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It turns out Rain was the lover I’ve been longing for
arriving with a bouquet of moisture
singing the heartbeat of Earth
the poetry of quenching
It is artists who interest me
Passionate conveyors of the beauty and pain of Love
and the necessity of risking it
who call us to the eroticism of life
lived with abandon, abundance and purpose
I was raised in the Rain Forest
Trees dripping with lifeblood
Old Man’s Beard wicking moisture from the air
to Slugs below
I want to gather around tables with food so good
it makes me cry and squeal in delight
And conversations about God and stories that elicit wonder
Or fits of laughter
Or take us on winding paths of perplexity and sudden revelation
Things that bathe and cleanse
To be honest it is the people to accompany this I most yearn for
Those who understand a glass of wine, pot of tea and a really good stew
Who see each Raindrop
and somehow sense every life-time it has flowed through
and every Being it has quenched
If this is you
or think it might be
the gate is open
~
Centred on evocative and deeply healing guided meditations, Kimiko holds Virtual Healing Circles Monday mornings at 9 a.m. and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. pacific. Please join us. Learn more at the Good Vibrations: the Energy of Resilience facebook page, check out the Healing link on this site or drop her a note by e-mail.
Centred on evocative and deeply healing guided meditations, Kimiko holds Virtual Healing Circles Monday mornings at 9 a.m. and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. pacific. Please join us. Learn more at the Good Vibrations: the Energy of Resilience facebook page, check out the Healing link on this site or drop her a note by e-mail.
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Trying to sort through the myriad of thoughts and emotions today, my birthday, what I land on is: It’s complicated. Very little about my life as I turn 56 is as I imagined it might be, as the world I grew up in told me it would likely be, or even as I determined it would never be.
I realized suddenly today, that my physical reality has come to mirror my existential understanding of myself as someone on the outside, who stands at the margins in a world that looks to the middle. Now I literally live on a border, a strange somewhat arbitrary boundary delineated by a ditch. Here I have spent the past 16 months seeking out the often unnoticed beauty of this place. And seeking connection while feeling immersed in solitude ebbing and flowing with isolation. In other words, I revelled in the aloneness until I didn’t.
Ironically as I find myself both single and my child grown I am now responsible for someone else in a way that has not been true for years, maybe ever. My child was 20 when I became a lone parent and my spouse was always the homebody. Parenting was shared but much of daily moment to moment was not mine. And while caregiving is not parenting, the moment to moment responsibility is much the same.
Looking at this feather graced by the setting sun, I am struck by the truth that a feather, while a thing unto itself, exists to be part of a bird. It is the feathers that allow a bird to fly. And without the bird, the feather cannot experience flight. This is the image I have chosen for myself to mark this birthday moment. I am a feather, an amazing work of Divine engineering and artistry. My gifts are a necessary part that creates the lift for something greater than me that in turn picks me up. Together we soar.
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Waking up on this cloudy summer morning, I'm enveloped in sensory memory. The grey sky and fresh morning air spiced with cedar, ocean and the faint haze of smoke transports me to camping by the lake, cousins in the next campsite over, bread toasted over an early campfire and permission to spend a day curled with a book.
This last part is the one I pause on. A day curled with a book snuggled into a sleeping bag while still present to the world. In the camper I'd climb up onto the big bed where, unlike at home, the activity of the day was still around me. Mom making coffee, people walking by on the gravel road or forest paths on their way to the bathrooms, the lake or simply walking. I could hear the conversational cadences of other nearby families and wonder, as I heard cars rumble by, where they might be going. I realize now that at home we were isolated from the world whereas here I felt in the midst of it. But this began as a memory about spending a day curled up with a book.
I was a voracious consumer of Nancy Drew, Little House on the Prairie, and comics. We read Batman, Archie, Richie Rich. I have a particular memory of a comic where the animal characters lived out stories inspired by the Canterbury Tales, the nod to which I noticed only in retrospect while studying English literature in high school. Oh, and Mad Magazine. Classic summer reading.
As I dive into this, the memory shifts from child to teen, books morphing. Titles are less immediately available to memory now as I move away from reading series over and over to more random and more complex and mature fare. King Rat, Catch 20 20. And still Mad Magazine. Mad, in fact, may have been my introduction to seeing the world through a lens that was more critical, less inclined to the easy and prevalent story.
I still read, a lot, and pretty much every day. But rarely do I have, or perhaps it's do I take, a day to spend with a book. Despite living in this place that feels like cottage country surrounded by the essence of lazy summer day. On my recent mini holiday my niece and I both opted for an afternoon of staying home. She too lives in a place surrounded by coastal trees and in sight of the ocean so all of the sensory cues were there. I sat in the rocking chair by the window while she streamed escapist tv. Like toddlers engaged in parallel play, the presence of the other was all that was necessary.
This brings me back to now and here. Sitting at the kitchen table with the park and ocean in sight, in the air, sun burning through the cloud cover. Now having to decide whether to stay in the world of words or leave the book for later.
~
Centred on evocative and deeply healing guided meditations, Kimiko holds Virtual Healing Circles Monday mornings at 9 a.m. and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. pacific. Please join us. Learn more at the Good Vibrations: the Energy of Resilience facebook page, check out the Healing link on this site or drop her a note by e-mail.
Centred on evocative and deeply healing guided meditations, Kimiko holds Virtual Healing Circles Monday mornings at 9 a.m. and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. pacific. Please join us. Learn more at the Good Vibrations: the Energy of Resilience facebook page, check out the Healing link on this site or drop her a note by e-mail.
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Kimiko Karpoff - Unravelled
This state of unraveling
presumes that At some point
I was ravelled. How could
I have missed such a thing?
How could I have not known when
I was knit beautifully
into something Wonderful, Warm,
That I could wrap-around myself.... That
someone could have wrapped around them
That you would look at
and say “wow
What a lovely beautiful
Raveled garment, item, Being this is .... ....
How could I have not known?
And now I feel the threads pulling
as if someone is at the other end
and just tugging and tugging
that One piece that one single piece
that makes it all come undone ....
Am I puddling onto the floor now?
Am I being re-wound lovingly
into a ball to be made into something else ....?
Is this Someone trying to pull it back
until the fatal flaw has been exposed
and removed and then it will stop
and the re-knitting will begin?
Or will I be nothing But my component Piece ....
Ready to be made anew
Or needing to be untangled
From the place Where
I have fallen in a pile on the floor ....
