somehow when i kiss you

somehow
when i kiss you,
it feels like an eternity in one breath:
i have been, always, here. right here.
this kiss, this heartbeat,
these eyelashes, your hand upon my back,
my arms around your neck
and
i lose myself in the
moment and
in you i see God.

i like that.

a lot.

Obsessive Compulsive Homeless Folks, Tapestries

Every morning, there is a homeless fellow who walks our in front of my house with an Obsessive need to say the same thing over and over again - changes by the day- and as my bedroom is just above the very busy street on which I live here in the City of Angels, when I leave the window slats open for air, which is most nights, he awakens me.

To calm my mother's fears: as she knows, I am not immediately at ground level but a floor above it, and the landscaping of trees and palms and ferns obscures my windows entirely, and the window slats are only slightly ajar and the curtains are drawn and so it is all just perfectly safe and fine.

Anyway.

Once he said, "St. John's Hospital, Cedars Sinai Medical." Last time he said over and over again, "The wrath of the Lord is upon us. The wrath of the Lord is upon us." A few times he has sung. I am so curious about him but I have never seen him.... until......

Today, I was up a bit earlier than usual. I took out the Henry Monster (my pup, for anyone who is brand new to my social media world and hasn't noticed the 234,897 [and counting] photos of Sir Henry) and.... who was following me but him!!! This Obsessive Compulsive Morning Dove!

He was definitely following me/ us, because every time Henry stopped to smell something, this fellow stopped where he was, 20-30 feet behind us. I noticed him a few doors down from my place so I'm not sure at which moment he started talking and at which moment I started noticing, etc., but suddenly, there he was!

He kept talking though. This morning he was hard to understand. After Henry did his thing at the other end of the block, and I cleaned up after (I am a good neighbor, after all!) I turned to walk Henry back toward home. This fellow had his hand to his ear as if he was a news correspondent. He was looking straight ahead but at me out of the corner of his eye, the way we can make it look like we're not really watching someone but we are. He was talking to (whomever) in a somewhat hushed tone but then when I looked right at him he talked MUCH louder. All I could really make out was that he was talking about the "weird stuff going down with the Republican Party."

Hmmm....

Henry and I walked on, but let me tell you, if I weren't slightly wary of engaging with someone who is mentally ill (and to a degree I do not know and therefore I just am worried potentially dangerous) on the street as a somewhat diminutive single woman, dog or no (Henry is about 11 lbs!) I would have wanted to talk to him for HOURS. Or minutes. I don't know why but I am always so intrigued by what he has to say!

Now as I type this: even my own mother says I look like Michelle Bachmann (she said I should be studying her, and I have! I have the mannerisms and surprised facial expressions down.) I wondered..... did he think I was?... nah, couldn't be. I'm a good 20-25 years younger than her......

Anyway. My own role in HIS personal drama aside, it really gets me wondering- this man is now a part of the interweaving of the tapestry of my life. Perhaps just one small corner, but he's a part of it. Just imagine how many people for whom we are parts of the delicate interweavings of the tapestries of THEIR lives.... and imagine our role therein! Of course we cannot necessarily see or control whether we are dark shadows or floral designs, but we can have awareness that we are all interconnected...

On my wall, in my room here where my little office is situated, I have a framed print of a piece of a tapestry from the Unicorn Tapestries hanging in the Cloisters at the MMA in NY. According to the website, "The Unicorn Tapestries display the medieval desire for interpreting in history and nature a vast interlocking network of symbols. The tapestries may be read as the popular tale of the hunt for the elusive magical unicorn."

http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Unicorn/hunt_unicorn_transcript.htm

If you read the story, you will learn that a unicorn cannot be taken by ordinary means, but can be taken by cunning... only the maiden can attract the unicorn, who surrenders himself to her purity. (Well, these were medieval folks, after all, telling with a specific point of view... but still....) Look closely at this print. The symbolism is fascinating: what appears to be blood on the unicorn himself is actually pomegranate juice, dripping from the tree above him. Pomegranate trees symbolized children.... and there is a tiny frog hiding near the unicorn, a medieval symbol of the aphrodisiac. (Princesses kissing "frogs," eh?)

I am only bringing this up because this tapestry- which I think is beautiful and cool, and, heck, I'm a girl and one that always loved unicorns- is so richly laden with symbols we may subconsciously register and "get the feel for the intention" via our own well developed layers of mythology and upbringing and culture- or perhaps, we may know outright through learning of some kind or through a natural observation of the wheel of things- or we may be completely unaware of. And so I mention it because I think of this homeless guy's small patch in the tapestry of my life and think, I have noticed some of the meaning here. What millions of fibers and strands am I as of yet unaware? What beautiful flowers and leaves are hiding that I do not see? What profound allegories are all around me all the time, just waiting to be witnessed?

I'm going to leave my mind and observation open to a new story today. I can't wait to see what is woven in on August 26th, 2011.

You Sing, Too

You Sing, Too

by erin elizabeth muir


Is it our humanity that frightens us?
Vulnerable and mostly unaware of the
silver fibers of love
(invisible but for the mind's eye)
that connect us ever

and

in reaction to our own blindness
we sigh and do not
knock on our neighbor's door

we do not shout,
"You who is me! Come out
come out wherever you are!"
(Ollie oxen free!)
We do not then open the door,
and see you as me,
and laugh at our folly
(some do)
or sing alongside out misfortunes
(well, I do), nor

Take off this mantle of
separateness and say
"Look!
here I am.
And you may receive me as you..."

What I wanted to write was a love poem
just for you but
you will not let me.
You will turn your ear away as I sing,
and I, fool that I am,
I just keep on singing anyway.

All these words, for you.
All these notes, tumbling out, just for you.
And only you can hear the inside out
of the music I sing,
and I sing so that one day
you may take you arms away from your chest
and we, one breath of god between us,
joining here now,

...

well,

then,


you, sing, too.

DANCING WITH BOUGANVILLA

DANCING WITH BOUGANVILLA

by Erin Elizabeth Muir

dawn on Sunday

:

did you know that in the morning,

free of human urgency,

flowers of the city

have a different vibrancy?

I don’t know how to say it quite so

because we all know the

bloom is when the fragrance is

when the bloom is when the…

but in this quietude

the flowers are

brighter, sharper, clearer

(I’m not even wearing my glasses)

so I begin to look at all the

plantlife

and it’s not just the flowers!

the trees are deeper

and the palm fronds are at once

full of a certain

sorrow one might never notice

when the mad human traffic,

disconnected, hurried

is too busy ignoring the sway

forth and back

at one with the ways of nature

sweet, and joyfully sad

but not in a melodrama, no.

like most of us, not actually native to America,

brought here to pursue an ancestor’s dream of

manifest destiny,

the distinction is that, well,

my fellow, the palm tree,

he gets the way it is and

that the way it is

carries all things both happy and-

not so.

now I sit and look out my window.

a slight dew and a

new crop of pink flowers:

my own basil plant in the sill

has pressed his lucky few leaves up

against the pane and

seems to be dancing with the Bouganvilla

These things,

these and so many other things

I wish I could whisper in your ear,

and then pause, listen while you tell me,

in your arrhythmic way, and I will learn about

what you have seen.

but you are not here so

instead I

am

dancing with the Bouganvilla.

After Tree of Life

Tribal in the left ear, Schubert in the right,
The muir-tide rises as summer draws nigh.
All heads bow to one heart,
Voices carry from a far off room:

"I've always..."
she does not whisper,
and,

"I thought..."
he does not say,

but instead,

she responds to a deep hunger,
the fire in her blood,
a kind of language churning eternally within her limbs,
sung with her body.


Knowest thou, then, how to hear?

Oh, Oh. They've done it again.
They've done it again and the night has passed
and the grass is wet with renewal,
And the morning comes
and the wind has crushed the peony.
Her parting gift-
a sort of gratitude for the pressing
falling tearing of her petals:
she leaves behind a locket of her scent,
which, some day in the dust of sunlight,
heavy summer heat pressing against his body,
where some whiff of peony will rise up in some forgotten corner,
he will pause, just for a moment,
he will wonder,
before he returns to the shuddering, clanging, dying fall
of day by day.

by Erin Elizabeth Muir

Walking Henry in the Afternoon

Slowly, along whispering lanes

Just blocks from the bees,

three by three, a shower of jacaranda.

The wind. A rustling.

Here, between the rush and tide

of leaves,

a symphony of petals.

Codependent No more

Check out this new Vlog from me!

The Passionate Ones

Inevitably? yes,

with passion and force, yes.

but for me, an allowance of my own vulnerability

is what makes so beautiful,

(all rosebud-like)

this taste of iron in the air,

a slip in the streetlights,

a secret sweetness just hidden from view.


you can take it,

if you know how.


The rose speaks:


"If you want me to take the risk to blossom,

you must take the time to

till the fertile soil,

grow this rose from seed to bud,

and- whether I grow

beneath urban lights or

the dawn streaming through your window...


take care. You sense me in the breeze

whether you crush me with your heel

or whether you resurrect me

from the trash or,

if you give me the chance

to bloom again and again

through your awareness

of my tender beauties,

you can smell me anytime you like."


There is one petal on the ground.

The rose is powerless to her blooming, her shuddering, her death.

Catch her now, this morning,

Quick! See?


She is opening her petals...

what a love

what a love like this

can do:


scattering not but remaining


as such true, deep and


there is no where to go anywhere but

deeper, deeper into this love


you see


as often as i can and have tried to escape as

(and i proclaim it so) i am like the wild horse running along the oceanside,

i still am upon this earth, running toward this love everso and everlong,

this wind my breath this fire my hair

this love this sun this joy

your heart

the echo

the beat

my legs

the music

an archaic undulating

a smile

life begetting life

a returning and


so, for all of that,

i bow in respect to

what a love

what a love

what a love like this can do.


this quiet deepening and all

metaphors for life on earth become

one metaphor for this love


and since i have stopped trying to

ignore you, deny you, escape you, flee you, my love

since always this mobius strip

of the lost space highway

we call life on earth

returns me to myself and

to

you, my love,


then i am here to receive

and here to give

and i will allow this love to tear me open

and expose my heart

and at once calm my fever

and soothe my wounds

erasing all lies of the mind

which take me from

what god (in the form of nature, apparently, and angels, and dreams) has joined together.


Does it frighten me?

I whisper yes to the silent stars.

They laugh

And the world turns again.

Strange Dreams of violins in the sea, and the waves and the hordes and the survival of joy:

Strange Dreams of violins in the sea, and the waves and the hordes and the survival of joy:



I just awakened from a strange dream. As I sit typing this, the sun is sprinkling through the palm fronds just outside my window. Crescent Heights Blvd, on which I live, is quiet on a Sunday morning. I am confused and interested all at once in the sweet sound of mild traffic that reminds me of a lolling beach. I know it is time to get back to the ocean.



But the dream- I was with a family of sorts- my family, but in a different configuration- on some island. We had gone to this island in the south Pacific to celebrate the New Year and New Life rolling in all around us. We were surfing and eating tropical fruits. I was with an ex boyfriend, but in the dream, he was not an ex. but we were bonded to each other in a sort of easy piece. He was very upset but wouldn't tell me why, and I never asked. In the dream life, I never asked. I didn't need to. He would take my hand and the energy would transfer between our hands, and I would look into his eyes and one of use could call upon a healing light that would cool the other like a sweet balm.



But this time, there was a sudden and great calamity outside. It was night now, just before dawn, and hot. He came to me and shook me quietly awake but I was already rousing because of the energy of a human alarm. The sun had begun to rise, almost taking over the entire sky, as he ran down with me to the beach. Crowds of people had run down to the sea as a great and giant wave was billowing up. A man ran out into the sea with his violin and began to play for us. I saw them, then, the tsunami and the hordes that the tsunami was bringing with it. Some people began to run. I turned to my love and asked him to go get his instrument to play, too. But he began to run and was lost. I called out his name- I ran to find him but I knew there was no running. So without him I returned to the sea as the tsunami swept in and swept away so many people. I was one of the few left but then the hordes came in with the tsunami, and although they wanted to commit acts of carnage, for some reason, when they saw me, they could not. They took only the fearful ones. I wished I could save the others but they were in too much fear. Those that remained were the musicians who had gone to get their instruments and play as their death was looming, and some children, and a few people in joy.



In my heart, I *knew* my love was still alive. But he was lost somewhere. I began work caring for all the children. I was the only singer left alive, and we were a small band of musicians, children, and a couple surfers. I was one of two women. Everyone knew that I could heal their wounds with my singing voice but that I was going to leave them to find my love. They begged me not to, swearing to me he was surely dead and gone with the rest of them, that there would be danger, that the hordes would find me.



I told them I had no fear. If he was lost, I had already lost him. I promised I would come back to them, with him, and care for them again. The children would lead the way, I said, as long as they were left in joy and nature and strength. We were not to indoctrinate them into fear, as what happened to those who had died in the great waves and the horde invasion that followed, but to teach them to play the instruments and to fish and forage for fruit, and honor the sea.



Then I woke up.

Married to the world.....

I am in love with the world, it's true. I know sometimes when I talk this way *certain* people think it's weird, but I point out, hey! Isn't it more fun to be alive and in love with the open sky and the stars at night and the cooing of doves and the blooming of flowers than to be a suffering heap of complaints and anger? Which sounds like more fun to you? Misery? Cool. Have at it. As for me, I'm in love with the cosmos, because the cosmos is in love with me........

So, I have excavated my love life to do my one woman show, and accordingly, all the exes have been coming out of the woodworks... in VERY surprising and charming and delightful and heartbreaking ways. Sometimes I wish camera crews would follow me around and make a TV show of my life, because it is so amazing, and fun, and sad, and all things in a way you couldn't write...

But the biggest thing that is of curiosity and joy and pride for me, personally, is my strength and dedication to the service of love and peace and integrity in the face of temptation.

In the past, I have always let myself get swept off my feet..... and in recent history, I have thought of myself as sort of romantically anorexic, un-allowing and sorrowful but NOT allowing the sweeping off of the feet to mess up my heart again.

However, now, I see myself rising into a different platform of strength, so to speak. One in which I'm not letting myself get talked into things that are bad for me for the sake of the idea of romance. Trust me, I don't need help with fantasy and romance and attraction. I've been swept off my feet by the best of them: revolutionary poets, melancholic painters, ranters and ravers, motorcycle crashing wounded sexy baddd boys, international business cavaliers, foreign royalties, etc. And all those men were amazing, truly. I loved them. But they were not sustainable. Why? because IIIIII was not sustainable. I needed always that quickening, instead of seeing that what I was yearning for was inside the yearning itself..... more Rumi, less Rimbaud......

And so, in the face of these beautiful darling dangerous men....

Something has happened to me.

I'm not buying it anymore.

I want the real stuff.

I don't want to be gotten. I want something deeper, less speakable, more breathable. What that is, I have no idea, but I feel it, like the expansion of my heart, like the clearing in the night air as the night doves coo, like the earth beneath my feet even as it rumbles. And I don't care if I never find it, because it isn't to be found. It's here. And I don't care if I find it again and again and again in every man I date from here on out, because it simply isn't up to me.

I have so many friends who take these classes and read these books- for girls, it's about getting the guy and keeping him; for guys it's about seduction. Look, I've even dated a seduction coach. (It was NOT happening for me with him, because his techniques were brilliant in the initial approach but failed in that deeper connection of which I speak. And I love bullshit but mostly only in the moment.) And I say, why? Why not just be you and let them be them and stop trying so hard?

But then again, what do I know? I know how to hook someone in, get them to propose, and THEN decide. Screw that.

I'm interested in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6I7ls7iQBk&NR=1

Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.
When our time has come, we will be as one.
God bless our love- god bless our love.

And what does that mean?

Again, I do not know intellectually, but I know it has little or nothing to do with the presentation of outsides, and everything to do with faith. We are all part of the two branches of that tree, for that tree is the tree of life, and the deeper down you get to the roots, the more connected we ALL are.

So I guess I'm saying I'm am married to the world.

Goodie! Because I love you all.

Spending our lives, together!

World without end.... world without end...........