and light. Always she would appear, a brief flash of brilliance, filling me with joy, in a moment of need. Reminding me that she was still there, living inside of me.
Only recently I realized I was her. A few months ago I did a past life regression during a psychic class. Before I regressed, I pleaded with sprit to bring me a happy life. I didn’t want another life of repression mirrored back to me, even though I knew those were the ones needing to be healed. When I closed my eyes and breathed into meditation, I found myself inside a temple shaped like a pyramid. I was, I realized with gratitude, a woman (many of my painful past lives have been as a man). And, I was a gypsy. On top of my long hair appeared a white scarf, and my body was draped with a flowing dress. I was dancing, as a part of a circle of women. Feelings of joy and love filled my heart. I didn’t want to leave.
I often dream of houses, I always have. Sometimes I wake in awe of the beauty of the architecture of my dream-world homes, wishing at these moments that I was painter. Wondering, at other times, which homes I am remembering from a past life.
Metaphorically, though, there is always something to take away from a dream house or building. When I find myself in a home rich with architecture and vivd colors, I am reminded of the rich tapestry of the soul’s truth. I am bounded only by imagination. We are all bounded only by our inner truths.
And, sometimes, we are inhibited only by our own fears. My fears manifest in houses that become mazes of rooms without exits, bathrooms without walls, and crumbled architecture. Last night, I found myself in a farmhouse with ample room, yet I yearned for one more room where I could entertain. I walked out of the kitchen (the heart of the home/soul) and found myself in the perfect room. It was large. It was empty. There were four walls joined into a rectangle.
As I contemplated my room I realized what was missing. The floor was not a floor, but rather the bare ground covered in grass. The ceiling, an open sky. The door and windows, merely frames. How, I wondered, was I going to fix my room? What would be the cost? Was it something I could afford?
I agonized in my dream-state, grabbling with this obstacle, not letting myself see how simple the solution was. With little effort though, the walls could come down. A “gentle” reminder that sometimes I/we get caught up in the superficial aspects of life, neglecting the true essence of our beings. Sometimes it is hard to let go. Even in my dream, I wanted both. I imagined large skylights in the ceiling, once I found a way to put one in.
The Light Behind the Story 