a cup of weird and wild

WONDERFUL (adj.):
"way up in the sky, like a witch," as defined by Princess

WEIRD (adj.):
"to turn, to wind, to become"

WILD (adj.):
"fantastically irregular, inhabiting the forest"


The coffee heats in the pot as I watch--mystical, magic, mysterious. It's a simple task I do every day, heating coffee on the stove. Today was different. Today I am alive. My eyes are wild, my brain is unhinged and I finally (oh) saw what happens.

And I have no earthly idea how it happens--change. Coffee into steam. Heated so hot there is no other choice but to "yeowp!" and become air.

This pot, this steam, it transcends...just because I opened my eyes today and watched it. I actually watched a pot boil. No music, no radio, nothing on. Just me in silence with a silent wet dog sitting just as attentively at my feet. She has the gift of seeing, of wanting to see. She taps into the world through animal instincts--her starts and her fits and her need to see everything that catches her eye or her nose. Freezing mid-step to listen, to see way, way, way off into the distance. No future, just now. Friend or foe? Something delicious? The feeling of warm wind as we move forward.

I feel more grounded. The screen on my window beside me is smeared with rainwater. Earlier, I saw pansies in pots drowning in rain. They'll dry or they won't. They'll die or they won't. There will be more. I am here, writing. Carrie said, write! And I am. I resisted the urge to go to the store or settle into some unimportant task. This is the thing. This is the fire. If I don't follow it, I'm...

I am following it. I am writing. I am collecting and gathering words. I am here. I am calling out for words. And sentences! I am ready. I am doing the writing and I AM SAFE HERE.

I am moving through the fear with this small pen. It may run out of ink, but I won't. My new pens say, "ink joy" on them. That's the kind, the line, the brand, the style. I was a copywriter for years and I know when something hits, when something lands. I know I bought those pens because they say "ink joy" on them. I am calling out to the pens, "Pens! Please, Pens! Let the joy come through, the weird and the wild joy. The WONDER.

Is that was that was? Wonder? Finally! Standing over a pot and watching it boil. Well, almost. No one wants burnt coffee. Standing over a pot, wonderful like a witch, watching the air call to the coffee, enticing it to let go, to become steam, then air, then something...else. I know how that all happens, of course. The changes. Or I know at least how it happens. You heat something, add an edge. And at a certain temperature, "yeowp!" you have steam. But how wonderful! What a mystery. This steam circling the pot, rising, disappearing into thin air. What an illusion, this trick. Here, not here. How beautiful! How weird. Turning, winding, becoming. "Having power to control fate."

I don't feel like I am controlling fate. If I've learned anything in this coffee-spilling world it's that I have control over NOTHING.

BUT.

(Ring of my wind chimes. The wind is changing.)

I do feel that I have dropped into something...else...my intuition. A smidge. An iceberg tip. I have come to a deeper knowing of my body down here in this stream below my every day. In the pulse, I know what I am, what I have always been, and will always be (even when I am a lilac bush--soft, purple, quiet).

I will be weird, wonderful and wild.

I am here.

In the thick of brain meeting body meeting, I..."oh, hello soul. So nice to see you."

The steam is changing into air, into rain, into stream, a deeper seeing. I won't always swim here. I won't always drop down. I won't always watch the coffee almost boil with white hot intensity.

But today I did.

And that is everything.





With a nod and a tip of the hat to Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg.