Deenie’s Diary Entry #4-Wolf Moon

Welcome to the Garden

The cards kept telling me to plant a garden. The planets aligned in such a way that the year before was one of great loss and instability. I was drowning really, pushing the water out from in front of my face as fast as my arms could move, kicking my legs and feet and pushing to the top, to the light, but getting no where. Plant a garden? I mean, I've considered it. I like the idea of it, but it wasn't a long-forgotten dream or anything. Yet every time my sister did my tarot reading, it came up....something about planting a garden. It took a while to finally break through that the garden was Deenie's.

I started the story years ago. A piece of it fell into my lap in conversation. There was something about her, about Deenie, that I knew. I saw myself in her, and later, I saw my mother, and my grandmother, and her mother. As I've gotten older, one thing that I understand better than ever is that I am not as "special" as I might have once thought. My experiences, insights, fears, dark thoughts, are not so unusual, and I am more like, and more connected to all of those women, to all women, than I realized.

But writing it all down means digging into earth that's been frozen over for decades, and it scared me. And allowing others to read it, in a zine, and now in a blog, well that really scares me. But Pema Chodron, from the 2 dollar book I got at Goodwill told me that to stay in my little bubble out of fear isn't keeping me safe, it's keeping me suffering. Living is getting out of that bubble and learning to stay open-hearted even when it's scary and everything falls apart and all the children laugh at you. And I can't forget the wise words of my dearest friend and mentor, poet Amy Sutton, writer of the fantastic Tabloids, "Just get your pansy ass in gear and do the damn writing."

So I've decided to abandon the fear and embrace the honesty, with whatever that brings. I'm bringing out the hoe, the garden rake, the shovels, and here I am, in my own kind of garden, in a zen garden, in Deenie's garden. And there's a lot of work to do.

Deenie’s Diary Entry #4-Wolf Moon

January 31, 2010, 9:39 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

She called it a wolf moon, the full moon last night that made me stop and hold my breath. The moon that put me in my place.

Like the night we drove through Kansas, a bowl of stars over the land, and I knew that I was floating in space, and insignificant. The wolf moon is timeless, she said, the earth is timeless, and we are only visitors.

I can’t explain the peace that brings me.

The weight of the guilt, the expectations…it all melts away when I realize that no matter what I do with this life of mine, the moon will continue on it’s journey, the earth will turn, and maybe it’s okay if today I just enjoy the way the light plays on the dormant raspberry bushes and read a poem, or ten.

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