Riverrun | Sensing into Automatic Expression

(Hello friends. A riverrun is one way I make sense of the wild currents of being coursing through my sense instrument. Once I jump into the river I close my eyes and write without pause, without thought. My usual practice is to follow the neural impulse into movement, into cycles of polar essence, contraction/expansion. Keeping my hands on a keyboard in this process creates an interesting constraint that isn't always very pleasant. The content here isn't important. My hope is to offer a pathway that may inspire you into an imaginal exploration of your own sensing/moving process, either through your own riverrun writing or with an attunement into your subtle impulses and images waiting to be danced in the depths of your awareness.)

riverrun

embodied flow, opening up to the spaces between, the substance of my stubby stance, the dance, the dream, the space between. left throat coated witha slight panic. a breath, a release of extensors, settling into my seat, a release, a relief, grief dreaming my eyes home.

breathing, waiting. breathing waiting.

an anger of pain stripping my bark to the bone. a punched rib cracking in the pressure to withhold emotion's turbulent flow flinging my flimsy kayakkety yak yak into the rocks of my ribs. my heart bounces into the swirling churn, dashed against the sharp edges shaping my pathway. tired of this river, or maybe my response to this river. throat leaps up, a red egg lodged left right above an empty chamber cracking light above my heart. the whole, this fear, this pain masquerading as distraction. my left shoulder girdle, scapula, cuff and on down detaches from my core self like an arm of octopus, released in the struggle for life. i squirt my dark ink by withdrawing into the focused obsession of order and novel emergence. the ground slips away below me, the yapping dogs of responsibility and concern fading below the atmosphere of my easy breath shaped by this beauty.

over right, skull capped, an angry punch, drunk with hidden habits and tonic. heart clutches, left arm curls, a collapse of being, hiding in the asymmetry of protection, a closing of the vertical line, a translation of history into body, concept into form. a swarm of bees buzzing in my left throat lining down to upper heart and through to a left wrist. right eye awakens in this pattern, a curling fold upper right to lower left. following following.

what is this sensation above my heart like a black hole, a pinch in the fabric of my contraction, sense pulled into the horizon spin of this full dreaming disturbance. belly, chest, throat, ribs, heart, kidney, liver, eye,  shoulder, arm, wrist all streaming into this black attractor. my resistance is fear, my holding the stability of identity. this whirlpool of hollow sensation  pulls me in like a torus magnet.

ah, a magnet from edge of left scapula to a hollow above and right of my heart. flowing in from the front and out through my back, a dimensional torus of magnetic lines misaligned with the wholeness of aliveness.

softening, listening, releasing organization keeping me from the fullness of this wholeness in this nested being.

an intense line of sensation rising up the inside of left arm into left throat where it does a tangled dance of corrosive angles and sudden turns, choatic knots of heat and aggression finally shooting up in a straight line through my left eye and ito the sky above.


now softening into the curving lines rising up my left arm, spirals moving to upper arm, into my chest, spinning a few rapid spins up through my throat, double spin in skull through right eye and up to sky.

the bar magnet of my spine consciously attracts the left lines to center. soft echoes remain upon left. breath guides a slowing of the rise. (perhaps the acceleration remains the same and i'm just perceiving a gentler fractal?)

the rhythm the rain the quiet pain turning inside out in a buzzing hum beyond the rigid clicks of habit

a return to a quiet breath. wholeness healing wholeness

aliveness intensified in the presence, acceptance and engagement of what is.

Dog hiding in tree, waiting for squirrels

The voices of my ten thousand blue beings rising in the trembling air

Palouse practice: Spiral Root & dogs (Motion Archives)

Winter Solstice Portal

Traveling upon earth's axial tilt
Through solar winds
To galaxies of wonder and awe
Awakening imaginative soul.

Buddhastone Clan

Expanding Circles of Being Light Upon a Lake

The lake is as still as I have ever seen it, a clear mirror reflecting the lights of Queen Anne hill. It is late and cold, the half hidden moon resting behind a translucent, thin curtain of clouds. From my perch on the fourth floor deck I gaze out in quiet delight over the rows of houseboats below. I am as still as the lake's surface, held in the trance of beauty's gaze nested in a surrounding fog of white noise rising as endless waves upon waves from the ocean of Interstate 5 behind me.

I stare at the lines of light reaching across the lake, pulled deeper and deeper into shape and color until my perspective flips into an imaginative portal of possibility. Now I stand gazing at stalactites of pure light hanging down from a cave's flat ceiling. I wander through this astonishing landscape, breath held in wondrous astonishment. My cells start to shimmer like the buzz of a giant bee tasting the colors of life. I sense the entirety of my physical being as a state of undifferentiated wholeness held as a subtle, wavering shape in the coolness of night's air. Each simple breath is enough to unpack the space surrounding each simple cell spinning this body awake.

My gaze is drawn to a presence in the lake just beyond the houseboats, a gentle disturbance on the surface, a ripple of light expanding. I scan for the source, for an explanation. A boat? No boats. No boat? What??? Expanding circles of fairly large waves move from a single spot upon the lake, as if something huge had been dropped onto the surface. Or maybe something rising from below? It doesn't make sense, but I've already moved away from interpretations, easily gliding into a direct experience of the exceptional beauty unfolding below.

The front edge of the outer wave expands into the stalagtites of colored light, soft curves rippling through the straight lines. A hundred nested waves follow the first, each one a bit smaller until they disappear at the center source circle. My eyes follow the front wave as it reaches the western shore and rebounds back into the lake. I am transfixed by the rectangular patterns of interference spreading as a deepening complexity in the open bowl of water. Over a span of five minutes (?? I am a bit lost in time here) the ordered patterns give way to a gently boiling cauldron of chaotic flow. I expect the surface to slowly return to the mirror of glass it had been, but for as long as I watch, the water stays swaying and bubbling in random waves.

Within the tangible softness of the night air, sound and light, awareness returns to my body, into a shivering coldness rising from my toes. I walk into the darkness of the house and sit on the big couch hugging my knees. An odd thought ripples through my being, a gently wavering interpretation that delights my imaginative soul. Perhaps, I imagine, I have just seen the same energetic forces responsible for creating crop circles. But instead of a painting or sculpture left in the field as a mysterious artifact, I have watched a live performance. I sit with a sensation of wonder, breathing into the echoes of motion shaping my well-ordered cells in ever-expanding circles of light in the lake of my being.

Hearts Across my Center

Present

source

I awaken around 2am, get dressed and head out into the Palouse fields. Gracie is a bit confused at first, but happily follows along. I stop on a slope next to a young pondersosa pine about 13 feet high. A bright moon about 3/4 full is high in the sky, a bit to the south. A steady breeze with a touch of coolness blows from the west. My weight sinks into the earth, my skeleton a bridge between sky and magma core. Listening to my sway and spin I slowly begin to release thought and effort. The wind blows against my back rippling my spine in small waves upwards.

Suddenly the moonshadow of a huge bird crosses the bunchgrass in front of me. I look up to watch a magnificent owl soar directly between me and the moon, his open wings gliding into the flow. I am filled with a sudden sense of hope and grace, as if this creature is calling my soul to life, calling me to witness the vital and endlessly emerging source of being in this space of awareness and connection to the powerful beauty of this planet. I swoon into this opening and begin to bounce in a gentle, rapid rhythm upon the slope, my arms loose and free. Rushes of sweet pleasure rise up through my core in healing waves of bliss expanding into the bowl of this amazing valley. I feel fully awake and deliciously alive.

A Thrum of Hum

The last touch of light warms my spine, my skin soaking in the angled rays. Pondersosa shadows lengthen on the upward slope across the Palouse river. Gracie sits by my feet, wanting to stay close this evening, frightened by the fireworks. I am standing in a long sliver of light, my shadow scattered on the leaves and limbs of the apple tree growing near the porch. I feel awake and centered, alive with quiet sensation in a gently shifting resonance of fluid emotion.

I begin speaking softly in a language that feels like home in all its odd waves and currents, a language I have never spoken in quite this way. I am telling the land a story, or perhaps the land is telling me a story, or perhaps there is no need for interpretation just now. The language is beautiful and captures me with its quiet intensity and flowing chks and unusual sounds. Gestures dance through my hands as if each vowel desires visual form. Emotion pours through the telling. Sadness and joy in equal measure float upon an ocean of sweet love cradling a wholeness of being. I am held in this state for five, six minutes, suspended, my observer wavering in and out.

The story is told and I stand silent in the golden light, savoring the lingering field. I feel on a cusp of knowing but everything is still too soft and formless to understand. The thrum of a hummingbird sounds about two feet behind me, hovering. The littlebird darts suddenly to my right, a few paces in front of me. For a moment it is the plainest of brown birds, but then it catches the setting light and becomes a shimmer of iridescent greens before disappearing in a line to the south.

I stand in wonder at the immense mystery.

Gracie whimpers, nudging my leg with her nose. Time to move inside.

this bliss

Shapes of bliss forming this charge in an electrical storm of possibility guiding light through cloudbanks bouncing upon a northeast horizon. Spine turns in memory of spin's grin repeating embodied mantras of luminous proportion. Releasing into flow aligned with a slow throw of knowing, allofus turning towards a branching spray of delight drenching eyes in spiral columns of lifewind reaching to deep blue skies.

This bliss kissing this wish: guidance into goodness upon wings of beauty.

Solar Eclipse

a soft knowing flow alignment

magma > earth > me > moon > sun

spinning out waves of being as expansive space
turning through core burning through core holding
electrical-chemical-habitual chargeflows
cranking identity down as repetition of desire

a core yearning
this burning turn
halos my rise
through golden folds
of funneled flow

all lines align, all waves awaken

what might we share
as expansive goodness and beauty?
let it out and up!
deliver us a centripital center
guiding wholeness home

shafts of slanted light above the bay invite my whispering sense
into a middle float beyond effort, thought and identity-entities

entreaties fold through my holding
a bold scolding scorching release.
spirals unfurl with graceful arcs
forming pathways of the now-presenting-past.
the loop scoops me up with a compressive charge
hooping my contraction into time told as personal story
embodied in the once frozen tunes of yesterday’s intensity.

released into the wind

softening into a leaning madrona
draped upon her soft skin, right leg dangling,
hip joint honky tonk bad ass holding on for dear life
tension poking up my hurried partialities.

a dozen ways of relinquishing effort in her strong arms.
folded, stretched, cradled, turned, open, folded
her roots hold deep
effort sinks as a sigh
offered to the bay below.

Buddhastone