Seasons of life change. Just as the earth is turning into the autumnal equinox at this time where I live in New England - I too am turning toward. I am turning toward renewal as the earth is getting ready to begin her restful time. The days are becoming visibly shorter, with darkness falling around 7:00 pm. I love this time of year and it is where I feel most at home. The brightness of color is turning toward autumn hues. Black-eyed Susan’s still shine their vibrant yellow throughout the gardens. The plants are growing more brittle and withered. Leaves tumble down off the trees when the winds blow.

As I walk around the gardens I am everyday reminded of the continuity and spiralic nature of my heart beating in rhythm with the land that I live with. My very good friends the rabbits have visited me throughout the summer. I see less of them now. I think about their preparations for winter time. A House Wren landed on my door stoop yesterday. We said hello as I thought of how the animals remind me of signs and symbols - important to carry in my thinking in my days. Get ready for the autumn. Rest and Renewal - yes, even in the autumn time.

I have been absent for a very long time from this Field Notes space. My mother crossed over to the other side two summers ago now. I have been on a long journey of finding new ways of living in this world. It has not been an easy road -as many of you will know this territory as well. Perhaps as time goes on in this space - I will find ways to share some of the grief journey with all of you. There is no other side. There is - different. The noticing of who you become after your mother leaves you is at times a heavy boulder carried around on some days. I have so many things I wish I could tell her now. Other days - I feel her helping me along. Helping me to notice all the beautiful parts of my life.

I think of her each day I walk down my doorway pathway here in this image. She always loved my little spiritual altar at the end of the rock walkway. She stopped to admire it whenever she came by. I am surprised in big and small ways when my mother shows up in my presence. It is startling - comforting - wonderful - grief-stricken. I share this here as a way of telling you - I have been absent from here swimming in the waters of grief time. I have felt muddled and not quite my self. In the image we can see that even with the bright sunlight - a shadow is hovering nearby. Looking into a toolbox of experience - we can learn to navigate these hard places.

It is my intention to return to my Field Notes space with renewed energy and love. I have a great many things to offer in the realm of Biography and Sacred Arts to you kind reader. The tarot cards here-The Witches’ Wisdom Tarot by Phyllis Curott with artwork by Danielle Barlow - represent a deep intention setting for The Bone Lines land of wonder, imagination, creativity, kindness and deep listening. I feel that each card represents a frame for Field Notes going forward, While this is a quieter and more inward time of year on this land as I mentioned above - as the inner pieces of knowing become more crystalized as we travel inward - the outward expression of these jewels can become an offering to one’s self - to the world. It is my gift to the world.

May the inner knowing and wisdom - held onto so tenderly - when we feel lost - come to the surface in mindful ways that offer up to you a life of tending and listening to find your way. I hope that sacred magic and wonderment will drip into your full rivers of life. If I can bring a new perspective - a helping offering in looking at your life with a lens of - Biography: The Artful Life - a deep gratitude will envelop me. Holding this vision for myself and for you brings me great joy!

Books I am reading. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is A Witch by Rivka Galchen. The story begin in 1618, in the German duchy of Wurttemberg. Plague is spreading. The Thirty Years’ War has commenced and fear an suspicion are in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of Leonberg, Katharina Kepler is accused of being a witch.

Katharina is an illiterate widow, known by her neighbors for her herbal remedies and her successful children, including the oldest, Johannes, who is the Imperial Mathematician and the renowned author of the laws of planetary motion. It’s enough to make anyone jealous, Katharina has done herself no favors by being out and about and in everyone’s business. So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold accuses Katharina of offering her a bitter witch drink that has made her ill, Katharina is in trouble, facing the threat of financial ruin, torture, and even execution.

Drawing on real historical documents and infused with the intensity of imagination, sly humor, and intellectual fire for which Rivka Galchen is known, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch touchingly illuminates a society and a family undone by superstition, the state , and the mortal convulsions of history.

• November 2023
• poetry
• tarot
• The Bone Lines
• thebonelines

Winter awakens in me the quiet understory of what is necessary in my life. The past year of learning to live without my own mother in this world began with a chaotic journey of change. Grief is a mystery unfolding. The learning not to pick up the phone, sharing photos, planning visits, texting funny notes, remembering that it is all different now. In the learning - at the beginning - I went through a massive cleaning out in my own home - again. I have done this before. However, this time felt different. One of the first books I read when I was just 13 years old was, Walden by Henry David Thoreau. It is a book that I hold dearly. While I understand that it is not a perfect framework for today in some ways - it is also a book of its time. It grabbed hold of me and never really let go. I held onto this ethos as I began cleaning out my home shortly after my mother passed through to the next world.

I systematically went through every room and began getting rid of furniture, clothing, shoes, saved paperwork, books, extras of anything, things no longer wanted. I put some of it on the side of the road and folks came and picked it up. Furniture was dismantled that was past its use for anyone. It is an interesting process to see how more freedom comes with the letting go of items. Perhaps a bit of a Swedish Death cleaning. I do have a great grandfather that came here from Sweden. I think my mother would be pleased that I was making my life easier - more simplified. She had been here when I had a go around awhile back. She had given us some things before she died. I liked that she didn’t wait until she was gone.

In the cleaning out I thought of my mother and cried and kept going. Somehow it helped me in the beginning days. I had something to focus on in the crying days. The crying days have not left though they are more random and at sudden moments of remembering from somewhere beyond. Like a thought whisper comes in and pulls at the sinew of heart muscle. Involuntary grief-slaughter is what it feels a bit like. How could she really have vanished just like that?

I know these feelings are as old as time. As old as humans loving one another. When we clean things out of the way, a layer of beauty opens up that wasn’t noticed before. A piece of paper holding a scent of an old friend. A piece of jewelry takes one back to a moment sitting and dreaming. Maybe that contra dance shoe reminds you of just how young and pretty you really were - twirling around the dance floors of Vermont. Yet, the nostalgia is really only my heart singing loudly. Pain and grief are not over ridden by getting rid of - anything. It is carried along in deep pockets of missing - sung out to open fields and oceans and sky’s filled with remembering. We don’t have to carry it alone. Our belongings will carry us until we no longer feel the need to belong to a possession. A door opens up, we just Be Longing. The longing will always be there. Do we choose to transform it into something more comfortable?

Sideways glance toward a wind whisper or a shadow bending. There is a heart outside of me. My own memories and heart struggle can come by from time to time - showing me a world that is carried heavily and mightily. It is brave to keep walking forward through and with grief. Lessening shows up on the roadways. Magnification corners the edges held by tears. Laughter as is if my own mother is inside of me filling me up with joy. Grief is a companion that sidles up beside us and settles in for a long journey of living. This is not a well of getting over or getting through. This well of grief invites us to look deeper into the dark. Those places that formed us long ago in a quiet place - beating hearts - with my own mother. This is what cleaning out has brought to me. A sort of tumbling inside a matrix of stars that shimmer in cotillions - waiting for hands to grab hold.

May the breath of heaving, heavily, catch the sparkle of the deep - simplicity. I feel. I see. I know. I hold out my hand to the mystery.