6/1/26 Blue moon

The dream of white flowers

The scholarly man had beige flowers for his presentation. His team sabotaged mine by replacing the slide trays with his images. I had to work hard at redoing it, again and again, piecing it all together from scratch.

In the end, I presented the entire tour with the special white flowers of dream.

6/3/26

I am pushed back, held behind the border, the rope, trying to board, not quite able. Leaning against the narrow ledge, arms stretched out, touching the gray granite rock wall for balance, blue water below, I cannot judge how deep, I cannot jump in safely, as shallow will kill me. I slide to the right and jump to the avoidance of safety.

I walk fast up the stairs, bouncing to another set of steps, pause to realize, look around wanting to share the joy, I am going up the stairs in “normal” stride!!! The pain in my knees and in my head does not disappear… but in my dream, I walk in freedom.

The book arrived today, already destined to be dog-eared and heavily underlined by my favorite green finepoint pen: Traité de l’amour moderne, by Emanuele Coccia, in French. It feels like coming home to some more pleasing language structure. So far, I had only one word to look up – acier that I thought might mean steel and it does. (Aço, in Portuguese.)

But language is much more than words and his meanings are so delightfully challenging and difficult – he does what philosophy, as a matter of fact, any writing ought to do… careful use of language as a starter fuel for transforming feeling-thought.1 In this case, thoughts about love, the maligned inspirational fire of the heart? The well-advertised only solution for a global reality gone furchtbar in modernity? The pounding clock tic tac metronome of love and heart… the pure lure of innocence and salvation?

So, I am delighted the mosquitoes are not yet killing, and I can sit outside in late afternoon light, surrounded by green, reading about the end and the beginning of some phenomena of cosmic metamorphic ferocity.

(Deep down, evil is always an excess of goodness, and not its absence. This is why contemporary rhetoric, that believes it can repair the excesses of modernity with an overdose of care, has no effect. Love is a metamorphic ferocity.)

In his Author’s notes, Emanuele Coccia mentions his intention to follow an ancient medieval treaty format, different from his other publications.

(One of the central theses of this book is that love is not a simple emotion, but constitutes the deepest structure of contemporary social and economic life.)

An added dimension to the reading, as I venture into format and medieval notions of cosmic proportions… no arguments from me here, as I tend to say that we may all share dream space, for sure, but also “feeling-thoughts”… a bit of rest from the ubiquitous isolated and isolating Self of here.

Momentarily distracted and enchanted by yellow ants,

counting how many have entered the sweet water space of the hummingbird feeder this time, one night and half a day. When I am no longer on watch, the squirrels come in the dark and knock down the feeder, eager to eat the plastic inserts and most likely enjoy the sweet sugar water. They might invite the handsome resident raccoon as supervisor.

I want to clean and refill the feeder, methodically, like a good caretaker, on behalf of love, and so I develop a theory about the plump yellow ants released, alive from the overnight. I would say about thirty of them, tightly bound, in an ant-made raft formation, leg to leg, antler to antler, antenna to antenna, torso to torso, all night, seeping sugar and enjoying the float. To the eternity of the morning, when I tapped them out.

Today, I count at least fifteen hummingbirds liking the fake unnatural yellow and red sucking nipples as gates to their processed sugar water… flying away to their nests and maybe already away from. In the quiet of twilight, the grasses are all waving, when they flutter by to feed.

I did not count the ants today, but they are rafting already, inside the glass.

Regarding love, I suggest Tom Cheetham’s next round of talks, this time about Imaginal Love, his last book, in explorations of thoughts of the heart and lots more. His next gathering starts next Tuesday, June 9.

And I recommend reading Traité de l’amour moderne, by Emanuele Coccia. So far in Italian and in French. It is so interesting to see what the next translator to English will bring to the text. Hopefully, Emanuele Coccia will step in. I just finished the Introduction and am ready to start Part one, in the Metamorphoses of the Cosmos.

2

Share

Gardens viewed from above, geometrical flowers in reddish burgundy. Endless searches for the papers I misplaced or never had, no documents, no identity, no passport to cross over. No forwarding address. No order to stay, no permission to land. My hosts for the night live in a neighborhood, I see flashing bits, a coffee shop at the corner, the plaza, rising on a hill, but I cannot tell you exactly where they live. If you showed me a street map, but even with a city map that they often and obligingly bring to the table, I cannot remember where. Maybe if you showed me a geological topographically detailed map…

The end of the line in buses where I negotiate terms with the driver for a ride back, as I have no money, none. Or when the money counted slides away between my fingers, where the value I have is in foreign coin, colorful foreign paper money, with fading effigies of forgotten queens … foreign ministers of culture and of health.

Incessant rides back, over known territories to land, again, in foreign land. Alternating currents between floating in the air and on water.

The night before last, though, as we approached the border, I had five stubs with me, as proof we were all to board that air transport. All five of us. Many changes of clothing, many showers, packing and unpacking.

Finally, this morning, the clear sense I crossed the border. No destination reached, no promised land, no journey ended, just this uncanny feeling of understanding and of lightness…

May 20 2026

Today, Emanuele Coccia offers a reflection about the great delta of the world, where all cultures converge…

Share

Subscribe now

The chickadee lands outside the wired feeder, finds a way in, takes a seed and flies away to grind it and eat it elsewhere. He comes back, lands on the hummingbird feeder, takes a tiny sip of sugar water, flies down on a stem, glides down the stem and hops inside the leaves of a cup plant to drink deeply. He then returns to the wired feeder and stays, crunching down seeds right there and then.1

A titmouse drinks a sip of water from the same plant, a squirrel, the tiniest of them all, drinks a sip of water from the saucer.

The blue jay munches on bugs on the winterberry, just beginning to bloom, a blue indigo lands softly on a bare dogwood branch and moves on…the first in the season. In the distance, a pair of brown thrashers acts like chickens, spreading the ground aside around the compost, looking for worms? A rabbit runs as I never thought rabbits could run this fast. A green heron croaks loudly and flies off.

The quiet hour, the golden hour of no expectations.

Subscribe now

Share

Then finding and sharing a beautiful entangled conversation with a machine, posted today, on Substack:

“Most AI systems are trained on text. This one is trained on the Earth’s surface. A proprietary model designed to help users explore and interpret what the planet looks like from above. The interface opens with a view of the hemisphere and a simple invitation: where do you want to zoom in?”

Vanessa Andreotti, PhD

104 - The Heart As A Satellite

This was not published on Earth Day because everyday is Earth day…

Read more

a month ago · 7 likes · Vanessa Andreotti, PhD and Rene Susa, PhD

Share

Subscribe now

Once again, I alternate between the threes, not the three headed snakes1, not the three-pointed candle holder2, the three atheists of dreams…

It is not about triangles3 and angles.

This time it is about three colors, the deep color of coral, the beige of mushroom dust and…a lighter version of something…still undefined and in between…

Alive and trapped like coral led inside a pencil, a coral pearl? What kind of rock formation? What kind of wood envelops this vibrant hue? What ancient story allows my hand to hold this fine penciled reddish ink and dream-drawn curlicues across entire landscapes?

Coral, orange yellow? and black greening green?

I see the three levels in time and out of time, in space and out of space, alternating again and again. They are not the often-repeated mother, father, with the child as the holy ghost, or god-forbid, father, son and again the (hidden she as the) ghost. They are no longer what I learned early in my teens, from Kritikos, the yoga instructor, about the first basic core that you needed to stand on your head, upside down, the second emotional middle of balance that was mostly kept private, and the third one, that could lead you to visions of the outside and the stratospheres of elsewhere, where there may be angels and infinite possibilities. So outside my reach, somehow… then.

To find the third level? Are there three levels? like as in writing? Extrusion, extraction and insertion keep intruding.

I zoom again into the teasing light coral pencil pouring down from the dream, liquid, almost lighter than coral, still alive and moving.

Is only the third level desired and workable? The highest? regardless of the other two? I keep seeing and building in all three levels…enmeshed … Immersion, immersion, immersion, instead, I’d say.

Yet, I realize now with the beginnings of some ease, that the incessant non-ceasing underground movements, tectonic plate shifts, beige earth and coral rock are not movements of mine, do not belong to me… are not mine as material possessions, are not my visions to understand nor to explain, maybe just to be, maybe to see and to feel, extract sometimes carefully, from the known penciled core, in search of more fluidity.

The original abo-riginal dream is from April 8, 2026, with a new moon in Aries, described by someone as a New Zealand Maori woman singing a warrior song of protest inside Parliament.

Know your materials well…once again, is the message.

I learn now that we tend to separate pencil led from ink, as if they belonged to different species. Even if it is the nankin ink I used to know from the early days, when my brother patiently explained colors, as he saw them. In oil, a splash of thick white, then a dab of red, some careful meshing and you get the perfect hue of pink for warmth in the cape, in the drawing of the Queen of Ice. And I learn from AI that:

Nankin ink (or Nanquim) is a deep black, waterproof, and permanent, typically water-based, ink used for calligraphy, drawing, and illustration. Often referred to as India ink, it is highly lightfast and popular for its dense, matte finish, making it ideal for technical drawing and ink wash techniques.

Nankin ink (traditional Chinese/Japanese sumi ink) is primarily composed of carbon soot (lampblack) for pigment and animal-based glue (gelatin) as a binder. These ingredients are pounded into a dense paste, often mixed with fragrances like musk or borneol, and dried into sticks. It is later dissolved in water for use.

Key Ingredients in Traditional Nankin Ink:

• Carbon Soot (Lampblack): Created by burning materials like pine wood or vegetable oils, providing a deep, permanent black pigment.

• Animal Glue/Gelatin: Often made from cow or deer hide, it acts as a binder, stabilizing the particles and allowing the ink to adhere to paper.

• Fragrance/Spices: Traditional, high-quality sticks often include scents like musk or camphor to mask the smell of the glue.

• Water: Used to dissolve the solidified ink stick.

“There is in me a certainty that begs to be expressed, dismantled while in the very act of its expression. Ah, to be forever curious!”

“Existe em mim uma certeza que implora ser expressada, para se desmantelar no proprio ato de expressão. Ah, desta curiosidade eterna!”

EW in Andarilha/Wanderer

When the Imaginary Pulse breathes
and shakes off Time 
finds refuge in between the Lines inside
Refugee Space…

Attractions whisper their Proper Names
and turn to Voice…

Quando o Impulso Imaginário toma fôlego
e sacode o Tempo 
se refugia por dentre as Linhas 
do Espaço refugiado... 

As Atrações sussuram seus Nomes proprios
e viram Voz

And she stood, perfectly still, at the edge of that color, in the fluid of some early blues.

Subscribe now

Share

Heartfelt thanks to all of you, who find a way through my words and images!

!

“Dançantes, não docentes”

Questioning my premises of belonging to home, homeland, family, 
territory, vertical architecture, wars and books, 
my heart, in migration from the questions of here, 
finds hammock time, once again. 

Time to lounge in the warm spring sun, watching red tailed newborn squirrels learning to swing upside down to catch bird seeds… how a freshly fledged titmouse dialogues with his parents, in unmistakenly loud calls. Warm enough for a first huge swallowtail to float away and a first tiny blue celandrina to find dogwood.

And time to find a new Ciclo Selvagem/Savage cycle of talks, 1this time about Mother Water, where Ailton Krenak suggests it is time for music and for dance.

“Somos dançantes, não docentes/ we are dancing beings, not teaching beings…”

It is an encounter between Ailton Krenak, Mateus Aleluia and Joao Paulo Tukano, 2inside a boat, navigating the waters of Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro.

There are whales around us, Ailton says, they are made of rock. Many see the rocks, but they do not see the whales…

and here an earlier post of mine, where Paulo Velho teaches us how to untie old knots in a hammock, with more from Ciclo Selvagem.

Subscribe now

Share

.

and to marvel, once again, at the amount of exquisite marble extracted from the many sources of mining stone from around your own world, Bahia Blue, Pure White from the State of the Holy Ghost to cater for the exquisite tastes of humans of means, who admire formations of marbled framed art, carved deeply out of the ground as bathtubs, kitchen counters – who admire the geometric love embedded in these stoned natural creations… the meshing of look-alike subtle art with hints of transcended vaginas inside kitchens is always a pleasure, isn’t? Art placed where, according to whose rules and according to whose desires? And here we go…1

Paulo Freire appears. I read an article about him on a Substack flow from the School for Radical Attention I do recommend. 2

Freire was not concerned about teaching the poor to write so they could join the ones who read and who wrote, the better society of those who could. He was more interested in motivating the disconnected poor to read the alphabet, so they could decide if they wanted to extract marble or not, as peons, by learning to read that foreign language…to vote and to write, maybe.

So as to change the rules, if so they wished.

He was interested in finding ways to facilitate the knowing of your own languages, and of different languages that you did not know, with the tools and knowledge you have, built-into your own. Language explained and expanded to mean your entire encounter with the outside, your yang manifested, and your yin interior, both in constant flow. Not some internal and external you, but rather a multiplicity of places, creatures and times that are as alive as you are, in co-habitations.

Freire designed and implemented a literacy program, now known worldwide. At the time, a military general named Castelo Branco stated: “young man, you’re fattening up rattlesnakes here in these backlands [sertões].” The project managed — astonishingly — to teach literacy to three hundred participants in just over a month.”

Oh no, don’t let the rattle snakes out of their cages. 3

And I am paraphrasing here, because this is exactly what my recent dream about grooming and planting the entangled poisonous copper coral snakes for the future was showing me. Plant it and it will grow. Seed it and it will sprout… Yet we continue to plant and to grow without access, without asking access to the layers of knowledge to destruction we are entirely responsible for… combined with the many levels of creation. Are we to be held responsible for …life? with death implied? hardly…

Literacy is a way to define and to separate what poison is and what snake is. It is a strange modern way to codify the praying… 2

A strange way to justify the plunder. It is a very weird and strange way to name love.

When we do not own the future, we do not know the languages spoken there and we pay homage and close attention to signs who might give us portents…of otherwise. We improvise.

and we dream.

The wars and my childhood house

I am sitting on the red tile front steps of the veranda, in my childhood house, alone, no one, not a soul, not a sound, anywhere. Raw, rarefied, shimmering light of night, not yet morning. Where you can see forever.

Someone else lives here now, they’ll wake up, greet me and take me in. No. There is no one home. That house is abandoned.

March 18 2026

I wake up. Flashing imagery of how small I am. Perfectly small. Now, in my childhood home, in my current size, in my being, alone.

I am no longer tall. Maybe I am a child. Maybe not. It is just a great feeling of completeness.

How small the ties of me…

"When the mountains were made of marble,
I was then alone.
I traced the cold veins of the surface of the mountains with my tongue.”

Subscribe now

Share

The story that leads to take 2.

I know the old man, from “real” life of the past and from dream space. The elevator operator, an easy man who likes to chatter and knows all about what matters. A bit bent, a muted checkered shirt, curly gray hair, trimmed short, … his daughter now a young woman, in charge of the lifts in the building. We wait in the lobby, people and many elevators landing and leaving, we try, but cannot get in, they are full or they will not stop at our chosen set of floors.

Take 2.

I book the honeymoon suite. The clerk, who is also the secretary in my project (or the elevator operator’s daughter), asks me if I want the fancy one? No, not really, we are down to earth people, give us the other one… the less expensive one and by that, I mean the one who doesn’t offer gaudy round love signs in red tinsel, entire baskets of florist flowers, laden with fungicide, entire baskets of fruit of suspicious origin, provenance and size.

And so it is that we are to take the elevator to the suite on the 23rd floor. I reassure my companion it is going to be alright to ride the elevator up. There are windows all around and a view, from the ground up to the 7th floor, when we enter the metal tunnel of darkness on the inside, absolute darkness enclosed. Gray, ageing, in a zoomed view from the outside of the round tower, crumbling, peeling, light beige cement.

Not at all sure if it is ok to go through the darkness. But we do… and I hold his hand to show him the landscapes. Then, taking a deep breath, we enter the darkness

to emerge on the 23rd floor and the honeymoon suite, a bit dazed.

The door opens directly into the bathroom, mustard green linoleum, a small toilette with no sit, only one cover and no lid. I lift the cover and ask if it is dirt or is that yellow faded stain inside just built in old? Mismatched shower curtains, checkered black and white on one side, and once transparent film on the other. No judgments, no judgements. Let’s see the rest.

Oh, well, we walk to the left, the entrance to the beach, sand on the wooden planks. Up front the many windows towards the ocean, opaque from humidity or just cheaply made from plexiglass. Old-fashioned windows, like many that still line Copacabana beach front view apartment buildings, in Rio de Janeiro. Fresh white paint on foggy windowpanes, where I lived at eighteen. Noise so distilled and muted, overwhelmed by the steady slushing of large green waves, way down below.

To the right, along the wooden corridor, raised platforms on both sides, with improvised shops for clothing, tourist bric a brac, vacation goods. Moveable racks filled with skirts, blouses, hats and scarves. But are all these vendors here with us, in our honeymoon suite, all the time? She said well, if you don’t want them to come to work, they can stay at home, but they will not get paid.

The main bedroom is somewhere in the middle, but I am no longer paying attention… distracted and concerned with the shopkeepers and their wages.

Take 3

Days later, news of yet another war. Far away.

Miles Davis plays… soundtrack for Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, once again…

Curiosity leads me to the film that I never watched.

Elevator to the Gallows[1] (French: Ascenseur pour l’échafaud) is a 1958 French crime thriller tragedy film directed by Louis Malle. The film stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as lovers in an affair whose murder plot starts to unravel after one of them becomes trapped in an elevator. The screenplay by Roger Nimier and Malle is based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Noël Calef. (from Wikipedia)

The film leads me to Louis Malle, one of the beloved and crucial names in the cinema of my teens. Referred to as controversial, difficult to pin down, restless intelligence. In 1971, Le souffle au couer, murmurs of the heart, in the loving incestuous relationship of a beautiful mother with her young son. Later, in 1981, a boring Dinner with Andre. Zazie dans le metro propels me to buy the book, in French, not yet in translation, and try to read it. It is my major in school, after all, but we do not read these extra curricular cinema things at university. A comedy of a young woman breaking barriers and riding the Paris metro, based on a brand new novel by newcomer Raymond Queneau. Then Au revoir les enfants, goodbye to the children, in 1987, a poignant autobiographical story of boys taken away by the gestapo in occupied France.

The search leads me back to Miles Davis, recording his entirely improvised musical track for the film Lift to the Scaffold.

Miles Davis watches actress Jeanne Moureau move across the black and white screen, and improvises his music, while director Louis Malle explains it all to the interviewer. Layers and depths of unfolding meanings, forever changing in the play. The year is 1958 and I am still nine years old.

Take 4

Dreams do not require interpretation, in my view, they do require engagement with life today, though. Sometimes a time set aside for re-dreaming… I was nine years old when I became mute, like so many young women did and still do, in my world. I was twenty-three when I left home on adventure, landing in the U.S. of A., a space of advertised freedom, imprisoned inside religious dogma and inside war. My image then, when I landed, was of a land of spoiled, wealthy and confused teenagers playing at war and at baseball, games I never quite understood well.

Seven remains my lucky number, maybe from when I learned to read.

Miles Davis theme music, Louis Malle and Jeanne Moureau would not have surfaced, had I not pondered that I am not claustrophobic and not afraid of elevators, had I not played Miles Davis again.

Still, why the mystery of darkness between the 7th and the 23rd floors? It was a lifting, for sure… an ascension, a transcendent wish? and the movie? A platform for the execution, of a jump as in a swimming pool, as in a death or more likely, a killing? More likely even… many killings? Much more like life today, here? Foggy windows? That waterfront apartment on Copacabana Beach housed a Nazi man, I discovered later, and that is part of the dream. Stranded in Germany, barely eighteen, ready to see the world and shown instead the hidden secrets of ancestry and of first employment…

Postscript:

Some of my resources:

Robert Moss is a recent discovery. He says “If you want a dream interpreter... see if they can tell you your dream before you tell it to them.” Good advice.

Robert Moss

If you want a dream interpreter...

A Turkish friend recalls that her grandmother used to take her dreams to a Şeyh (shaykh) of the Halveti Ussaki sufi order for interpretation. On one occasion, the Şeyh greeted her by telling her the essential content of her dream before she had told him the dream. She was shocked, but also convinced that the Sufi master was the right interpreter, if he …

Read more

3 months ago · 28 likes · Robert Moss

He is well known, has written many books, and facilitates dream workshops.

The amazing Story of your life, by Ted Chiang, later adapted and produced for cinema as Arrival. A linguist is hired by the authorities to decipher an alien language where time shifts, and in knowing that language she can see the future, the present and the past as one, in a way so similar to dream space. She says:

“I would have liked to experience more of the heptapods’ worldview, to feel the way they feel. Then, perhaps I could immerse myself fully in the necessity of events, as they must, instead of merely wading in its surf for the rest of my life. But that will never come to pass…”

Artificial Intelligence uses an interesting turn of phrase to describe her translation work and her knowledge of past present and future - the emotional weight of knowing one’s future, including personal tragedy.

Buy Ted Chiang’s book. Just in case you don’t and want to read it now, here is a link:

https://waldyrious.neocities.org/ted_chiang/story-of-your-life

His other story about the tower to Babylon and to nowhere, of course comes back to me and is another must read.

Also quite compelling, a visit to one of those small medieval town towers in Germany, where you enter a small door and must climb all the way to the top for the only exit and only view to the town, down below. When you wonder about the gracious spaciousness of your own housing today… the lack of housing, the lack of breath elsewhere, almost everywhere.

Reminders of the quality and fragility of dream, and most important, of our relations to others and to all relatives. Allowing myself a moment of weakness in preachiness and forgiveness, I send blessings to those who can let go of rituals, fixed ideas and meanings… to continue in praise and in love with the uncertainties of improvisation.

When we do not own the future, we do not know the languages spoken there and we pay homage and close attention to signs who might give us portents…of otherwise. We improvise.

Subscribe now

Share

Snake poison

The act of writing is repetitive motion and there comes a time when the hand gets tired, the metatarsals 1ache, when the fingers pecking to choose precise words for true meanings hurt, when the masked muse sneaks out of the building structure, in search of a flying circus, elsewhere.

And the flying circus insists on revealing an old-aged fairy tale of horror and of war, once again, revisited in history, not with Dali, but with paintings you never seen for sure, for real, but know deeply in the imagery of your dreams. Some Spanish stuff, from art classes, Guernica also comes to mind, and how much Picasso earned and all the others that divinified and collected plenty for their personal views on wars.

Not the workers from the lifting of stone necessary for the erection of the buildings, but the dead in the trenches from the killings in the wars. Now dead, paralyzed and silent inside school yards and apartment dwellings – fake divides between civilians and army erased?

Today, when it felt almost like spring, I watched the first snake of my season emerge from dream and slide across the leaves, slowly. I waited, in barely baited breathing, hoping she would cross the main path, the civilized plowed path leading to my house. She did, methodically slivering to rest, for a long two foot while then, on to the other side, by the winterberry, to disappear. Today, I released a cute, wide brown eyed mouse from the blue safe life trap inside.

In the act of dreaming about poisonous coral snakes

My childhood is populated by snake bites. Someone else’s children taken to emergency room for free intensive care, the sweat of a shaman sucking the snake venom and spitting it out with curses, words in languages I do not know, nor understand. Yet must respect, listen to, then. Mostly, listen to today, now, here. Listen to, paid money to listen to, now, here today.

Rattle snakes were my father’s favorites, musical in that they warned us when they were about to strike. That rattle chatter is alive for me. Jararaca as the name given to a very ugly woman. Girls turned into women fast and becoming uglier even faster, once used. Not deemed to become – then just becoming what? Poisonous? By that stage in the poison, beauty then quite related to sinuosities and the abilities to eat and procreate successfully? The becoming of snake and of poison soon after, if you don’t, as necessity…? Killing it then, again, a necessity to preserve beauty?

The Poisonous Coral Snakes - a dream

I am reintroducing, reinstating (like a queen reinstates inside a nation- a state), poisonous coral snakes to our place.

It is a cakelike structure I hold carefully, with both my hands, where the snakes are piled on top of each other, like fallen leaves, held together by light beige clay, triangular hourglass shapes and veins. The key is to place them in the water, without awakening their poison and getting bitten… as you move them and they start to wake up, their heads in red, black gray and yellow orange coral colors. Ready to strike if you disturb their peaceful life.

I am seeding the poison snakes, trying to teach others how to do it. An older, bearded relative cousin of mine is quite good at it, removing an entire clump with serenity and guiding it, one by one, to place it inside the ground, inside the community.

Like when planting or transplanting with meticulous care. Recognizing each poison in its own set positions of being and of poison. With respect, difficult silence of my own. Not war.

Besides, there is a huge storm passing by, it is my birthday and as tradition dictates, I am entitled to do what I want, at least until midnight! The photos are from a similar storm, similar squirrels, snow and birds, ten years ago, in late January of 2016.

“A veces me pregunto si la paloma que se cruza en mi camino al atravesar la plaza de la Cibeles de Madrid es la misma que picotea los restos de un donut en Trafalgar Square, Londres, frente a un tipo algo perplejo que observa a la suya como yo a la mía. ¿Podrían ser esas dos aves el producto de un desdoblamiento? No hay manera de comprobarlo. Muere una paloma en Madrid y a la misma hora muere una en Londres. Mueren a la vez porque eran la misma, estaban duplicadas para proporcionarnos sensación de abundancia. ¿Cómo asociar esas dos muertes? Quizá la pierna de cordero al horno que me estoy comiendo yo en Ávila es la misma que se está comiendo usted en Segovia porque pertenecieron a dos corderos que eran un único cordero. Y esa mosca que acabo de fumigar cruelmente en mi despacho de Madrid es la que usted se ha cargado por el mismo método en su casa de México. ¿Todas las moscas son la misma mosca? ¿Todos los gorriones son el mismo gorrión? ¿Todos los peces son el mismo pez? ¿Todos los hombres son el mismo hombre?

En tal caso, la paloma de Cibeles sería el eco de la paloma de Trafalgar, o al revés. El eco es una repetición que llega tarde y, por llegar tarde, modifica un poco lo dicho. Si usted grita “esperanza” en una cueva, vuelve “esperanza”, aunque un poco gastada, quizá con una vocal disminuida. La paloma a la que le falte una pluma o esté tuerta en Londres sería el eco de la que está entera en Madrid.

Entre la mosca de Madrid y la mosca de México hay un volumen de aire donde algo se demora. La mayoría de las repeticiones son inaudibles; solo cuando chocan contra un acantilado de atención —soledad, fiebre, agotamiento— las oímos.

El eco tiene una propiedad curiosa: a veces se adelanta. Hay días en los que escucho el golpe de una puerta antes de que la puerta golpee. Un preeco, diríamos. El mundo es un parking subterráneo donde todo suena dos veces: primero como presentimiento, después como suceso.”

Juan José Millás, 23 enero 2026

“Sometimes I wonder if the pigeon that crosses my path as I cross the Plaza de la Cibeles in Madrid is the same one that pecks at the remains of a donut in Trafalgar Square, London, in front of a somewhat perplexed guy, who observes his as I look at mine. Could these two birds be the product of a projection? There is no way to prove it. A pigeon dies in Madrid and at the same time one dies in London. They die at the same time because they were the same, they were duplicated to provide us with a sense of abundance. How to associate these two deaths? Perhaps the baked leg of lamb that I am eating in Ávila is the same one that you are eating in Segovia because they belonged to two lambs that were a single lamb. And that fly that I have just cruelly fumigated in my office in Madrid is the one that you have killed by the same method in your house in Mexico. Are all flies the same fly? Are all sparrows the same sparrow? Are all fish the same fish? Are all men the same man?

In this case, the Dove of Cybele would be the echo of the Pigeon of Trafalgar, or the other way around. The echo is a repetition that arrives late and, because it is late, it modifies what has been said a little. If you shout “hope” in a cave, you come back with “hope,” albeit a little worn, perhaps with a diminished vowel. The pigeon that is missing a feather or is one-eyed in London would be the echo of the one that is whole in Madrid.

Between the Madrid fly and the Mexico fly there is a volume of air where something lingers. Most repetitions are inaudible; Only when they hit a cliff of attention — loneliness, fever, exhaustion — do we hear them.

The echo has a curious property: sometimes it comes early. There are days when I hear a door knock before the door knocks. A pre-echo, we would say. The world is an underground parking lot where everything sounds twice: first as a premonition, then as an event.”

Juan José Millás, 123 enero 2026 (translated by “machine”, with a few tweaks of mine)

“…there is a volume of air where something lingers.”

AI cannot be separated from those who wish to profit from it through us. And could it possibly be the lowest common denominator, a post-echo of colonial expert mind sets? If viewed, from far, faraway… through 12D lenses?

Subscribe now

Share

After the ring of fireworks, the nice words of praise, the frantic travels, the yearnings and nostalgias, comes alchemy in dream night


no light 
no fluor glow of algae
no fish scales
in claire of moon

atoll
island deep in
the pacific ocean  
in darkness

in my vision of paradise

Dark thoughts for January and the New Year? Absolutely not. It is cold, wintry, snowing. Time to slow down and hibernate. 

This morning I read a fun piece that validates my views. The authors explore the Gregorian calendar and the new year falling on January 1, at the whim of emperors and popes. A good read.

A relatively recent and hotly contested innovation born of frustrated astronomers and bureaucrats, eventually enforced through papal fiat and global peer pressure. 

Owls, archangels and ghosts

In keeping with my theme of less light, you are blinding me with your glare!, my brief account of my recent encounter with a ghost: 

The ghost
I am walking slowly, in a careful approach to K's house and my acupressure session. The same place where I tripped and fell, a month earlier. I feel the air vibrating, shiny silver, fast rising from the ground, a creature taller than me, with milky white, fuzzy borders, bluish tinges of color in the face but no visible face that elongates, a suggestion of the trunk of a small elephant. Like a hologram, shifting shape, the creature moves towards me, towering, and I almost back away and say no, not now. It wants to engulf me and swallow me whole entire and I almost say no. He moves towards my right ear, crumbles, slings down like water and disappears into the ground. 

In the peculiar logic of dreams, my first imaginal story gives me an eight year old boy, surfaced as a ghost. He then expands into the possibility of the spirit of Ganesha, the Hindu child god elephant. I am intrigued but not familiar with that tale. New stories continue to emerge every day.

But the best is my delight in finally having a bona-fide, clear ghost dream. I grew up with them and I was born in the neighborhood of the Good End - Bonfim - a block away from the Cemetery with the same name. The ghosts and the angels were my neighbors and inhabited life and death around me. Not like this, though - this is my very own ghost, this feels happy like being free to fly again, in dream. 1

For the owls and the archangels, one of my other favorite transition posts...

Meanwhile, Tibetan Buddhist monks walk miles, from Texas, hoping to get to Washington, D.C., in a walk for peace. Social media goes crazy and everyone wants to be in a selfie photograph with them and with their dog. To try their shiny brand new tiny weapon of mass destruction2 to register the event for immediate posting.

Let peace rub on, in whatever way it comes. I cry every time I see them.

Subscribe now

Share

Share

It seems easy and soft growth of tiny drawn, strewn on fast, slight green, in slender lights up, blue flowers in delicate miniatures down, repeated routings in the movements of wood, from the ground that I witness, shifting, moving from right to the left of screen. Endlessly, the perspective is from there to here, not too far. It seems easy to comply with and to create the creation. This way instead.

A voice tells me it is not enough, it must have more drama, be more intricate, more like a story. I am slightly annoyed. I draw some ants, incredibly well drawn ants, clear shiny brown, black with some specks of white in their eyes, in perfect boundary focus, hairy long legs, speckled antennas. 1

And the ants in slow motion, from right to left, devour the tiny flowers, one by one. It gets even more dramatic, as they methodically devour all, with rigor, even the light green. Still very much from right to left, but animated. It is a beautiful drawing with, and without the drama and anima of my language…

And I remember that I am dreaming… and that I would like to draw that drawing of creation…

So, I ask of you? When is it then, that you ask yourself, if at all? If you are part of a tiny caring part, like a single nuclear family, an extended family, a global village family, single or not, or are you simply, ? quite integral to the entire painting of the creation? regardless of your “own” imaginal being in creation? …

Sorry, Microsoft tells me i need a new computer because my Windows server is down graded and some new upgraded, higher in the hierarchies of Windows’ Angels is needed. they tell me it will be much better, more light in, more wisdom, more, a bunch, a bundle of more connected creative joy.

And back to the imaginal blank page. Today, I wrote an address label, in clear, beautiful, carefully crafted cursive, to mail some printed matter to a dear friend. Only to understand, in a flash, that artificial reading machines do not routinely read it, nor, probably, do the kids that work with the sorting of mail at post offices, everywhere, in this country, now. Cursive2 is no longer taught in schools here, as I learned, to my chagrin, years ago, as a teacher of languages. I tried to show them, weekly in class, but i suspect i might have failed, like many have, in our approaches.

Maybe next time, I will write in cursive/cursing, with tiny word images instead, fill in the huge blank page of expensive mulberry paper I ordered, on a whim, for an art project!

Subscribe now

Share

2

A importância de nós e o jeito certo de dobrar uma rêde

Paulo Velho, rapaz da Paraíba, não só nos ensinou como dobrar uma rêde, mas nos ensinou como tirar nó delas. Essa rêde da foto tinha dois nós muito antigos, daqueles desbotados que já parecia que faziam parte dela. O Paulo Velho soprou três vezes, e isso é importante. Depois, em menos de cinco minutos e com a ajuda de um prego grande, desatou os dois nós e tirou todos aqueles enrôlos e amarrados que tôdas as rêdes tem. Conta que foi com a Mãe dêle que aprendou, lá na Paraiba. Essencial, dizia ela, notar que uma rêde sem nós tem dono sem nó na vida, e vice versa.

O dobrar segue o exemplo dos velejadores – dobre como se fôsse uma vela.

The importance of knots and the right way to fold a hammock

Paulo Velho (The Old One), a young man from the state of Paraíba, taught us not only how to properly fold a hammock, but also how to remove its knots. The hammock in the photo had two ancient knots, so discolored and tight, they seemed to be part of it. He blew three times on each knot, and that is important. Then, in less than five minutes and with the help of a long nail, he untied the knots and untangled the strings. He tells us his Mother taught him this, back north, in Paraíba. Essential to know, she used to say, that a hammock without knots has an owner who has no knots in his life, and vice-versa.

The folding pattern is the same sailors follow, on a sailing boat, when folding a sail for storage.

Reprinted from Prosa semilinear, April 2010

And some more emerging hammock conversations:

Hammock talk/ Conversa na rede

A series created by Ciclo Selvagem, with Ailton Krenak, indigenous leader and activist from Brasil, and Liz Hosken, one of the leaders from the Gaia Foundation. Delightfully slow, filled with pauses, and quite a beautiful talk!! If for nothing else, go to time mark 40:00 for some of Ailton’s remarks about the devouring capitalistic monster who insists on eating inside shopping malls! And how we1may tend to place the burden of spiritual salvation on the shoulders of the remaining indigenous, many times isolated, frozen cultures, anchored in our imagined natural, past gaia paradises… He does not say this, I do.

He does talk about a mysticism that may not be sustainable… anchored on the predatory shock of real commodities, like cars, travel, airplanes, single family houses, rare metal, gold mining. And more.

Worth every slow second of attention.

English subtitles in Settings for his talk, hers is in English.

Share

For two days now, I am busy shopping, ripping the skin off, chopping precise squares of butternut squashes and turnips for tomorrow, the day of prescribed thanksgiving. Dressed in sage, allspice, many colored ground peppers and agave nectar. Happily immersed in my own mixed breed culture.

Wishing you a similar happiness, in plenitude of knowing some, and not knowing it at all!

Sometimes, in the garden, I absentmindedly snip off a piece of a plant, just in the habit of doing it, for the green acrid … for the newness of tart, sometimes just to hear a stem snapping. Dead heading flowers, with my fingers tightly curved in, twist to the right, as I am right-handed.

But over the years, it is happening less and less. I step carefully and slowly over the weeds, looking for tiny flowers, minute butterflies, infinitesimal bees and flies. The notion of cutting flowers to adorn the inside of a house, in a vase, seems excessive, seems invasive, and requires a long tortuous dual pondering pause… like when the snapping goes wrong and your entire body is then engaged into tearing the flower apart, long spewing strands of uneven fiber, in yield to your contrary force. You need sharp scissors, some sharper tool blade, some advanced technology to get the job done.

You see, the plants outside are no longer there for me, only. And I am no longer inside, for me, only.

So, this is what I am referring to as an esthetics of gardening. Trying to understand the rules I obey while living with the plants that surround me.

Some may call it post modern, post colonial… I prefer to think of it as a thoughtful and gentle way to be in the world - a way to some slow motion.

Plant blindness is a recent phenomenon, tied, it seems, to modern man. Is it then a sign of individual sovereignty, a testament to the proud accomplishments of the human race... I can even breathe on my own!?

Plants (and butterflies, bees, snakes, birds, humans) are not here as part of my property…a material property, an Aristotelian-word defined property, are they? They are not here in usefulness to me. As an extension, they are not here in usefulness to some client, some friend, something called my audience…

Philosopher Emanuelle Coccia has a lot to say about this, preoccupied, as I am, with aesthetics and with ethics.

Plants are the always open wound of the metaphysical snobbery that defines our culture. - Emanuele Coccia

They are the cosmic ornament, the inessential and multi-colored accident that reigns in the margins of the cognitive field. The contemporary metropolis views them as superfluous trinkets of urban decoration.

Superfluous trinkets of urban decoration and yet essential to our breath intake and exhaling in being alive.

Dreaming of a butterfly sanctuary, high up in the mountains

It was late afternoon, as I watched, in surprise and in horror, the young man spraying around the house, methodically HITTING ALL that was green with the gooey spray. The precious weeds, the unknown future happiness for all my next mornings, methodically threading lightly in search, finding beauty at home, day by day. Next morning, my happiness was all dead. In that instant, I realized I could not live in that place, because I had no clear voice inside someone else’s property. The laws of jungle capitalism applied, and industrial roundup reached across borders of nation states to become the easy way to clear the land… no more hoe, no more scraping the soil to separate the good for the good-for-nothing weeds, no more days for hard manual labor. Done. Killed in five minutes. The caretaker was in heaven! The property owner, matter of fact, was satisfied the job was well and efficiently done.

From animal chauvinism, not granting plants equal status, to their deification, as saviors and gods...worthy of rituals and deference... not ever as equals, in a cosmos filled with unknown, surprising and inspiring creatures.?

Gardening seen as a mirror to agriculture and agriculture as usage. Humans as caretakers, shepherds of these lesser forms… plants as matter. ?

Are plants as deity now, the newer trinkets of urban decoration thought, toys for the children of the new self appointed higher beings in nation states?

I have no clear answers, only more questions, as I walk the gardens at sunset, finding wind tunnels and air streams to guide the dogbane seeds elsewhere, in search of continuity. Dreaming of dream flight.

The Oxford Full Moon News was my response to the difficulties in finding like-minded publishers, back at the end of the millennium. I wanted to continue writing and I also wanted to see my stuff as a printed page. So, I decided to run my own newsletter, with everything that was meant to fit the page. Great freedom and fun that lasted many months, with about ten issues. Robert Prince contributed with a gem - The girl and the gate.

Hey, ho.

Subscribe now

Remind me someday
Remind me someday to tell you
	about this dream I had with an old friend of mine
	that I love
        who has beautiful green eyes.
I looked into his eyes last night
	and in them there were reflected harbors in town.
	ships of steel and grasses growing
	entire profiles of cities in grey
	dotted red blue violet streets and neighborhoods in flesh
	and the more I looked in to the depth of fields in green
	specks of gold and brown light
	the more images developed in black darker shadows
	I could see clearly far in perspective retractions
	projected inside
	the liquid in his eyes.

Written by me in January 2003, and found recently inside a pile of old writings.

Yesterday, after many years of absence, that old friend sent me an invitation to the launch of his book of poems -  Amor e exilio, Love and exile. 

On November 15 and 19, Dirceu Xavier will be launching his book “LOVE AND EXILE — Between desire and silence” by the Grupo Editorial Quixote. If you are in Belo Horizonte, Brasil, go and bring your friends!  November 15 — Bookstore Counterpoint, 11 am. November 19 — Bookstore Reading (BH Shopping), 7 pm. Copies will be available for sale later on.

Dirceu tells me, with a laugh, that I am in it! As always, he continues to be a marvelous poet!  

Subscribe now

Share

with a printed booklet of Unanswerable Questions, and their answers, compiled and published by Carol Peck1, a marvelous master teacher and poet, at a writers workshop, in the fall of 2005. We were working with the poetic musings of what is sometimes called the right brain mode… in a gathering of women writers in Saratoga Springs, where we held our summer week long retreats, at Skidmore College. We were an international women writers guild, IWWG.2 Magic times, when about five hundred women could gather, write, exchange views and feelings, be heard without fear of the usual frown or open opposition…

We were asked to write a bunch of questions we thought had no answers. We then exchanged papers with a colleague, a stranger, at random. She answered my questions, while I attempted to answer hers. Astounding results, delightful, as I had not seen this in print, and had forgotten much about those words. The questioning poetic themes, though, reappear, like sparkly lifelines, fugues, daily lines of dream flight and binding threads of incipient poetry.

Here I chose some of my questions, with answers by Heidi Schultz, a classmate.

1. Who counts the coins inside the pot of gold, at the end of the rainbow?

   Only the person who has a finger of each different color can touch the gold, because the rainbow is a slide and the pot a catch basin for coins arriving from the Prismatic World.

2. Who is the man behind the curtain?

   I think he is you and me, but I cannot be sure, because he doesn’t have a face.

3. Does God have a daughter?

   Of course - I see her in front of me, and I see her wherever I go, even if I go alone.

4. Can water run uphill?

5. Do dragons dance?

   Once I entered a forest. In the deepest, darkest center there was a clearing. All the trees around the clearing had been scorched, from root to canopy. The ground was scattered with jewels shaped like scales, yet there wasn’t a single footprint, and not a single pine needle was broken. 3

6. Can we stop the wars?

7. Do angels walk?

   Yes, but they never leave footprints.

Here some of my answers to her questions:

4. Can you still feel when you have open heart surgery?

   You feel your vein of thoughts.

5. What do dreams see when they are awake?

   The invisible dreams - they see the invisible threads

   they see the possibilities in the impossible dreams.

13. If I looked into a mirror and didn’t see myself, would that mean I was invisible? Like a cat, it is said we can walk behind the mirror, and enter the realm of the invisible souls. Those who fly from rooftops at midnight, dance in the fountain plaza at 2 a.m., and return home at twilight.

And now, in practice for answers to new questions:

Why is this heron standing in one leg only?

first cold of autumn
a solitary blue heron preens
standing on one leg.

To close, a statement that shook me up and balanced me, all at the same time, begging for more questions:

“love does not rest on reciprocity"4

Does beauty rest on reciprocity?

Do herons ask questions?

Share

I have not published much of what I feel, sense or think, lately. The entire universe stands still, in a repetitive display of abject absurdities. Playing card games on line and watching reruns of cooking challenges and glass blowing competitions are now two of my most cherished motions.

I learn strategy, card counting for future ventures into casinos in Las Vegas, or better still, native American owned establishments in Nuevo Mexico. Card prediction for readings of the present and for the future. I also learn to control the dreadful feeling I lost this hand, once again. Next time, there is always a next time in playing cards.

There was a time, many days, time even measured in months or years, when I played card games with people. Happy shouting matches, home made exuberant queens and kings, money as fava beans on the table, sometimes corn. I too belonged to a tribe that liked to play noisily with the odds, where cheating and poker face were qualities, if displayed successfully, where half the room was filled with smoke and the hope of being dealt a hand filled with whimsical jokers. The other half fragrant with the vapors of cooking and the watchful gaze of mothers.

Playing card games on line now, by myself, is one of my most cherished motions.

The act of writing

The act of writing is repetitive motion and there comes a time when the hand gets tired, when the finger choosing precise meanings gets tired, when the muse leaves the building, in search of a flying circus, elsewhere.

Letter to the muse

Excerpts from “Starvation Lake, the material of writing, in the art of love and loss in fiction”, written back in 2001, starting with a quote by Gilda Radner:

“I get distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity.”

How will I meet you? Where will I find you?

Little disturbances of sound, minor notes in music, small intersections, glimpses of same in between

we meet elsewhere, where the herons meet, once a millennium to feed

the instant of soul.

No longer forgotten, nor forbidden

may we touch the dirt of ivy

may we mingle in crowded cities at midday

may we find fullness in empty copper prairie

may we piece the pieces broken

search and rescue sew and mend

tiny beads of beads unraveled

may we, like Alice, plunge inside waterfalls

glide lightly over swamps

land on rooftops

may we touch the ivy at threshold, heal the wound

find a flying circus and venture beyond.

Toss the material of writing, back and forth,

like a child in a swing.

You are fiction love, the material of my writing.

I made you into meanings you did not have

and in the making of these meanings

I got to know you so well.

1

2001, Starvation Lake, near Mancelona, in Michigan

Never looked closely back at those threshold mirrors, after the crossings! Never quite understood… until now, that I am both, divided between the room filled with fun and smoke and the stern watchful gaze of moral mothers…

Share

When we talk cell talk, or dream talk, membranes surround impulses – in a similar way, we have relationships, bare touchings of inter-meshed membranes, bubbles, where connotations reside, briefly.

Share

Note: It’s been a while since I posted here. The campus magnolias showed up, and I am now gazing at them, in larger than life printed format, or rather, in temporary permanent format. In love with the pleasant surprises of changing light…

Subscribe now