Fall Cleaning

For the past few months I’ve been really busy with work. Between my work at the local law library, my law office, and my intuitive work, I have been straight out. Whenever I can take a breath I run to the beach. And as I look around this morning, I can see my home really demonstrates this preoccupation.

What at one time might be excused as ‘creative clutter’ has morphed into menacing dust bunnies and worse. So it’s time for a clear out and what better time than the autumnal equinox of this past week to accomplish a good fall cleaning?

Today I grab the sponges, water, and cleanser. I grab the dust cloth, the vacuum, and large bags for discarding ‘stuff’. It’s amazing how much ‘stuff’ accumulates. Do I want this stuff? Do I need this stuff? Why is it here? Do I keep it, toss it, or file it and deal with it at the next big clear out? Ha!

I use cleanser and salt and vinegar. Cellulose sponges and cotton rags. Moon water from the last Full. I refuse to buy those toxic chemicals in environmentally irresponsible containers. Those foul things don’t make the work any easier, and they sure are harder on the Earth. Makes no sense. I’d rather use a salt-based bleachy cleanser in a cardboard canister that costs $2, than drop $10 on poison in an aerosol plastic abomination.

I reflect on times gone by when people either had house servants or were themselves house servants. That must have been rather nice. For each, I mean. To be the master and have a house with several families living there to take care of it while you went out and hauled in the money or managed the estate to generate the money. To be a servant and know the shelter and food would be there and you took care of your part of it, whether you were a cook, or a cleaner, or a grounds man or a general manager /butler. Everyone had a home and made a contribution to the home. Reminds me of those great lines from the film The Birdcage: Who cares whether you say I can stay or I say you can stay? It’s home. Or words to that effect.

Hmmm. I shake the cleanser on the white porcelain of the sink and rub it around. Gleaming once more. Am I really advocating feudalism? Or baronial whatever you call it from the 18th century?

What if I didn’t regard all this cleaning as a chore? What if I recognized it for what it really is? Some time away from the cares of work, away from the cares of clients, away from the worldly concerns that rattle around in my head? A meditation. A way to send love to my home. A way to send intentions of peace, of well being, of gratitude to my abode? A way to honor those who share this dwelling place with me?

And all of a sudden I started to enjoy it; this dusting of green powder on my tee shirt, and puckering of my fingers from the warm soapy water. My knees, wet and sliding across the kitchen vinyl floor as I kneel and scrub are now humorous and not inconvenient.

The dryer tumbles. Guitar music wafts in from the living room. Coffee scent lingers from the French press carafe of earlier. Cats stretch to unbelievable length and sleep in the hot sunbeams of September in SoCal. This is real. This is my life.

I think I’ll go tackle the bathrooms next.

Awash in Emotion

Lately it seems I’ve been hearing a lot about emotions and how they are purportedly evidence of frailty and lack of control. What hogwash.

Emotions are every bit as valuable and critical as Intellect. Yet they come from a different place.

Our western society places great emphasis and gives great deference to Intellect. And it is generally acknowledged that Intellect is wisdom that issues from the brain. Intellect is very important it is true. But the brain is not the only sentient organ in our bodies. Today I present to you for your consideration the heart; another sentient organ. One of several sentient organs you possess in your marvelous body.

The heart is a repository of knowledge every bit as potent as the brain. The energies that swirl in us as the heart chakras are just as wise as those swirling in our brain. The wisdom that flows from the heart is known as Emotion.

E-Motion. Energy in motion. The words we so often use to describe Emotion are almost always action words. My heart soars. My fancy flies. I feel uplifted. I sink in despair. I writhe in agony. My heart freezes in terror. My soul crashes in sorrow. I was pulled out of pain by my love. My heart sings. My sorrow weeps.

Emotion must flow in order to be healthy. If we get stuck in one Emotion then illness and dis-ease come in and sets up housekeeping. Have you ever been lost in despair; so lost that you ignored the beauty in your life? Have you ever been so intoxicated with love that you ignored the practicalities and duties of your life? If you reflect you will recognize how being stuck did not serve you.

Emotion must swirl and flow. It analyzes by movement. When we are in despair, we often seek the comfort of our bed or metaphoric cave, but we must not remain there overly long. After we have had our think, and let Intellect have a go at the situation we must move and take up action in order to fully find our way through the situation. We must engage Emotion. Intellect sits. Emotion moves.

This is why we instinctively go to water when our heart aches. The water is a mirror and teaches us about flow. As we watch the water flow, and we reflect in the mirror of it, we understand that our emotions must flow as well. Water teaches us how to move, how to escape being trapped in negative emotions, and how to elevate positive emotions to new heights.

The next time you are near water, whether it be an ocean, a river, a stream, or a pond, watch it. Watch how it moves. How it adapts, and flows and never loses itself yet becomes what it must become.

When you feel an emotion, let it flow over you. Analyze it just as the water analyzes the rocks and creek bed, the seafloor, and sea creatures. Caress it and see what wisdom it has for you, and utilize it. I don’t write of gut instinct; that is another wisdom, another chakra for another discussion. I refer to feeling, of the clarity of knowing and incorporating what cannot be put into intellectual words and phrases. Intellect has its lexicon. Emotions have their feelings. You know what it is; you feel what it is. And thereby you gain in understanding. Yes, let Intellect have a go; it too is valuable. But do not exclude Emotion.

Emotions wash over you. Revel. Feel them, the good and the bad. You are alive. This is a temporary situation for you. So enjoy it all: the ups and downs, the pain and the joy. Welcome the giddiness of laughter, the release of tears. They all serve you. They are you.

Bringing in the Sheaves

The dawn rose misty and cool this morning; a rare gift in SoCal in September. I have had my head in several wrongful death cases for the past month and needed balance this morning. So off I went to the beach, arriving long before the Labor Day revelers; when only the surfers were there. I walked hip high in the incoming surf and then sat, and dug my feet deep in the sand for grounding and clearing. I sat there until the tide overcame me and kelp swirled in entreating tendrils around my ankles. I am MerCrone.

I felt solitary. And started to muse on helpmates and partners and how these tend to emerge from the ether when we call for them. I ascended the cliff to head home to the piles of medical files that await me.

And suddenly I started noticing all the help that spontaneously arrives. Upon reaching the chairs at the top of the stairs I saw a policewoman and some bicyclists petting the local cat and inquiring whether she belongs to anyone. She has a collar and tags, and is well cared for. But people were asking and would have intervened had she needed them.

I saw a pair of ancient pug dogs with gray faces being pushed along in a pram, like the enfants terrible I am sure they are. The pram was pink and had satin blankets in it for their aged rumps. They looked content and entitled and they wheezed as the pram passed me, their two daddies in close attention.

I saw a greyhound of tremendously regal build, no doubt rescued from that dreadful race industry, walking alongside a very portly couple. I laughed at how fate intervened to take him away from that cruel land of forced exertion and placed him in a world no doubt full of soft cushions and good fatty cuts of meat.

And I realized that no matter where you are in life, you can always call for help, the siren song will go out, and the perfect answer will always arrive in perfect time. If you look the signs are all around you that all you need to do is call, and the way there will emerge.

I looked across the highway and saw the pumpkin patch. Large orange orbs ripening and almost ready for the children to come seize them for All Hallows Eve. I saw all the future pies, and breads, and pumpkin butter. I thought of that old hymn Bringing in the Sheaves and how as children we used to sing Bringing in the Sheets… an ode to laundry. And laughed.


Harvest is coming. All hands to the field. I flew home, stopping at Peet's to get caffeine and a smile, and now face the sheaves of medical files. Time to bring them home. Loreena McKennitt serenades me from the living room sound system. The sheaves are lining up perfectly.

Selkie Summer Night

Went to the beach tonight in search of my skin and eventually found it tucked under a pile of leafy kelp fronds. Guising myself I dove into the water. It was clearer and lighter than it has been in months.

No resistance. I glided through the surf effortlessly. Water is my element and I recall eons past when it was our home and we lived in the surf and rocks. This night I swam in the shallows until the sun was past the horizon, the New Moon rose, and the water became inky black like the seals. In the pitch I arose Melusina, and know who I am.

Scarabs and Second Chances

This evening the beach was cool and overcast; just the way I love it the most. While walking in the surf I spied a scarab beetle on his back, in the wet sand, about to get overwhelmed with an incoming wave. I plucked him up and he grabbed on to me for dear life. His six tiny feet clutched me with gentle desperation, and I wondered what he thought of this giant looming over him, delivering him from certain death. It’s not often you get to play deus ex machina to another being.

He was so beautiful; an iridescent soft green covered with sand. I took him away from the roar and breeze of the surf to the soft sand near the base of the cliff. We had a visit while I brushed the wet sand off him and he started to revive. He began by waving his right front leg about and slowly began to groom the sand from his face.

He continued to cling strenuously to my hand and slowly became more animated. I think the warmth from my skin helped him recover from his ordeal. I sat down in the sand and talked with him a bit. He would stop his grooming and look at me, and for a brief moment I fancied we understood each other and the moment we shared. Endoskeleton and Exoskeleton. How often do we commune? Not so much I’m thinking. (but see another scarab entry August 29, 2009).

Once I was certain he was all right again I put him on a bamboo leaf, out of the wind and away from predators. Perhaps he is spending the night there. Good camouflage; fine shelter.

Many traditions hold that scarab beetles are symbols of rebirth and regeneration. Timely, my wee, emerald portend. Earlier this week the mother of a dear friend passed this Earth plane. I was honored to have been there for her passing and see her into the Light.

This little beetle reminds me that, no matter what our circumstance, we should never give up and never assume an outcome. We might be toes up wriggling in the wet quicksand with an advancing wave mere inches away, and something that wasn’t there thirty seconds before can pick us up, dust us off, and put us on a nice soft tree.

I had gone to the beach searching rocks and crystals. Turns out it was an evening for jewels; a beautiful jeweled insect who had a lot to show me about life and fate and making a difference.

Two Crows

The animal world is amazing. They share our planet with us, and are ever our teachers if we open to their lessons. Last week I received a good lesson from the crows who live by me.

I love crows. And they seem to love me, too, as they have always allowed me to get close to them. On a misty morning I left early for work and encountered one of my regulars out scavenging for breakfast. She was striding through the dewy grass searching out worms and grubs and insects, and doing a fair job of finding them. We regarded each other as we do. She gave a low crawk of greeting and cocked her head to look at me closely. I told her, in low tones, how beautiful she was. She crawked more words to me. I watched her as she resumed her rustling for food, and then I turned to continue to my car.

After buckling in I stopped to marvel at how beautiful life is and how privileged I am to relate to these crows. I put the car in gear and headed out of my little housing development to the main street.

Just at the corner to the bustling main street I saw a fledgling crow smashed in the gutter, apparently hit by a car in the late evening or the early dawn. Clearly dead. And I could tell he was a fledgling by the color of his beak, still so bright to make it easier for parents to find to place food in. This young one had not judged traffic accurately, and thereby paid the price. It is a too frequent occurrence of late and always puts a lump in my throat. A few weeks ago I witnessed a crow being run over by an SUV that never stopped and it affected me deeply. How can people be so clueless and callous?

After my instant of adrenalin and horror passed I did what I do for animals who are killed by cars, and continued on the way to work, but remained shaken. As I was accelerating on the freeway ramp a gentle voice asked me: Which crow are you going to focus on now?

I thought about it. I had done what I could for the dead one. The live one was still there grubbing out her meal. Which crow would haunt me for the morning? It was then I realized I had a choice.

I could continue to feel shock and pain about the dead crow, taken too early, and too violently. I could continue to mentally image his poor broken wing at its dreadful angle from the road, feathers rustling in the morning air. I could continue to feel that pain all morning and stay in that vibration. And believe me it was tempting to stay there. I was still shaking with the emotion of the encounter.

Or I could remember the incredible honor and communication with the live crow, her words of greeting, her focus on her meal, and how that encounter raised my vibration to soaring heights.

The two encounters happened within ten minutes of each other. And each so different, and so polar opposite, vibrationally. I had to smile. Because of course I chose to stay vibrationally with the live crow.

In life we must make a conscious choice to keep our eye on the prize and our mind and body in alignment with positive vibrations. Of course sadness and low vibration events will come and we must attend to these situations. We must do what we must do. But then we need to wrap it up, conclude it, and…here’s the trick… Let. It. Go.

How often do we stay with the dead crow? How often do we hang on to something that is painful, and ignore or minimize the positive things coming in to our lives? I am not suggesting we abandon these painful situations, or ignore them, but we must keep our emphasis and our focus on the positive. The positive must be our default vibration. It is the only way we can continue to progess in our lives. By staying in the positive we can better do what we came here to do.

And so every time that morning, when the image of that sad, broken wing came into my head, I sent that crow a blessing and shifted to the image of the breakfast seeker and her low crawking greeting to me. And I marveled at the entire sequence.

My work day was very busy and full of a lot of negative and some positive and ended with my long drive home. I finally got in just before dusk, pulling up the drive quite tired and cringing at seeing some feathers still in the road as I approached. I turned off the ignition and sighed with letting the day go. I thought of the dead crow, blessed it, and refocused. I gathered my purse and tote and stepped out. And looked up. There, greeting me, were two live crows walking in the grass looking for dinner.

Two crows. One, my morning companion, looked up and crawed at me and resumed beaking about the blades of grass. The other merely regarded me mutely and picked up a beetle. Tears stung my eyes at the beauty.

Mitaku Oyasin is Lakota for ‘all my relations’ but it means so much more than just those words. It has no complete translation, but encompasses everything as one family and as one learning spirit. We have so much to learn, and the world has so much it can teach us. Watch for the crows in your life. Take the lessons they offer.

Carefree Summer Days

A Summer Weekend looms – a long holiday one here in the States as we celebrate July 4. Puts me in mind of a particular childhood summer in Pennsylvania. That was the summer I essentially lived with a British family and it was the start of my funny way of slipping into an accent that defies localization. My Brit friends know well that I get “a case of the Madonnas” when I’m around them; the timbre of my voice changes and I start saying GARE-age instead of gar-AHJuh. I go on holiday, not vacation, and everything comes out of my mouth a wee bit more English sounding.

That magical summer during my youth was one of great creativity. Kids were given free rein to create. There was a mad cacophony of projects: a toothpick Eiffel Tower in one corner; painting canvases in another; and game boards for never ending Monopoly games, some kind of farm game, and Battleship were always set up in the caravan /travel trailer. In the back room we spent hours assembling bones from animal skeletons we found in the woods and we played museum keepers trying to put them together. It looked like some grisly experiment of cat, gopher, and rat bones. The great Golden Labrador named Costas spent his days flaked out on a frayed Persian rug, smiling, and thumping his tail whenever we walked by, no doubt because we dropped bits of food everywhere. There was endless food in the kitchen. It was HEAVEN!


I staged plays and radio shows. My Grandfather had given me a reel-to-reel tape recorder and I would interview anyone and everyone, and then would edit and present it ‘radio style’ from a booth I rigged in the GARE-age. We hung sheets and staged plays of our own imagination. We were kings and queens and ace fighter pilots and intrepid explorers. We wrote plots of murder, betrayal, and revenge and – since it was the cold war in those days – intrigue involving Russian spies.

Sean Connery was James Bond then and the local bakery, Bond Bread, took advantage of the coincidence of name and sold loaves with end wrappers featuring photos from the movies. We collected them all into a mad collage of black and white stills from spy films and put them up on our theatre walls. We bragged about how when we each grew up we would have Aston Martins and speed around the countryside saving the free world.

We trooped down to the creek with Costas in the evening and sailed boats made of plywood with ripped sheet sails. We built dams and temporarily incarcerated frogs and toads, always freeing them at night to return to their lives on the banks of the stream. At night we lay on the grass, got devoured by mosquitoes, and stared up at the constellations, making charts of the stars and sneaking them to bed with us so we could sit under blankets with our flashlights and compare them to the star charts in our books. We captured fireflies and put them in bottles and watched the fluorescence. We let them go after a few hours. Unless we forgot. And if we did and they died we buried them with honors worthy of Egyptian pharaohs in the morning.

Crystals were everywhere, or so it seemed to me. I collected them all summer and put them in boxes by category and pulled them out late at night in bed and held them, felt their power and compared how different ones buzzed in different ways. We passed them around and felt their energy.

All summer long we created and laughed and learned about life and the environment.

And yet we attended no summer camps, participated in no programs or classes, and had no formal structure to our days. We had neither teachers nor seminars, and days would go by without us ever getting in a car or going anywhere other than where we went on foot. The only television I recall us watching was Gilligan’s Island, which we would sit and sing to and mock endlessly with our own lyrics.

Yet somehow this summer of our imaginations was one of the best of my life. It was a magical time of friendships, of exploration, and of self-realization. Adults served merely to provide us with food and - as I look back on it – overall protection from the elements. The odd scraped knee was bandaged and kissed. Bad language was sharply reprimanded. Laundry was ordered picked up. Other than that, it was Lord of the Flies without the bad bits and with gentle structure. We were kings and queens and we found our very essence that year.

It was not all jolly for me that summer. There was some ugliness on another front. But while I was in this household I learned what it was to be myself, and unleash the creative person unafraid. And I knew what it was to be free and to be loved and to be embraced for who I was.

What a blessing. I wish all children such summers. I wish it for all adults, too.