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In Africa, I experienced the power of the full Moon in absence of urban light pollution. Enough illumination to reveal pathways while maintaining the mystery and magic of Night. A gentle light that nurtured a sense of enveloped connection to Creation.
The Moon embodies the Feminine Divine. Women full-bellied with child are as the full Moon. I think of Mary, weeks before giving birth, belly round and taut, glowing with Love.
The Moon is of the Night, apt for life and birth. Each of us was formed and gestated in the gentle dark full-Moon-like warmth of the womb, as are seeds that grow from the nurturing soil of the belly of Mother Earth.
These dark cold days as we draw close to the longest night may not seem the fertile season. Yet it is the cycle that precedes all visible manifestations of new life. It was evening before morning. Winter precedes spring. We are nourished in deep and ancient ways in the belly of darkness under the light of the Moon. I invite you to embrace this time. Turn your lights low, sit in the quiet darkness and listen for what is germinating deep within.
~
Centred on evocative and deeply healing guided meditations, Kimiko holds On-line 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 On-line 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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Winter darkness creates space for journey
Listen ~ 9 minutes
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Kimiko Karpoff - Walk into Advent ~ Wrapped
It's raining again and the start of Advent. I'm looking out the window but haven't put my contacts in this morning so the world is a landscape of soft shapes and colours. Somehow it seems right for this moment.
I'm feeling the draw into this time of Darkness, a darkness of reflection. I almost can feel it wrapping around me like a quilt. Warm and comforting ....
In the darkness, if it is clear and really cold, that's when the stars shine the brightest and you can see those ancient fires telling their stories, from great distances of time and space. It reminds me that our stories, my story, comes from the dust of those same places, the sparks of those same fires .... .... ....
It feels like there's a lot to consider this Advent .... .... .... Like those ancient wise ones I feel like I'm on a great journey .... To find something really important. And yet, at the same time, I don't feel like I need to look for something or to find something that is not already accessible to me. But somehow that journey metaphor still feels like the right metaphor for traversing this space and time. Almost as if what I will find does not come from outside but is in fact my story and the way that I will tell it. Stars tell us their story in light .... What is the way that I tell my story .... ?
I think we have made this Advent time too clean. We have stripped it of its power by focusing on a kind of cartoon version of following wise men on the star, of holiday activities. Advent Is a time of pain, really. The bloodiness of birth In a manger. The long journey that precedes it .... .... The perseverance of continuing through a time where it's hard sometimes to see because the light is low and it's cold, where we are in any case.
And now here where I am we add in rain. Flooding rain. The ground is saturated. The paths that we have laid out for ourselves, in a very literal way, have washed away or been covered in debris .... And we are called to stay where we are and just sit in this moment. I'm feeling the call to be in it from this place ....
The darkness wraps around me. And although it is daytime now I can see the light that shines in the darkness. But it is the darkness that is my calling card today. It is where what I seek is held within me. It is where my love lies, my story lies. And I walk towards my story .... I walk toward myself ....
~
Centred on evocative and deeply healing guided meditations, Kimiko holds On-line 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 On-line 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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Listen ~ 2 minutes, 20 seconds
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Kimiko Karpoff - Here and gone/where you touched me
It was always the case that You would be here
and gone
It doesn't matter who the You is
Any of us
Are here And we're gone
moving in-and-out of each other's circles of existence
Some of you closer than others
Some of you into the most intimate moments
of my circle of Self
And yet it's still true
that You are here and gone
This isn't a lament
This is simply a truth telling
And actually, truth be known, it is
a telling of gratitude
Because the part
The part that I want You to hear the gratitude for
the part that I want to remind Myself of
Is that You were here ....
And truth be known
Even though You are now gone
I still feel You
Blessed be ....
~
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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My body knew before my brain remembered. I’d been walking around for days with this hole punched through me, like those cartoons where someone is shot by a cannon and it cookie cutters their middle out.
November 11, 2016, we’re scheduled to take Paul into the hospital to spend the weekend on the palliative care ward. The idea is to be in a place where he can be monitored while they get his pain meds sorted out. Days before he had od’ed and it was scary as f*^k.
We hadn’t anticipated how Remembrance Day would impact getting him there. The streets were blocked for the parade and gathering at city hall, and all the feeder streets that would take us to the bridge seemed to be barricaded. We were turned back at every route we tried until we were able to detour through the other side of the city.
It turns out this would portend the whole experience. This was supposed to have been temporary. Come in, get your pain under control and then go home. Instead it all fell apart. I mean, more than it already was. Everything had started crumbling when he found that first lump that he thought was a canker sore. But for a while it seemed like the pieces could be put back together. Now they were crushed, dust.
I started to feel this hole earlier in the week. And I realize now that taking Bill into care had triggered it. The institutional feel, the medicalization, the stark room, staff in scrubs. Even the way Bill’s and Paul’s gaits resembled each other as they walked through the corridors.
The Cowboy Junkies singing David Bowie’s Five Years broke me open today, tapping a deep and ferocious grief ~ a profound and alive grief that cradled love and regret, desire and loneliness, hope and joy. It acknowledged that while there is grief in the loss there is also grief in the new possibilities that emerge from that. That might seem strange. Hold it for a minute in the context of Remembrance Day and maybe you’ll see it.
Five years. And it’s everything pouring out of me. Five years. Grief for lost opportunity. Five years. For the Earth, for racism and violence. Five years. For the music that will never be. Five years. And tears of joy, for the fierce beauty of life. Five years. My body alive to possibility. . .
Five years. I love You, You’re beautiful
Yes
You
~
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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His tuneless hum cued me when he was moving. I’d listen for the shuffle of shoes to hear where he was heading. Bathroom. Back to the living room. Ok. I could relax.
It's been 19 months since I came to support Bill through pandemic lockdown. Like everyone I had no idea that a year and a half later we'd still be in it. As the waves waxed and waned, the steadier tide was dementia. This is one that rolls in but does not recede. Now we're coming to the point where I can no longer on my own keep the rising water at bay. In a few days he goes into care.
Two main emotions hold a balanced tension within me. Sadness acknowledges that it will be a loss for him to leave his home — his favorite spot on the couch, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, watching the hummingbirds at the feeder on the porch. He no longer knows the neighbours who greet him as they walk their dogs, but he enjoys the interaction and they all think he's so sweet.
I've known Bill for 35 years and only recently have I experienced the sweet that others were exposed to. Although he and Amy, my in-laws, Paul's parents, have lived close to us, we never had a particularly close relationship. We saw them for holiday meals, occasional Sunday suppers and events. Twice when Finn was a baby we took little holidays together but that's a long time ago. Bill always seemed emotionally distant and somewhat disinterested in our lives. I knew that alcoholism had affected his marriage and relationship with his children. And although he has been dry for most of the years I've known him, his interactions with his children remained, at best, surface. After Amy died we made a point of reaching out more, more phone calls, more visits. I continued that after Paul died.
The other abiding emotion, I recognize, is gratitude. And when I say that, I can feel the truth of it wash through me like a cleansing wave. Gratitude for these past 19 months. Gratitude for the opportunity to have a relationship with Bill that would not have been possible otherwise. To eat meals together, to tend .... not just that I tended him but in small ways he tended me .... Calling out and asking if I needed help in the kitchen, calling me M’dear as I assisted him to prepare for and snuggle into bed ....
It was a fraught beginning for sure after the first few weeks I was here. Then his dementia took him to a place of feeling like I had done something — I had sabotaged the phones, I was preventing him from driving, which to be honest I was. I parked my car in front of the garage so that he couldn't take the truck even if he wanted to. Him threatening to call the police to make me leave but not actually knowing how to do it. And then that passed and we settled into rhythms that changed with the tide of dementia .... Where he used to make coffee, get his own breakfast and shower himself, now there is so much less that he does. The last thing that he still will do is to make himself a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
The time here has given me an opportunity to slow down, to be in this place, and to inhabit a world where he and I are family. And granted, he doesn’t know that in truth we actually are. He knows who I am by name but not by relationship. He knows that I am the one who is here with him. And when the homecare worker asked him what he would do if I couldn’t live here anymore, he didn’t have a response for that other than “that would be a tragedy.”
But it’s not just the fact that he is my father-in-law that makes us family. It’s that we have shared this home together, this world together. We have broken bread and washed dishes. I have helped him bathe. We have gardened together. We have rejoiced over the hummingbirds coming to feed, even when he couldn’t think of what to call them.
It’s a great gift to recognize the gratitude in this time. And the other day as we sat over a meal and I realized that in a few days I would be sitting alone at that table, I felt a pang of recognition for the emptiness that the house would feel when he left. Because as much as I have kept him company, he has also kept me company. He has provided me with a rhythm of checking in, creating a break from my work in order to make sure he had fresh coffee and a sandwich for lunch. Caring for him has necessitated focus and structure.
When he's gone I don’t know if it really will feel as if the tide has receded. Or is it that it had washed up so high that it was time to step out of it altogether? Maybe the latter. And, our relationship will continue. I will visit him where he is. And it may be that he will be unhappy with me, unhappy there, I don’t know. It may be that after a few days he settles right in. And I hope that at least in some way that will be the case. He will be surrounded by people who are caring for him. And I will be left here with the cat and the garden and the mementos of the life that he lived here with Amy and then with me.
- Published on
Each image is infused with loving notions of what it means for someone who thirsts to be quenched.
We are quenched not only by water. We are quenched by beauty.
We are quenched by being held. We are quenched by being seen ....
We are quenched not only by water. We are quenched by beauty.
We are quenched by being held. We are quenched by being seen ....
Float
Listen ~ 4 -1/2 minutes
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Kimiko Karpoff - Ikoi
The idea for this series of scarves, came from a desire to take beautiful images, captured in photographs, and create something that wasn't simply a still image to be hung on a wall, but something beautiful that could be carried, worn into the world ....
These particular images were chosen because I was looking for images that worked both to be hung in a way that was maybe different than a framed photograph, hung to catch movement of air, but also, if worn, maintained the sense of what it was. I had previously printed a beautiful image on silk that did in fact, when hung, catch the movement of air and was quite striking. But if it were to be worn you would lose the image itself ....
And so the series Ikoi. Ikoi is a Japanese word that in a basic level means to quench ....
Drift
Each of the 4 also carries its own particular way of holding the notion of that quenching watery image ~ Refresh, Drift, Ripple, Float .... ....
These images are photographs taken of petals and leaves where they had fallen on water. I did not place those petals and leaves there, it was simply where they had fallen .... And in capturing in that way that which was ultimately a moment in, you could say a dying. And to acknowledge the beauty of that leaf or petal as it was captured and held by the water. A sense of Peace. A sense of even Compassion .... ....
Refresh
Each image is infused with these loving notions of what it means for someone who thirsts to be quenched. We are quenched not only by water. We are quenched by beauty. We are quenched by being held. We are quenched by being seen .... This springs a kind of healing.
Ripple
And so each scarf is infused with this healing energy .... And they can hang on the wall and you can see them. And you can wrap it around yourself and feel the beauty of the silk, the warmth of it, the airiness, the softness. And carry that image, carry that sense, carry that healing with you into the world, into your day .... ....
Ikoi. Quench. Beauty. This is what I was trying to create with this series ....
~
A limited number of scarves are available for purchase.
100% Silk Georgette. 65 x 16.5 inches [165 x 42 cm]
The pictured hanging is half the length of the full scarf (It's hung from the centre to create two layers)
I have not been able to source the pictured hanger. The hanger is not included. (If anyone has a tip on these, let me know.)
Each one is $185. Please message me to purchase.
A limited number of scarves are available for purchase.
100% Silk Georgette. 65 x 16.5 inches [165 x 42 cm]
The pictured hanging is half the length of the full scarf (It's hung from the centre to create two layers)
I have not been able to source the pictured hanger. The hanger is not included. (If anyone has a tip on these, let me know.)
Each one is $185. Please message me to purchase.
- Published on
Autumn has me considering what it means to be grounded. As leaves fall, they become, quite literally, grounded, on the Earth. And, if left to their natural cycle, of the Earth, part of the soil. In order for that to happen, they have to have been released, let go.
This is the part that draws me to wonder, in both senses of that word. Curiosity and awe. When I speak of being grounded myself, when I turn my energy to this, how do I mean that?
Being grounded connects me to this world. It allows me to be present. Often I do this through visualizing a deep connection to Mother Earth such as through a cord or a root. I cycle my energy through Earth, releasing anything whose task is finished for the season, trusting the continuing cycle. I also feel the deep connection, as if some part of my being rises from the Mother. This is part of the awe.
Another wondering is about the release. Not so much about those energies I release, but about myself. Like what in Buddhism is called non-attachment, which is not just about stuff, but even how we perceive ourselves, our self identity if you will. When I am truly grounded, I can trust I have a place here beyond who I see myself as in my identities as mother, lover, friend, child, minister, writer or whatever. At least that is the work, the goal. And in trusting I can let go. In letting go I can land. In landing I can settle and know myself held here as I become part of the soil. In other words grounded.
This is the part that draws me to wonder, in both senses of that word. Curiosity and awe. When I speak of being grounded myself, when I turn my energy to this, how do I mean that?
Being grounded connects me to this world. It allows me to be present. Often I do this through visualizing a deep connection to Mother Earth such as through a cord or a root. I cycle my energy through Earth, releasing anything whose task is finished for the season, trusting the continuing cycle. I also feel the deep connection, as if some part of my being rises from the Mother. This is part of the awe.
Another wondering is about the release. Not so much about those energies I release, but about myself. Like what in Buddhism is called non-attachment, which is not just about stuff, but even how we perceive ourselves, our self identity if you will. When I am truly grounded, I can trust I have a place here beyond who I see myself as in my identities as mother, lover, friend, child, minister, writer or whatever. At least that is the work, the goal. And in trusting I can let go. In letting go I can land. In landing I can settle and know myself held here as I become part of the soil. In other words grounded.
~
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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The solid and ethereal dead Oak Trees of Buttertub Marsh lay bare their teachings.
Buttertubs Marsh
Listen ~ 9 minutes
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Kimiko Karpoff - Contemplating Oaks - The might oak laid bare
I'm having a slow morning. Feeling contemplative, reflective. Wondering where things are going. By that I mean everything, my life ....
I've been thinking about those Oak Trees we saw on our walk. The dead ones. They were so beautiful. And I feel like they have stories to tell, things to teach me. They were so solid. And surrounded by all of the green trees. And yet there was something Eternal about them, stripped of of all greenery. Stark. Bare .... .... There was something .... Almost, huh, ethereal about them. And I wonder how can something be both solid and ethereal? And yet....
And yet ....
Life is so interesting, of course it is, that almost sounds trite and mundane. But it’s so true. Even with those trees, we think of trees that die in the forest, when we see them and they are decomposing, creating fertile soil for new growth. These trees don’t seem to be doing that. You almost expect to look at them and see a buzzard sitting on one of the bare branches that continues to reach to the sky. They’re like ghosts. Majestic ghosts. Continuing to hold their place.
I wonder, what is the lesson in that for me today? That even in these moments of unsurety, when I myself feel a bit like a ghost, a bit not-quite-here, between two worlds....that I am here holding my place, still me. Even in those moments where I feel stripped bare, still me.
Even surrounded by greenery, still me.
But there’s something more than that, something deeper, something about rootedness. Something about solidness. Something about waiting for the moment. Maybe the thing is that we expect, or I expect, things to happen in a certain time. This happens and then the next thing will follow and then the next. And that isn’t how life works.
Nothing, or very little, about my life, has fallen into any kind of pattern that I would have considered to be a pattern when I looked forward on my life, none of the patterns that I was taught as a child.
Those oak trees have lost their capacity to spread leaves out and gather the sun. But their roots are strong. I wonder if they’re still there connected to the network below the ground? If they still hold the wisdom, the knowledge, to share with the trees around them? They still provide, I am quite certain, some kind of shelter, some kind of food for insects. And maybe birds. Maybe other creatures as well.
I look and I see a dead tree. It seems to reduce them. Yeah, simply to reduce them. They are Oak Trees. Beautiful and mighty. Hm. And maybe it is just to acknowledge that.
Maybe they aren’t there to teach ME anything. I’m probably of no consequence to them, quite honestly. But I can admire them. I can ponder. They have given me food for thought. And of that I am grateful.... on this quiet morning of contemplation in the rain.
~
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.
- Published on
Listen - less than 2 minutes
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Kimiko Karpoff - Poetry, Everywhere
Poetry I have learned
is not just words. It could be
wine or food or music or
whatever helps us take the gifts
of the World and convey them
in a way that shares it, that interprets
it, that gifts it beyond ourselves ....
And I think too that Nature herself
speaks poetry. In the Flowers that grow
through the cracks in the sidewalk. In
the way the Clematis grow over the barbed wire
on the side of the golf course. The Blackberries
abundantly growing everywhere .... Hanging
its sweet fruit over the fences And in the weedy
wild lot. That too is poetry ....
~
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.
- Published on
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.
