a Thursday night. been listening to housemates singing over guitars and candles. the sweetness of human creation. the persistent sensation that there is a piece of my magic i can't access, and that it is blocked by this psych drug I take. missing missing missing it...

For a few years now I've heard people say that depression is depressing your feelings, or that it is anger turned inward. I did not get this. But now I'm starting to get it...

I want to write about some things that have been culminating for me this last week. I celebrated a year and a half sober yesterday, sitting by the river with the woman who's been helping me through the steps, wind in our hair, life stories on our tongues, sun on our backs. Deep summer and things are changing in my life.

i gotta say that the dark blurry places have a certain kind of seduction, a certain sick familiarity which calls out with this promise of less effort, less friction, a lure to go backwards into the cocoon... it's hard to resist. Some part of me has wanted to believe in that cocoon all my life. But that's not the part i want to feed. That's not the seed I want to water. I get it. And I don't. And then I get it. And then I don't.

musings on acceptance, resistance, turbulence, serenity, courage, and prajna...

Musings on the snowmelt, my first maple sugar harvest, the returning birds, and the deepening connections between all of our roots underground as we build bridges between so many realities and try to find radical balance in a counter-intuitive world...

this poem just tumbled out whole this morning after a night of dark and tangled dreams...

now I am thinking about all kinds of things from the world of dark moon and fallow gardens, things like tarot cards and sex and chocolate and creaking doors and silver and green and still water and sailing ships and wind and summer and burdock and birth...

The impulse to write this came originally from a woman, with whom I am entirely smitten, who lives in London. We seem to have formed one of those connections that convinces you you are in love with someone you barely know, and inspires you to cram as many of your life stories into a few short days together as humanly possible. But the picture of daily life is so different from the recounting of adventures and insanity, heartbreaks and visions and dreams and disasters. Different, and yet part.

These days are rather quiet, except when they're not.

Today I have been sober in AA for an entire year. My last drink was a year ago last night, with my mom. Tomorrow I am celebrating with my home group. Crazy, crazy, crazy. I cannot even possibly believe how much my life has changed --

How am I doing? it is thrilling to be here, to feel plugged into all this adical community energy, to see how The Icarus Project is going to spread like wildfire through the U.K., to be sane and sober and excited, physically well, making connections, alive and a part of.

'm sitting on the fourth floor of a gorgeous squat in London while my British host/newest-best-friend Max responds to e-mail and Sarah lays in bed reading. It's been a long good day

It's been so nice to see everyone's responses to the last blog post and forum post I put up, the one about gender and sex. It's funny -- I'm realizing now that part of why my art and my writing dried up for a while is because some part of me was trying very hard not to feel, and if I was not feeling, then there could be no honest bubbling up in the way that spills into art and words. And so there wasn't.

A lot has been erupting out of me lately about gender and sex and control and fear. I got an e-mail today that triggered all kinds of old heartache and sinking stones in the stomach, and ended up writing a bunch of things down... this is an excerpt:

musings on performance, childhood, abuse, and re-learning how to dance

Today I am excited. About having begun this blog and having begun the first painting, in quite a while, that feels like it comes from the magic place inside me...

And here is something very helpful I read in one of the most helpful books ever...

I had intended to tell you about the books I've been reading. I'd intended to tell you about the way Orion haunted the horizon tonight as i got out of the January car. And then a star fell across the sky and I wished you could see it. The mud curled up around my feet. The mystery parted the folds of her dress...