Halloween Tarot by Karin Lee - artwork Kipling West

Laden

An internal beat quietly is present in the undergrowth of weedy living -
Lambs ears is fading - unable to hear the stroke of ignorance
Seeing into earths seeds of abundance - they ask for another chance -

Reflection require - a heavy carry of past viewpoint - skip a stone across oceans -
Over there in my field - I am sturdy in my unknowing -
Wire cutters are readied - a mantle of disappear is a shroud -

Lemniscate past this gate - clear eyed - uncertain masks in lightened darkness
Shipwrecked against shores of forgetting - dampened spirits -
Holy helpers - pull at the weight of a lightly worn mistake -

Balanced scales - fear winds round rocks in forested landscape -
Gnarled sticks hold lichen - ancient history in tendrils of noise -
Wise comes - listen to the wind - it’s above your head full of thinking.

~Linden of The Bone Lines

The Herbcrafters Tarot

Hard Knot

Gather up simple tools of lifeways - teapot, herbs, kettle to cook in -
Pestle to grind away at the hard knots of rumination -
Carried communion - linen shroud will cover ignorance -
Heat - steam dilates a question to essential point - it simmers -
Distillation - contemplation - excavation - dig into marrow -
Embrace internal wisdom of priestess - people’s wisdom is not captured -
Turmeric - earthen colorway - warmth carried - dyed escape across oceans -
If rooted footsteps find - possible freedom - embodied -
Road side mandalas created - sign posts of what is to come - measured -
Forgotten - disagreement etched into memory - permanence -
Hat removed - carry the tablets across arid landscape -
Sweat pours down furrowed brow - rankled - wronged - wretched -
Blood pools - ask the question - another moon night glimmers across - Time -

~Linden of The Bone Lines

The Herbcrafters Tarot

apple boxes poverty land orchards

Long ago I worked at this orchard with a good friend that I had met at weaving school. That is a story for another day. These boxes! We filled so many of these apple boxes after full days picking and hauling and transporting in a tractor. Often we worked after being out at music late at night, contradancing, or breaking down in my old VW Beetle.

Soul Midwife

Found beside zucchini - pickles in a crock just inside the kitchen door
Friendship forming - as distraction of loves held us captured
Waking each day - me upstairs, you downstairs
The frost coming closer each day

Looking out over Poverty Lane - white old farmhouse surrounded by apples
The showers were ice cold - warmth was in the working
In the orchard - in the barns - next to the woodstove
Stacking wood - throwing firewood - scar on my finger is a wedding ring

Pulling on woolen socks - handknit hats - those confining boots - work
Later on stomping in boots - contra dancing late into the night on Halloween
Our food of choice was zucchini bread - pickles in the crock
Scooping off surface mold - a daily ritual

Poverty Lane Weavers - my fathers contribution of 300$ - yours from New Jersey
You kept weaving even after I had moved on - soul midwifing in my heart
Unexpected cars rolling backward down the driveway -
Migraines laying waste to another day of work - are you okay in there

Love snuck in through all the cracks - is it love at that age or lust
Walks in the woods with one too many - Tom Wessels before he was a nature teacher
Building his house - carved from extra curricular activities
Rock climbs - car rides - oatmeal so heavy you could plaster walls with it

Long talks into the night - a shaker table handmade by a local woodworker
Barn building - over the next ridge - hauling more than I could handle
Looking back - scent of apples in boxes brings me presently there
It occurs to me - looking back is cavernous - walking forward

~Linden of The Bone Lines

Poverty Land Orchards

The above images are from Poverty Land Orchard - a place I worked a very long time ago.

Barefoot Girl With Cat Florence Harrison

““There are two beings in a door; a door awakens in us a two-way dream, that is doubly symbolical.””

— Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space.

Emma Florence Harrison (1877-1955) was an artist from Australia. I see a young girl coming through a doorway with her little cat beside her. Doorway into story is a rich life to carry within. Doorways are a powerful threshold symbol. We are entering or leaving. A doorway closed is something we anticipate entering or contemplate - what is behind the door. Often we take for granted coming and going through these threshold moments. A doorway is an opportunity to pause. What are we entering - What are we leaving - What are we anticipating? We have entered a new place. Now we leave something of ourselves behind. Entering - we bring who we are in to the space.

“The threshold is the place of expectation”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. This is a densely lyrical - almost magical book on our experience of architecture. I did a three study on this concept explored in Bachelard’s book, The Poetics of Space, in a three year Biography Work Training. Home - Dwelling - Poetics. I hope to share more here about how we live in our home places and home ways.

Winter is whispering around the edges of the forest. A moment needs to hear. Storms come - blanket the earth - travail left behind. Courage - a man opening a school - relief a mission of “for the people”. Courageous - a field note - written on historical madness - empathic requirement etched into veins. Waking up in heavy - weighted blizzard of scared. Our direction is lost - words. Internal - thoughts swirl - fragile missing crystalized templates of distant. Agony - long ago - formed a seeking. Original etching of stars - foment the fire of fraught justification. Participation is globalization - climate destruction realization. Wall of white - stinging eyelash - frozen breath hangs in the air. Longing to go back - retrace steps - recount mistakes. Hanging in balance - moving forward - sidesteps were the missteps. Stone cold - immovable mountain of weighted white - sleep is a moment away. Heaving forward - a distant cry reminds - there is no lack. All can be found in the cup of steaming - a book opens to the past.

Reclaim Oracle by Marion Constentin

Bow your head - sweet blush upon your cheeks. Maybe there sits a tear - caught in the corners of your eye. Those eyes that are big - round - half open - looking. Bouquet of wanting is as big as the number of many. Enclosed by all that is offered on the branches of display. Too much. When a simple array of choice is present - needs - desires - wrecked cars in getting from here to there - close the tunnel. Wide around a heart is evolutionarily all there is. Is progression in a constellation chart - if wanting - envious challenge shown suddenly on the dome of a brain. Look askance at your empty hand fulls. Who are you without. Discomfort is an avenue of asphalt destruction when shorn up by envy. Is envy a cousin to desire - tender seeping of hurt. The world shows a plenty non-existent - existent only in an advertisement. Wrap yourself in a cloak of contentment with what is in the hall of mirrors. Each flower picked - saved - held - opens. Chicory crowds out envy with a smell of divine.