Kama is the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting, smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul. The ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of sense and its object, and the consciousness of pleasure that arises from that contact is called Kama. (Kama Sutra)
12-17-05
SNOW–again. I am toying with the concept of just surrendering to it. It’s hard because I so miss being outside, working my muscles into looseness in the warmth, and the smells of earth and flowers and green things. My nose functions at about 40% in winter due to the dryness. I also miss the color and songs of the birds of summer. But if I can let go of missing the seasons I love most, I do find pleasures in this season too. I love my house, so it is good to be in it more, to sit in the big open living space, light pouring through the skylight, surrounded by all the color and beauty my friends and I have created here–moss green walls, iris/violet walls, my photos of all the beauties of nature, from a glowing pear on coppery silk to wild berries to orchids and peaches and hibiscus. The sun slants through silk curtains and traces a lovely pattern on the wall.
Instead of birdsong, the mesmerizing notes of Martin Simpson and Alisdair Fraser and Kate Price weave around me. And though my nose may only be at 40%, the rich smells of coffee and spiced incense and honey on toast permeate the room and me. There is a coziness, a stillness, a turning inward that is nourishing, nurturing. While watching the winter outdoors–scarlet flash of cardinal, sapphire strut of blue jay and topaz softness of doves. I was sitting in the computer room yesterday, frustrated as hell with a connection problem when a wren lit on the bush that is right next to the window . She threw her head back and let rip with this gorgeous outpouring of song–followed by a scolding chatter–that vibrated her whole body and cleared out my bad mood in a heartbeat.
I have prepared myself as well I can for snowstorms–got a propane stove to keep me and the cats warm if no electricity, and also have a propane cooking stove and a stash of food in the basement which includes lots of Fancy Feast and tuna, a bit of chocolate, some pretzels, peanut butter, and cans of soup and one of black-eyed peas. Who could ask for more? Winter brings out the paranoid survivalist in me–our weather just feels off to me nowadays. Mother Nature disturbed.
As the snow first came down, it coated the rhododendron leaves and magnolia leaves with the softest whitest powder–powdered sugar cookies. 
The magnolia looked like white poinsettias.
By the next morning though the snow was so wet and heavy on some of the branches that they looked in danger of snapping, so I got my broom out and brushed it off. Big, of course, managed to run under it just at the wrong moment and get covered. He scurried inside complaining at me for my cruelty.
I talked with Jalaja Bonheim this week (of Hunger for Ecstasy). She said some interesting things, one of which was to suggest I focus on the High Priestess card of the Tarot Deck in relation to where I am now. I’m not very comfortable with words like “goddess” and “priestess”, due to their casual overuse in our world today–almost as bad as “shaman”. (Which reminds me–there is a god who answers prayers. After my rants this summer about the way “shamanism” is bandied about by so many people and workshops, the universe thanked me by having Mr. Winkle featured as a Shaman in his 2006 calendar. Which I now own.). But I do think the archetypes have value for us. And what she said made me think of the Tarot reading I”d done that week where the end card was Marie Laveau, which is the Voodoo deck’s version of the High Priestess. And I do relate to the imagery of being more about the inner life of soul exploration, dwelling in the core, where passion exists for itself, not as a part of courtship and marriage and family. She said “the Priestess dwells in the temple.” My home does feel like that to me. She also suggested I sit down and get very detailed about what I want right now in relationship.
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12-18-05
Luscious scents of the week–thinly sliced, lightly garlic-salted and olive-oiled sweet potatoes baked to crispness, whole grain bread rich in yeastiness an embrace of fragrance as I come in from the cold, and essence of apple most intense, Garden of Eden ancient magic apple distilled in fiery Calvados, glowing amber in crystal, then lava trail of warmth through throat and belly. A pre-Solstice toast.
My writing about what I want in relationship took a strange turn towards the end. It’s like I kept boiling it down, reducing it, again and again. Ending with this rich essence that was about “simply” being in my bodywork room doing the movement with a man–letting the energy flow, and moving with whatever comes along, be it animal, loving, battling, erotic, or stillness. That is my greatest desire right now. And I have a feeling if I tried to also take it outside of that room that it would dilute it or muddy it or limit it somehow. For now anyway. It’s like therapy in a way. The things that happen in a therapy room often are possible because it is a container that does not have all the difficulties and distractions that go on outside. Or like a temple–one enters in and leaves the every day behind in order to connect with the Divine.
I also had this lightning bolt vision last night–got so excited about it I wanted to start calling people and telling them. I just vibrated with imagining for hours. And then woke up with Mr. Poopyhead telling me how silly I was and that it was totally a fantasy that was not possible in reality. I imagined having a place that really was like a temple from ancient times. Dedicated to beauty, the senses, the Divine. And a few people who could truly find joy and fulfillment in that realm would live and work there. I thought of my friends who have such creative energies but do not seem to have the right way to plug those gifts into the every day world. Rafe whose greatest joy is to play with spices and scents and tastes and textures as she cooks and bakes. She can lose herself in creating a sauce. But she’s never been happy in the world of restaurants or other public food venues. And Kathleen for whom creating beauty is like breathing, whether it is spending hours in her pajamas stringing beads and gemstones or painting fantastical creatures on a child’s rocking chair or giving artworks just the right frame to best showcase their beauty. Yet her work is not prominently displayed in any gallery or shop or in books or magazines. With both of them, I feel sometimes like their creations are more just for the sake of creating–the pure pleasure of it, the losing oneself in the Divine flow. And to try to please people in a way that makes them pay you, somehow seems to detract from it. So I imagined a place where Kathleen could create beauty in an unfettered manner and Rafe could explore the realms of food to heart’s content. And people could enter this space from time to time to experience that–to experience being in the energy of the creative flow. And maybe I could move with them, dance in Ecstasy with them, explore their dreams with them. “And we’d all live happily ever after”, Mr. Poopyhead interjects. “Maybe if you win the lottery, sweetheart.” Well, I respond to him that even if I may not be able to create this on a large scale, I can live my own life as best I can in this way. And honor my friends in that realm, inviting them into this space to co-create. Which we already do.
When I talked with Ricky about this, he said I should be just this clear with any man about what I want. And that “if you want someone to come into your home as a temple and experience it as sacred space, then damnit that’s what you want and don’t settle for anything less!!” This said in his Ricky-as-prophet-with-hair-on-fire voice. I love him so much when he is in the pulpit. He says for him it has been the most freeing empowering part of his life to state just what he wants in the sexual realm and “if you can’t get with that, that is fine for you, but don’t plan on being with me”.
As I was talking with Phyllis about some of this on the phone in the evening, walking up and down the drive, as the cats got in the last few minutes of mole hunting, I heard my patroness bird, the peahen (phoenix) let out an even more raucous than usual shout, “WEE-ha onk”. I looked up to see her rotund form levitating to perch on a high branch across the creek. A bizarre sight somehow. I”m used to birds being little flashing featherweights, not big as my dining room chairs. But there she was perched in all her glorious largeness looking out over her territory. Phyllis started singing the 12 Days of Christmas song line “and a partridge in a pear tree”. Then we changed it to “a peahen in a tulip poplar tree”. I’m thinking of rewriting the whole song “three Fre-ench brandies, two or–ange tabbies, and a peahen in a tulip poplar tree.” A hymn for my temple.
“Wee-ha” and new beginnngs to all.
