Leaves found and scanned in Durham, NC. Transcribed oracles translated here. Bushwick and Harlem scans incoming.

The Heart Sprouts Hands to Hold the Swirling Mind

Hold your hand on your chest, feel your heart beating, the force that keeps you going without you having to do anything, to be any way, to be in the right place at the right time with the right people, your heart just beats your body, an act of love and sustenance. You are sustained by a constant rhythm that always lives in your body, you who questions where and who is home, return to this simplest simplicity. Feel a tenderness pool at your feet, under your fingertips, gather in the tension of your belly, consume you with a soft golden light. Feel the old crackle burn. You are so deeply loved, you are love. It can feel hard to believe this, especially when we feel overlooked, not cared for in the ways we’re needing. But there is a deeper pulse of love always keeping you afloat, below the layers of masks and the striving, a force that just wants to nourish you. A force that is you, the softest pillow you can always return to…

“Blame it On The Sun” - Stevie Wonder

“Candy Says” - The Velvet Underground

“How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” - Al Green

“Faith’s Hymn” - Beautiful Chorus 

“I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons)” - Nat King Cole

You Know 

You are right on time, and your pain, the little voids in the pit of your stomach don’t make you any less whole, you are here, human, feeling, as everyone is, and you need not respond so deftly to the inner pressure to be sewed up and shiny, healed and beaming and ready to offer pearls. The truth can’t be bent or fragmented, it must be eaten whole. Holding your wholeness holy, keeping your wellspring flowing… Your heart is beautiful, your feeling is sacred, your tears are medicine. The mind is quick to sacrifice your essence for quick validation and familiar retreat. Stay with you. Root into your center seed, your longing, your deepest need that was betrayed all those years ago. 

It is a time of fortifying your inner voice, dropping down to listen close enough so you can hear the sounds floating out of your wound-gaps, the holes of your heart. What are the cries screams whispers songs you hear? Listen as if it's the code to the door that will save you from a fire, because it is, it's that precious, the code to get back into your heart, to hear and honor and trust it, that is your offering now. 

“Where I’ve Been” - Mary J. Blige, Eve

“Pain in My Heart” - Otis Redding

“I Am” - India.Arie, Beautiful Chorus

“Cokesbury” - Sidney Gish

Some Things Just For You 

Before pulling out your phone to capture some beauty you encounter, a sweet cloud or cheeky little flower, let your eyes graze it tenderly first - what do your retinas land on? What do you first notice? Why does it strike you? What in you recognizes the luminosity in this moment? Cherish it, hold it in your heart, use it as fuel for gentle care and a slow return to yourself and your own rhythm. Quiet the noise, distractions... return to your breath, listen...What do you hear? What does the tender one, the young one in you, the frightened one, the hiding one, what do they need? What are you drawn towards in this moment? 

may we let ourselves shed may we let ourselves bleed angels weep for me may we touch melt on in our sweet burning wax — finally — primally — the fire said follow me the water said pray to me — the air said sing — the earth said fall into me let me hear your greatest need— yesterday the piano called to me so I walked in steadily and sand my only melody — the black cat the orange one they followed me home— and I stayed with them slowly and hummed all along — as the moon courts the light its edges sing from angel matter’s wings lining all of it with the glow ancestors know — held you are holding held fresh in this new we are all made new in this home we return to our clay

“Wayward Hum” - Vashti Bunyan

“God’s Coloring Book” - Dolly Parton 

“Chimacum Rain” - Linda Perhacs

“You Are My Sunshine” - Johnny Cash 

“The Nearness of You” - Norah Jones

  Honor Your Fire 

If you hear yourself say “should,” ask where that voice is coming from, and what part of you is listening. Is it the third grader shamed for talking in class when you were bubbling with curiosity, or when you showed anger or sadness or confusion and were told to calm down? Beyond should, what do you want? Dropped back into your animal legs, where would they take you? Could a tree hold your weary back and could the sky rest your nervous system? You are of the ferns and the swallows, the ember and the seed, a natural being embedded with instinct—follow where the dancing flame takes you, leave your head at the door, walk with your essence, sovereign soul. 

Nurture your seed… You are alive and nobody’s pet - can you let yourself go? Can you? Can you let yourself sing? Hear the ring of your baritone dreams and stretch your God-sized hole at the seams, take yourself with you and that prayer will make it all true…Say, do you and you and you mind if I take my time? Do you mind if I comb my hair? Would it be okay if I chose my own clothes to wear? Will you please be sure to sit and stare so I question indelibly? Can you hush my only melody? Can you please make me small when I am so big? Can you raid me clean like your grandmas fridge? Can you forget to water me and then hope for a tree?

“I Find It Hard To Say (Rebel)” - Lauryn Hill 

“I Double Dare You” - Bea Wain 

“Be a Body” - Grimes

“New Resolution” - Heartless Bastards

“Polyester Bride” - Liz Phair 

   The Coffin That Grew Into A Tree 

In the Egyptian story of Osiris, the king is captured in a coffin and thrown into the Nile, floating ashore and becoming fertilizer for a sprawling myrrh tree. Isis turns herself into a swallow bird, singing out to her lost beloved, eventually bringing his coffin on a boat back to Egypt with the power of her breath, reassembling the body of Osiris until he comes back to life. He is then sent to the underworld to decide the fate of souls passing through… 

What deaths are actually seeds? What songs of mourning seem to slip from your lips or waft through the wind? What is the beloved in you, the sacred counterpart you are mourning? The wounded masculine, feminine, child, parent, earth or wind spirit, all of these within you longing for what feels lost, that spirit locked away under thick wood, singing grieving songs of freedom, praying to be released, land in your divine timing, integrate brokenness, initiate alignment, instincts grow into trees, the decay and rearranging of flesh in the cosmic order, where are your pieces scattered and who do they reach, who in you comes singing after you?

“Remind Me” - Patrice Rushen

“Stories” - Bill Withers

“Tenderly” - Chet Baker

“Spring, You Come Again” - Nighttime

What is Real is Free is Alive is You 

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” - Kierkegaard

Can there be pause in the overwhelm, a sitting back to look at all the strewn pieces of your magnificent puzzle of creation, each morsel of inspiration a different shape, and oh the worry of how this piece could fit and oh there’s so many things and not enough time, and yet for a moment can these thoughts sink down the drain and can you celebrate the miracle of your imagination, all the ideas coming to eat you for supper, show you yourself again, alighted with the sparks that created you that will create again and again, that wellspring, unrelenting flow of shapeshifting dreams, all forming constantly at its own pace, finding form in the seams of space and time, seeds settling in the soil of your life. Trust that each spark will find its place, will receive fair ignition, and let intuition guide where you flow, one step at a time. God alights each morsel of the upcoming path as you go - only shows you as much as you need to see. Look to the sky above the illusioned limitations implanted by fear-factories to siphon, manage, control, defend, attack your power and creativity- thoughts thoughts thoughts blah blah blah! - need to let the ink flow out- the words are begging…

“Calypso” - Spiderbait 

“Rock Steady” - Aretha Franklin 

“Creator” - Santigold 

“Six Different Ways” - The Cure 

“Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” - James Brown

Wholeness From Hole-ness

Crawling out of the well, the light is punctuated with dark spots, remnants of the place you’ve been living. You're used to the dark world with the coffee shop of darkness the dark couches the regulars of darkness, so of course the world of light is seen through eyes of dark. The light can only be seen through these dark spots, it is not diminished by the dark but revealed through it. Not that we're ever wholly in the Land of Light or the Land of Dark, it's always the swirling dance within both and through the eclipses, but after a time of dwelling in dark energies, wading through latent leering depression, thick in the soot of grief, paddling to stay afloat, survive, getting used to living where the light don't shine, it feels like extraterrestrial business to land in the light. Remember you belong here, even with your eyes of darkened spottiness, they are impaled with light, come from it, and also dance in dark, because you are whole. 

In your exuberance you are not too much

In your solemn you are not too little 

"Perfect World" - Liz Phair

"My Grandfather's Clock" - John Fahey

“Sometimes” - Erykah Badu

“High Time” - Kacey Musgraves

Exhausted, Wise

The journey is long and tiring, and you know this deepest in your ankles, your knees, your shoulders. You need a long bath, a back rub, a little time… for grounding, bowing to your inner shadowed grace, the cup that appears empty has atoms inside, you’ve been calcified petrified hardened, you can become liquid again…start with a bath… you’ll feel the melting begin, your toes will give in, calves will follow, the blood will rush back in, you’ll remember you’re human and not hollow, what used to be frozen will drip from the faucet before you.. 

Step outside onto the earth, feel the soil between your toes, your foundation, the place we all stand on, imagine the core of the earth sending out loving light rays, pulses of energy that fill you with warmth and strength, assurance of your worth and the deep love that you are made of, that surrounds you. It is the truest thing, Love, and what we are tested on the most. It can feel so far away sometimes. We just need to remember that it has always been us, it could never leave, it is the fabric of everything. We must simply return when we forget. Start with your feet in the dirt, love it, let it love you. 

"Wilson Rag” - Elizabeth Cotten

“Overtime” - Lucinda Williams

“I Heard It Through The Grapevine” - The Slits

“The Wayward Wind” - Patsy Cline

With Power and Glee

Keeping your wellspring flowing, drinking from the waters within and running down from the skies of might and delight and washing out fright, you are cleaned from the weight that once locked you to terror/ you are free and you remember this now/ you move steadily with your heart out of hiding/  assign to your own divinity/ align with what’s clearest calling for your watering/ and you know that nothing they say can scare you, the voices you once listened to are silent now/ your ears fall deaf to all but delight / you sign your emails not with Best, or Sincerely, but With Power and Glee, from the one in this body, the animal in this skin, not the avatar or the set of letters I type within, the one I’ve been, the newborn with the eyes, the surprise and rise of my energies now, I flit and fly and sing out the apple of my eye and reach beyond the Old Abide to dead things that make me sick and flip it and reverse it to dance in New Flying in the malleable movements of me /  now I see now I know what is Inside/what they convinced me to hide/HA!/ you thought you knew/the shape of me/ what is True in me can’t be known just felt /in the fabric of my harmonies/ with the stillness I listen / I listen to nothing but my silent melody 

“People Funny Boy” - Lee Scratch Perry

“Best Behavior” - Gustaf

“The Starlit Hour” - Ella Fitzgerald 

“Fare Thee Well” - Joan Baez 

“Greystone Chapel” - Johnny Cash 

Light Guts

From the core you see all from this window - the parsed melody of sovereign creatorship - cosmic workers take your places lead me to the enchanted underpass - emergent emerging cracking shell - ease-fully rise to meet your emanation - immerse in the most natural - the veil no longer protects only shields light - unfolding creation - where you are burned can see clearly, from the eye of your “no” - the blueprint of your core speaks slowly - the path aglow - hold yourself up to the light, see your guts ignite - what is your light telling you? Where do your photons want to go? Let it leak at your own pace. Where do you feel the most alighted you? Try and trust it. 

All curled up and wet in the sacred in between- twilight - between light and dark, between death and life, creation and creator - and then letting the sun dry you and fluffing up - preparing to fly - flying - from there you can’t put the shell back on - yes it’s you and its painful to let go of, to see your own skin falling off - wanting to hold on let go wanting to feel held and protected by the only thing you’ve ever known - being asked to breathe and trust and let go - you were meant to fly - you can keep the shell in remembrance - who you’ve been and where you come from - not forgetting - just showing up to the moment now - the fresh seed of consciousness emerging

Dive into the center, no more talking around it just be in it, no more circling the edge of the vortex… If your innards are still being formed in the dark of the womb, woven from void, dao, the collective tissue, how can there be reverence for the process, tender nurturance for the heart, song, essence, story, presence being created and healed in the cycles that form you? 

“Fire By The River” - Harumi 

“Adventures Close to Home” - The Raincoats

“Come Down Easy” - Carole King

“I Care So Much” - The Fleetwoods

                 The Side Inside I Hide 

Your stem turns slowly to the sun, aware of its promise of

nourishment but hesitant with where you’ve been stung. 

The light is so bright, it blinds, its glow finds the singed 

edges too. The dwelling presence in you, the God in all atoms has been streaming into the light, taken by the current and finding its belonging in the bright spots. And then the curled edge cranes its neck, you feel the magnet pull, shadows filling spaces where the light had pooled. The burnt side that won’t budge, the ache that holds itself when the curtains draw, what pours in feels less light more fright. 

What part of you won’t budge, won’t listen to the new ideas, scoffs at resolutions, turns away when light is offered? We often get frustrated at this part of ourselves, Why can’t I let myself have a good thing? When will I stop self-sabotaging? As natural as this is, there is more room for gentleness, seeing with kind eyes the path we’ve been on, why it might be hard to trust a good thing, much less enjoy it. Does this part of you need some love? Some time to tell its story? Speak for itself, why it’s worried? Give this part of you the time of day. Set a place at the table, pour some tea, and let it come naturally, at its own pace, and tell you what it needs. 

“The Windmills of  Your Mind” - Dorothy Ashby

“Underneath it All” - No Doubt, Lady Saw

“When Will I Be Loved” - Linda Ronstadt 

“Safe in My Garden” - The Mamas and The Papas

Unsure Aperture 

How much you open the lens to let light into a camera is the aperture level, how sensitive it will be to receiving light. What is your level of light sensitivity in this moment? Are you squinting, are your eyes open? When is it too much to take in? Is it hard to believe that you reflect light too? That it can’t leave you, can’t be canned or fragmented or stolen? That it’s you - your innermost essence- and though we’re taught to hide it in shame and courtesy, it is the balm for all of our healing. Begin to notice your light, commune, build a relationship with it- what color is it in this moment, where does it shines from, your throat? Behind your eyes? Behold the surprise, that it’s you- it’s your light you’ve been yearning for! To feel it close and intimate, to know it’s your best nourishment. To not be so dazzled by others’ colors that you betray the sacredness of your gorgeous hues - look at you - bask - slow… How can you gently, knowing you deserve it, let more light in? Let the effortless process begin… don’t need to know how, have a roadmap, explain, just open yourself to listen and trust what you hear, where your light is leading you, what color is naturally wanting to shine through…

“October Song” - Amy Winehouse

“Surrender” - Diana Ross 

“Just the Way I Am” - Dolly Parton 

“Don’t Let The Good Life Pass You By” - Cass Elliot

Goodness is Not a Loose Tooth 

"Consider the lilies, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin.” (Luke 12:27)

Remember when you lost your first tooth, the weeks before how it hung from a string? A fragile thing that will eventually fall, break from its source. This is how faith in the Good can feel, like something hanging from a delicate thread that must be monitored closely or it all comes apart. Around the fall equinox, Yom Kippur brings Binah, Divine presence, closer to Shekhinah, the physical world, healing the alienation we can feel as spirit beings within this earth realm. In Jewish mysticism, Binah is mother to Shekhinah, a loving force we can call upon for protection and guidance. Lilies lean into what feeds them, the light from above watching over their growth, while we can toil and spin, thinking that thinking will feed us, that if only we try hard enough we can figure it out on our own. We must remember the warmth that surrounds, that isn’t fragile but can feel like it when the clouds roll through, and all we can do is continue, feeding our slow tender exploring…

“Sweet Believer” - Cass Elliot

“Edelweiss” - Bill Lee, Charmian Carr

“I Have Considered the Lilies” - Connie Converse

“Dear God” - XTC

Desire ≠ Disappointment

The wounded one’s cycle of masochism:

Step 1: experience innate unbridled pleasure, joy, peace or love 

Step 2: find one of the many chairs in the attic of your shattered heart and inch it towards the door of pleasure, securing it in place so not one inch of light escapes, lest it reveal the dust accumulated from lack of you going into your own heart

Step 3: Once you’ve sufficiently blocked all light and pleasure, now you’re ready to buckle in solipsistic agony at the fear of losing all the things that you yourself are refusing to let yourself have 

A thick callous grows as we live under the veil of disheartenment, anticipating pain with no room to hope for pleasure. What’s scaring you? What if you opened the door and the light was everything you’ve longed for? Could you live knowing you never even opened the door? 

“Fall Again” - Kath Bloom

“Brokenfolks” - Georgia Anne Muldrow

“Early Morning Breeze” - Dolly Parton 

“Love’s In Need of Love Today” - Stevie Wonder

Dutch Angle 

In the 1996 movie Matilda, Danny Devito directs the camera with an eye towards the slant. When the adults talk down to Matilda, drawing her closer to her power, the frame tilts. When is it actually more aligned to be slanted? When is being tilted good for you to see what’s on the highest point and the lowest, to be tripped up, dizzied, thrown off course so you can remember your power, trace back to your particular center of gravity. In the hamster wheel of the Everyday, everything is always shifting, moving, you can’t trust that your next step will be the same as your last, and so the return to the center-est, where you are holding you steady, well mostly, sometimes falling, but getting up again, and sometimes dragged along but never stuck as it can feel, it is never too late to find your center again, this is the only constant, the return, teshuvah, how cells renew constantly, how we are made of cells, we return to center in each moment, dizzied maybe, turned around sometimes, but never as far as we think. 

“Down By The Riverside” - Million Dollar Quartet

“Didn’t Want to Have to Do It”- Cass Elliot 

“Skating in Central Park” - Bill Evans, Jim Hall

“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” - Bessie Smith

Magnification and Compression 

To capture an image, glass works together to magnify and compress reality through a camera lens. We can even fragment the bits of ourselves that defy capture, that can’t be swallowed by glass. What happens when you zoom in, not to be compressed, but to see each etching in your skin, to love your lines more intimately, to hold each grain of sand in your unfolding alphabet. What are the letters of you? What is the map telling you? Where have you been hiding in massiveness, enormity, scattered energy, everywhere and so nowhere really - is that really free? Tangled and tempted, trailing everywhere in front of yourself, zipping yourself up, dragging your essence behind, paying what’s sacred no mind, eyes on the primordially-promised prize, energy drenched in acid, soot, deteriorating elements, turned puppet, breached from the animal instinct to run, to fly, to be in one place at one time, what would the lines in your skin say if you asked them what they’ve seen? In this magnified moment of granular specificity, do you see you looking back at you? A heart so big it cannot be compressed, only magnified. 

“Stillness Dancing” - Marina Raye

“O-o-h Child” - Nina Simone

“Wishwandrer” - Vashti Bunyan

“The Approaching of the Disco Void” - John Fahey

Mitzrayim

We each pass through a Narrow Place in our own versions of Exodus, when “our דעת / da'at (awareness) is בגלות / in galut (exile) and בקטנות / in katnut (smallness). When we are in Mitzrayim, it is as though God shrinks” (Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, Me'or Eynayim). When we feel tight and constricted, overwhelmed and afraid, alone and confused, we can feel disconnected from the Whole that connects everything, unsure where we belong or if we’ll make it through in one piece. It can be hard to remember what is life-giving, what makes our heart skip a beat, what calms us into love’s steady rhythm. We’re conditioned into the illusion of separation, rewarded for believing in scarcity and competing for a false zero-sum game. When we remember that we all journey through Narrow Places together, every day, though we may not know the name of the one aching across the street, we are each other really, our pain threads through skin and warms us when it weaves together again. We must bear the risk of unclasping the hands, looking around, and letting light touch where we feel most bound. 

“Down the Dirt Road Blues” - Charley Patton

“Outside Looking In” - Rose Droll 

“The Mystery of the Mystery” - Dolly Parton 

“Little Green” - Joni Mitchell, Elektra Women’s Choir

Sleeping Sun 

we can never be wrong cause we’re each all your thoughts spread out from the same clay—and each day we forget we are clay we forget we are you and the red in us coursing reminds with each beat—we are here we are falling we are falling so high—when we listen we rise and sink into the sky—where our clay holds another where we dance and remember—the blood honey saplings rising shy and so tender—that move with us too fastly in the pull of our days —that grow withered and writhe till they fall with the water inside—and we hold close rotted roots, we lament their last flower— we let the tears stain our cheeks and flood out into showers— and just when winter has froze every inch of our longing— the bud calls out curious a daring new songing

LONG TO BELONG - TO LONG BELONGING - BE LONGING - BE THE LONGING - AND YOU WILL BELONG 

LONGING IS NOT APART FROM CONNECTION BUT THE HEART OF IT

The gap between the match striking and the flame can feel excruciating, when the longing is sustained in midair, bare to see and hide from, so vulnerable, I know… and yet precious too, this longing of yours, this deep knowing of where you belong, trust it won’t be long, stay in your longing, be long with it, patient, remembrance that you could never not belong. 

“My Journey to the Sky” - Sister Rosetta Tharpe 

“Will the Circle Be Unbroken” - The Carter Family 

“Feet of Clay” - Vashti Bunyan