Textures and Patterns

 from a recent trip to Blackwater Falls Nat'l Park:

    

"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.

I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down.”

- Annie Dillard, 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'

Coronation, or the Act of Crowning, with Mullein

When I was dealing with Corona in my lungs a couple months ago, I utilized Mullein in my formula.  I had some already harvested and dried at that time, but decided that I should also harvest some more to have on hand with this respiratory virus going around.  Mullein is heavy this year, as plants seem often want to do when they are needed, showing their perfect timing and immersion in the flow.

While harvesting I began to sing to Mullein about what was going on and why I was harvesting her leaves and then to sing to the virus that was meshing with my body. 

I'm not singer, but I am a long-time student of breath as a mindfulness practice, and the virus had made me short of breath, just doing simple activities like picking Mullein.  This shortness of breath for no real reason* (I wasn't running up a hill - nor did I have a knee on my neck) was a new experience for me (having never had asthma or pneumonia or anything like it) and I felt it important that I try to deep breathe and stay in touch with my lungs.  I think this is why the singing happened, this undeniable connection to breath.  I felt compelled and I obliged. 

The vibrations from singing with what little breath I could take felt healing for my body, just as I feel the cat's healing medicine when they lean against my chest and purr.  I am thankful for the ~sound.~  I sang to the virus as yet another way to connect to this other part of life that was finding its terrain in my body - lyrics of a willingness to hear its song too.  A mutual expression of meeting, of life, of relationship, of learning.

And here, this weekend, Mullein comes to me again in the most majestic form.  Truly a crowning.  <3

Corona is teaching us to look at what we are giving birth to; various things are coming to term that have long been in the works, but we still have choices to make as to have they are received and what we do with what is born unto us.

Also, I wanted to share my formulary for those who know the herbs well enough by sight.  I do not want to simply share a list of the herbs I utilized to get through the acute stages as they may not be the right ones for you.  There is not a one size fits all answer in Herbalism as the body that a pathogen engages plays a role in how the pathogen manifests - and even if it manifests at all.  This means that herbs are utilized for the specific body that has symptoms and what those symptoms are; Herbalism is not a 'take this for that' modality.  So my formula for Corona may not be your formula for Corona and you do not want to make yourself worse; so please consult with a qualified practitioner if you are wanting to utilize herbs for Corona.  But for those who know the herbs and understand differential diagnosis, I will share pictures for you to see what I utilized, and feel free to talk to me privately.

Mullein, Raspberry Leaf, and Boneset were infused with the decoction below.

Many of you will recognize fresh sliced Ginger root and dried Citrus peel; these support digestion among other things.  This is the formula I used at the peak of acuity with Corona when I felt I was going toward cytokine storm territory.  Severe lung pain that had began at the bottom and worked its way up to feel it was encompassing them, wracking "bone" pain, could hardly take a breath, headache, strange heartbeat, severe fatigue, runny nose, sore throat, neck pain.  I noticed immediate results from the formula.  I had been on a different formula leading up to this point, and after peaking and feeling "better" I moved to formulas more nourishing and recovery oriented. 
I am still doing this now, but seem to have been left with a strange, but not severe, "achiness" in my whole body and strange pains I am not used to along with hands or fingers going to sleep for no reason.  I am working to alleviate this, focusing on Blood.  I no longer have the list of symptoms I had before, all that is cleared up except I still have fatigue, though it's nowhere near what it was.

Cacoethes and 'Roads Less Traveled'

A Bid of Welcome.

Water finds her path to the great body, the ocean, just as we are finding our path back to the Earth.

Many paths, many branches, in the lungs of the Earth.  We share the same breath.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
(I had to memorize this poem with the whole class in 8th grade; it changed me,
guided me, and patted me on the back...)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

A BitterSweet Tangle.

 ~

Seeing into the distance...a far-away vista of color and sun through the murky wood, then closer...

...it comes into view:  a centered spiral of hay for winter, stored sunshine.

~

For some the way is known.

~

Paths known. - a revisit.

Paths unknown - possibility for the 'morrow...

And in honor of a great author who died yesterday:

"It is good to have an end to journey toward, 

but it is the journey that matters in the end."

 - Ursula Le Guin

Back and Forth - A Photo Journal of Reveries

Juxtaposition on today

"Magic is just science we don’t understand yet.

 - Arthur C. Clarke

Containing Keys

 In creative work — creative work of all kinds — those who are the world’s working artists 

are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different 

from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. 

It is, simply, something else. 

Its labor requires a different outlook — a different set of priorities."

 - Mary Oliver

An invitation

...and a gazing within

“At worst, ​one is in motion; and at best, 

Reaching no absolute, in which to rest, 

One is always nearer by not keeping still.”

 - Thom Gunn 

.

 “You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.”

- ​Beverly Rubic

Layers

Ravenwind Botanica Coriander Oil Infusing

"​Close some doors. 

Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, 

but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.”

​ - ​Paulo Coelho

Art supplies/animal findings

"But when I lean over the chasm of myself - 
it seems my God is dark
and like a web: a hundred roots
silently drinking.
This is the ferment I grow out of.
More I don't know, because my branches 
rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind."
  - Rainer Maria Rilke

Slow Food - Nourishing Body and Soul (organic potatoes and healthy fat)

“Of all evil I deem you capable:  therefore I want good from you. 

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings 

who thought themselves good because they had no claws."

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

Calendula: Summer Bottled

The teacher who is indeed wise 

does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom 

but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind." 

 - Kahlil Gibran 

 - and Gone Again

The Yang within the Yin: Hear the Music

"Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on."
 - Mary Oliver

In this dark, inner time of the year, that coincides with this dark transitional period for our society, and this dark time for the entirety of the human race and world, as we know it, itself...
I want to remind you, as I remind myself...
that it's always darkest just before the dawn...the deepest Yin turns to Yang,
Spring always follows the darkest, coldest (warmest?) Winter...

Here is a video that shows the seed of Spring that is within the Winter; revel in the exuberance of new bees taking their first flight and know that we too shall fly.




If you haven't yet, plant some seeds of the new, the next,
for now is the time to nurture them in the dark of the earth...
so they may burst forth with strongly rooted growth when the time is right... 
Within Yin is the seed of Yang and within Yang is the seed of Yin.  Extremes turn into themselves.

"You should be angry. You must not be bitter.
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.
It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure.
So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it.
You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it.
You talk it. Never stop talking it."   - Maya Angelou.

And as a reverse to these times, here is tomorrow's seed, the Yin within the Yang.

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
  - T.S. Eliot

"And those who were seen dancing 

were thought to be insane by those 

who could not hear the music.”
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

~~~

Nature's Stunning Abstracts - Masterpiece "Paintings"

 

"Each man’s necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of; though he converses only with moles and fungi and disgraces his relatives, it is no matter if he knows what is steel to his flint."

  -Thoreau journal entry; excerpted in Thoreau and the Art of Life

 

 

"The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."
 - Julia Margaret Cameron

 

 

“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, 

for I have seen the shadow on the moon, 

and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church”

- Ferdinand Magellan

 

"Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand." 

-Thoreau journal entry; excerpted in Thoreau and the Art of Life

  

 

"Life is much too important to be taken seriously."

 - Oscar Wilde

  

"Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows."

 - Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - 

the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science"

 - Albert Einstein from Living Philosophies

 

 

"One is never so strong as when one is broken."

 - Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

 

 

"Hand over the controls to the universe and go along for the ride. 

When you're a passenger, 

you can appreciate all the beautiful scenery that you might otherwise miss."

Author unknown