Brothers

For Tommy and AJ The things each of you says and does That remind me of the other brother - They twist into my heart like wool, Each translucent fibre a tiny needle So fine I don't feel it going in. I just notice one day That I&

Homecoming

For Tommy Dropping deep down into prayer, flow, trance Will sometimes do it. Or when I feel us connect. These things Show me how it feels to come home. To put down, as if forever, those last few things I’m still carrying And turn with empty hands toward the

A letter to my drug of choice

Fiction, mostly. Explanatory note at end of story. I. When I wake this morning, my hunger for you hums in my cells before I open my eyes. It is so loud that I wonder how I could have been sleeping a moment ago. I would say you rise with the

Clarity contractions

This is a long post, but it is hard to overstate the importance to me of the ideas it tries to express. I will be fascinated to come back to it in a few months and see what I've learned. Where I was right and where I was

In the meadow

Yesterday evening I lay in a grassy meadow and looked at the tall intricate feathered stalks around me, and I thought, “If any one of these were the only one of its kind in existence, it would be treasured as an exquisitely crafted art object of surpassing beauty.”  And of

A love poem

From me to me, from me to you, from me to all of us. A poem of self-love, maternal love, sisterly love, romantic love, the love of deep friendship. We're all just walking each other home. My love for you is not a crusade.  It has no goal

A good weekend

For Tommy I. In a medicine song circle on Friday night My left hand clutched my friend Sara’s right And my right hand rested on my belly Where no child was or ever would be. We sang soulfully of mermaids and rivers and stars To Luis’s gentle guitar

Taking a really heavy hint

A fun maths question Imagine that you deal seven cards from a deck of 156, one at a time, putting each one back after making a note of it (and shuffling in between each deal). Then imagine that you shuffle the pack again, and deal ten cards off the top.

During breathwork

In the third round of breathwork this afternoon Open your chest, open your heart centre I dreamt you kneeling before me, hands on my belly, Mocha eyes shining and uplifted As we both felt Her slow miraculous cartwheel. Take a deep breath in and hold – The wide world smiled to

The last Social Studies class of 1996

Note: I nearly didn't post this as it felt too much like preaching to the choir. But my tarot single-draw last night was The Hierophant, Reversed, the ethos of which is the ethos of this post, so... the universe has spoken. In my final Social Studies class of

Opening the wrong door

A couple of days ago, alone on a hillside (sans goatherd), I found myself passionately sobbing out loud, “I love him so much”, while thinking of nobody at all. Ahh, I thought, when I had somewhat recovered, crying over men has become so habitual that the man no longer even

I will not decide what I can instead discover

I’m on holiday in Arrowtown, Central Otago. My family has lived here for generations and I am always grateful to feel the land welcome me, even if this is the first time I’ve had words for that experience. I've been thinking a lot since I arrived

Ecstatic dance

Woo level: 4/5 I was at an Ecstatic Dance event on Halloween at Bhakti Lounge, and this woman there appeared to be absolutely entranced with herself. You know when people are on MDMA and they touch themselves like they’re the most amazing tactile experience the world has ever

Learning a lesson

Woo level: 3.5/5 Today, for the first time in a while, I struggled for a long time to find my energetic connection to Spirit and the living things around me (which in my current worldview excludes... well, nothing, actually). On my walk/run home this evening up and

Rejection: getting to yes

I thought I was good with rejection I've often told people I'm good with rejection. I genuinely don't mind asking out a stranger. They might say yes! They might say no in a sweet and obviously slightly regretful way! (The last time this happened,

Wild

Today we bide in the wrath and grief of Tāwhirimātea, broken by his parents' breaking. On Parliament Lawn the wind flows through the grass like water. I speak glory to my creator for making me tall and strong, that I may stand in this storm. Wood and brick? No,

Pouring into the void: Self-care edition

Put your hand up if “self-care” feels like a dutiful task on your endless to-do list, a burdensome moral imperative of wellness and self-improvement, something that demands from you energy that you just don’t have. Me too, until a few months ago. Turns out I was doing it wrong.

Love is not policy, it is implementation

This writing is to remind me of the reality and meaning of the love I offer - to my friends, to mystic and mythic forces and beings, to myself, and one day I hope to my life partner. Inevitably, from time to time, things are hard and I feel like

Witching hour symphony

First movement: allegro I woke at around 3am this morning and waited. I’m getting kind of used to this now. When I wake in the witching hour (and I use the term deliberately), absent any alcohol the night before, it’s because I have some work to do.  It’

Raspberry

Three days after the last time they have sex, she goes off birth control. It's like she knows she won't need it for a while. “It’s weird,” she says to a group of workmates eight weeks later. “Usually when I stop, I get my period

Eden

That ticklish coolness behind my ears when I shaved my hair off? It felt like flirtation. In 2009 when I became myself The universe started hitting on me. I walked in sunshine, I smiled all day, swung my hips, Wore fine leather thongs around my ankles. I made eyes at

The Leash

I wrote this a few months ago about an almost unbearably sexy photo of a friend which included a glimpse of, amongst other things, a little star-shaped sticker on one of their fingernails. One of six, as it turned out. The leash One of the most beautiful people I'

Hot tub time machine

The question At the weekend I was hanging out in a hot tub with a friend around midnight, talking about the kind of stuff you talk about in that situation, and they asked me: "If you could go back in time and tell your 20 year old self one

Twenty five years is probably long enough

[Names and minor details changed for privacy.] Dear Patrick, I met you in my first year of high school when I was 12 and you, in the year above, were 14. I liked your low-key uncompromising weirdness and, despite the age difference which often really matters at school, friendship blossomed.