Arizona

Burning Fire,

Living Fire

Breathing Fire,

Loving Fire

Three o´clock and all is blazing,

I marvel at the sight of the very subtle and quiet pulse of life held in nature around me. Slow dragon breaths move resilient foliage and cactus thorns, the heat of their flames licking the surface of my skin. A living oven for my body, sitting in the shade of the bluest and most treacherous of skies. "Come" it says, "come dance under the clear vault of my heaven, come out and play, for all I am is light and sun, no menacing clouds, darkness and storms in view, just limpid air for us two".

All I see are crickets, black spotted ones with drops of red, sand colored and bright green ones, now out in the open, impervious prays to absent birds which murmur their relief hiding under sparse shaded branches. Multicolored butterflies, little dragons themselves defy the burning air and flicker over proud cactus flowers I see. I breathe deep, my body surrendering to the forced laziness seeping through my limbs, all I need is my willingness to surrender to a force much greater than mine and let in the roaring force of an August Sun passing over the Arizona desert.

I am approaching my 51st birthday and I like to think that there is synchronicity in me, around me. What if, I ponder, what if this transforming and ruthless heat is an accomplice, a teacher sustaining the travel I have begun? What if it is helping me burn entwining and binding bridges which have held together my old defended self. I feel inspired in my purposeful intent to reduce to ashes the fortress of the illusive luminosity I saw as me, which I can no longer vouch for.

For what is light without shadow?

What is ethereal without substance?

The desert is showing me that heat, light, luminosity by themselves are perfect killers. No shade to restore and hide, no humidity to bring out what lays underneath the burned out dirt. No birds to pick grass hoppers, no people in this scalding heat, no moisture brought forth by the darkest hours of the night, only incandescent waves of heat numbing my body and my brain.

So I pray,

So I dance,

So I rejoice

Celebrating the paradox of me

Holding as one my light and my dark

While I sacredly hold the juiciness of my Being.

Substance

I read these lines written by Dante and something in me sings. He writes this just before entering the Inferno ... this is what I wish happens to me as I move into my own burning fire, held together by the awareness that all of me is bound by the brilliant union of love.

In that Abyss I saw how love held bound

Into one volume all the leaves whose flight

Is scattered through the universe around;

How substance, accident, and mode unite,

Fused, so to speak, together, in such wise

That this I tell of: one simple light. 

La Vergüenza

Dime, dime tu ¿qué sabes de la vergüenza?

¿Qué sabes de la vergüenza que mata la esperanza y aniquila los sueños?

Dime, dime tu ¿qué sabes de las llagas que llevas dentro, pudriéndose en desilusión y amargura?

Te digo, te digo yo que la mía, apenas la voy conociendo

Esa vergüenza que adivinas en mi rostro cuando dudo de quien soy,

aquella vergüenza que rehuyes, cual escapista, cuando se perfila en mis palabras

dejándome sola con ella, porque es innombrable, un mal inaceptable.

Te digo, te digo yo que la llevo con honra

Mi vergüenza duradera, persistente y aguerrida

Una ecuación emotiva que suma, resta, multiplica y me divide sin fin

Mi vergüenza, MI vergüenza, compañera fiel y negada.

Solo ahora te voy conociendo,

Aún me resta tanto por comprender.

Y ya estoy cosechando tus frutos de miel en la dulzura de mi ser

Por tanto tiempo enterrada en mis catacumbas.

Celebro nuestro encuentro

Cara a cara,

Mano a mano.