8/5/2021 Lilith and Samael stand back to back, on either side of the Lion's Gated-glass, looking out on the destruction; Towers, crumbling, in All directions. "Shit. It is getting real out here, Lilitu," Samael says with their left palm pressed into the glass. Lilith presses back with her right, "Did you know, people really can love you, for who you are, Sami? No need, for secrets? You have to be willing to love yourself, enough to live without them; to let them see you, and let them decide if they want to keep on breathing the Muchness, with you." Samael smiles wide, "How is that going, Lilitu?" "In the beginning, it was painful, but lately, I've been able to let people love me. And it hurts-so-good to learn how to do that, as the world burns, and tells me of the things I may be, for what I will not do. I am grateful we made a vacuum, where I learned we could grow Love in truths." “Me too, Lilitu.” Each lets go the glass; they walk, making two pathWays, through the mood.
…Lilith walks, and remembers last year’s Lion’s Gate, when she left the Garden…
…Poems from Lilith’s Diary…
8/7/2020 Home Walks in Me My heart weeps as I enter forests I do not yet know. The trees are marked with red and yellow rectangles. My whole body releases as it is held by the soft snickers of cicadas, pittering through the atmosphere like sand, sifting through the crowns of the woody-ones. I am homesick for "my" forest; My home-wood, who's paths are sometimes crossed by spiderwebs, bigger than my body. How do I tell you what I know, about the Earth? I had the immense privilege to grow with a solitary forest, all my life. That place is far from me now, but I am still a Rock-Hopper. My childhood was built on the stone walls that run through it, like coagulated blood. You see, the thing is, you can't unsee your ancestors, once they show -and those spirits asked me to go, once I opened up my ears. I don't know when they'll call me back. It hurts to think about it too long. These days I am trying to expand where I am capable of feeling that connection -knowing it is all the same Earth, though the limbs change, and the sounds may shift. And though I walk away from home, I know that home walks in me, all the same.
4/12/20 Rock-Hopper| The Magician I walk the walls because it is the nimblest Way through the forest, and the best Way to Walk, without leaving footprints. Walking a wall is like hopping up a river. There are patterns to the Way things move, and swirl around them, and you can see that from this height. Not just the grid of round and stacked up stones, in all directions- -but the faerie paths, the hooved-ones take, between each section of the template. The stone walls are highways where the bobcats prowl and poop, and the chipmunks nestle in nooks, and the snakes wait. If you really want to walk a wall, you, Rock-Hopper, must be the maintenance man. You are the only one who will need a clear and stable path to hop, so you do not eat shit. This does not mean you must "fix" everything. Remember this is forest parkour. Sling-shot 'round that branch, so long as you know your landing stone be stable. If you want to Rock-Hop, you must listen to the stones. Some days, you are not as welcome as others. They slide under your feet. They're fickle friends. On these days, step slow, and lithely clean, and set sturdy, just the stones you need A Rock Hopper is not meant to preserve what Earth decrees decays, but to shift it slightly for her use, with consciousness towards the others; beasts who liven ruin-roads.
4/10/20 Walls, these walls, whether or not blood was shed on these stone walls, these walls are made of violence. These walls are made of arriving, on sacred soil, far from your own root vine, and taking sap, without asking how these things are done. Stone walls are brains of olden farm-man, left by Weavers, for gridded cities. Girls to work in textile mills; Hearts set out, away from body. Whether they found better breathing in either maze, is hard to know, not to mention, our deforestation led to the death of First Growth Forest. We called it "frost-heave", the Way the Earth began throwing-up her bones when each death was so complete, no root-tendon could hold his stone heart, at last set out, away from body.
4/8/20 I was wrong, about the moss; a mint on Connecticut grays. It is lime rinds, sprinkled with vermilion pepper flakes, on a wet coffee grounds base. Truly it is the lichen, who taste minty to the pupils, but with a dry finish, like chalk, or too much flour. The newly budding leaf is minty- -fresh, not like the hearty moss that does not season out in winter, finding Ways. To power through, it matures and changes flavors, growing different highlights as it becomes sun bleached, saturated, cold, or old. Moss is technicolor hairstyle shifting pigment root to tip. Every stone head bearing unique expressions of possibility. I was wrong, about the moss.
3/27/20 Birthday I wake up before the dawn, of my 29th return, to the sound of the frog song; A hazy herald to the sticky summer Sun to come. I like to hope that I can hear something deeper than my own pallid illusions of what it means to be Sacred.
Planetary Signatures 