Brand New Day

This Van Morrison song has long been an inspiration to me…

Brand New Day

Songwriter:  Van Morrison

When all the dark clouds roll away

And the sun begins to shine

I see my freedom from across the way

And it comes right in on time

Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light

And it comes from the sky above

Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me

And lights my life with love

Chorus:

And it seems like and it feels like

And it seems like yes it feels like

A brand new day, yeah

A brand new day oh

I was lost and double crossed

With my hands behind my back

I was longtime hurt and thrown in the dirt

Shoved out on the railroad track

I’ve been used, abused and so confused

And I had nowhere to run

But I stood and looked

And my eyes got hooked

On that beautiful morning sun

Chorus

And the sun shines down all on the ground

Yeah and the grass is oh so green

And my heart is still and I’ve got the will

And I don't really feel so mean

Here it comes, here it comes

0 here it comes right now

And it comes right in on time

Well it eases me and it pleases me

And it satisfies my mind

Here it comes right in time, the ferry to the Isle of Mull. Bringing a brand new day into my life. And when I step on that ferry, I know it is taking me home, to where I’m meant to be, maybe where I’ve always been.

As I stand on the upper deck in the misty rain, all the past abuse, hurt and confusion is blown off me. Washing me clean. Then, literally all the dark clouds roll away and the sun comes shining through. And I can see across the way. The gulls are hovering over the deck railing, their raucous calls seem to say, “Come on, come on. This is the right way!”

Everything seems so clear for the first time in my life. I am doing what I need to do; I am going where I need to be. I am showing up for MY life. My life, not someone else’s version of what they think my life should be. I’m writing my script now. Clean slate writing. It’s an adventure. Just show up and see what happens. How will I fit in here working at the Isle of Mull Hotel? Quite well. Will I make friends? Lifetime.

It feels good to be awake and not sleepwalking through life. There is a rhythm to the ferry’s engines. They are playing my tune. My spine is aligning to the pulse in the heart of the ferry.

I stand straighter, ready to meet what may come my way during my three months on Mull. I have had a two-week sojourn in Scotland as I traveled around looking for a job. And it feels like every step along the way has been guided to get md where a job would be waiting for me. The Scots are a mystical people and they appear when you need them the most to help you along your way. They never failed me. And then there were the crows that were always there, cawing when some synchronicity was about to happen.

The ferry is nearing the dock in Craignure where the manageress of the hotel is meeting me to introduce me to the staff and get me settled in my quarters. Outside my window is a rhododendron bush as tall as a house. I will keep a jar of its lush purple blossoms in my room for as long as they bloom in May, the first step to making this room my own.

On this brand new day I’m 49 years old and for the first time in my life I don’t feel like I need to be somewhere else. My gypsy soul has found its home.

Rebekah for The Poplar Grove Muse

Dreams and Determination

I’ll admit it. For many years, I have harbored the fantasy of being a guest on Oprah. I imagine myself sitting on stage in her modern upholstered guest chair, smiling out at the audience, discussing my new book. I feel the glory of applause and gratitude in response to my words. I enjoy the sense of connection, joyful that my creation has touched others. Oprah hugs me, not unlike she hugged Elizabeth Gilbert, and my book, now blessed with her Midas touch, becomes a best-seller.

This story could take on a sarcastic tone at this point. I could exaggerate Oprah’s influence, or poke fun at my fantasy. However, I write this in all earnestness. For many years, Oprah has represented a pinnacle for me, a goal to strive for, a sense of hope for my story being seen and heard by a wide audience.

The ironic thing is that, as of last Wednesday, her show has ended. Yet my dream of writing a book is still alive. My dream didn’t die with the Oprah show.

I believe in my mission, and it seems that universal forces do too. This might sound strange, but I found it necessary to receive the blessing of my maternal ancestors in order to proceed. I come from a lineage of hard-working, salt-of-the-earth women, who gardened for survival rather than enjoyment. I had to confront my guilt around “indulging” in an artistic pursuit when what I really “should” be doing is hoeing the soil to feed my family. But I realized that writing is MY way of working the soil, and my generation is the first in our family to have this option from birth. Once I explained that to my great maternal grandmother, we came to an understanding. No, I’m not a rotten apple on the family tree.

I have carved out time to write beginning June 21. I have divided my word count goals into days. I am not going to let anything stop me. This amount of determination, I’m discovering, is what it takes to write a book. I’ve confronted the “who do you think you are” whispers that have held me back. I’m daring to be more selfish with my time for awhile. I’m ready to roll.

Over the next six months you may find me rolling in self-doubt or reveling in happiness as I pound out a manuscript. I share this with you because good, bad, or ugly, I trust the process of creating something is worth documenting. I’m fully aware how declaring my intentions may be setting myself up for failure. I don’t care. I dare to fail. I'm encouraged by others I've seen do the same, and dammit, I want my daughter to witness me in this process.

So thank you, Oprah, for providing a chair for me to dream into. Thank you creative spark, for sticking around even after that chair has been removed from the stage. Thank you ancestors, for your blessing, and thank you WWFAC for providing me a sense of community to lean on. I’ve got a story to share, and I’m determined.

-- Kim for the Poplar Grove Muse

I Know Things

I Know Things

For as long as I can remember I’ve known things or seen things. I don’t know how I know them or why I see them. My first experience I can remember with this happened when I was around
eleven years old. The phone rang and before my mother could answer it I said,“Aunt Merle died”. I could tell by Mother’s side of the conversation and the look on her face that I was right. Aunt Merle hadn’t been sick, so it wasn’t something we were expecting. Mother never questioned how I knew that. She also has the same abilities.

In thesummer of 1995 I was in Scotland working at the Isle of Mull Hotel; I was sitting in the staff room having morning tea with my co-workers. One of thehouse maids, named Mary, looked at me and said, “You know things.” I smiled at her and said, “So do you.” “Ach,aye,” she replied as her blue eyes crinkled and we exchanged knowing smiles. I met many such kindred spirits in Scotland, a mystical place where the veil to whatever is on the “other side” is very thin.

On Sunday evening, May 1, 2011, I was sitting in my living room catching up on some TV shows that I had recorded. Suddenly, I felt this wave of euphoric lightness sweep over me, as if the world was lighter. It felt like something bad had left the world. A little later I was on my computer and saw that Osama
bin Laden had been killed and I realized what my earlier feeling of lightness had been about.

That news took me back to Sunday, September 9, 2001. I had gone to bed and was lying on my right side reading. I sensed something and looked over my book toward the corner where my Grandma Wentz’s sewing rocker sat. I saw an African American lady who was all dressed up in a navy blue suit and a big hat; two young boys, also in suits,were sitting in front of her. They looked as though they were posing for a portrait. Then they were gone. I didn’t know what to make of it and eventually got sleepy and turned the light off. That night I dreamt of a long plywood wall with hundreds of photographs on it,
some similar to the family I had seen in my room. Again, I wasn’t sure what it meant and mostly forgot about it.

Two days later, our country was attacked on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I watched this
all unfold with the rest of the nation. The anger didn’t come right away; I just felt numb and shocked. Then the plywood walls full of photographs of unaccounted for family members and loved ones started appearing on the news. And I realized the meaning of what I had seen.

But why have I been given this ability if what I can see doesn’t make sense at the time or
doesn’t enable me to help anyone? It can be very frustrating. I’m not saying that I could have stopped 9- 11 by telling the CIA that I saw a wall of pictures, but I still wonder what to do with some of the more every day things I see or dream about.

But there are cases when the meaning is quite clear. Many years ago when, a lady who had
been like a mother to me was in St. Vincent’s Hospice dying from cancer, she came to me in a dream and said that if I wanted to see her, I’d better come right away. I went the next day. She was having a good day and we had a wonderful visit. She died the following day. I’ve paid very close attention to
my dreams ever since. I’m starting to do more dream work and am very excited about it.

I would like to work on this ability and develop these skills further. I am able to sense things about people and this helps me to be more empathic. I believe that we have a collective universal connection. I’ve experienced that during a channeled writing workshop. If we could connect on a less superficial level and
be able to understand each other on a deeper soul-level, we might not be so quick to fight each other for domination over things that we don’t we really have the right to control. We could let each other just BE and all breathe a lot easier.

Rebekah for Poplar Grove Muse

Dreams Come True

I made a recording in 1999 called "Dreamtable". The title song was inspired by an evening with friends during which most of the women at the gathering eventually found themselves at a large oval farm table recounting their dreams. The lyric, which at the time was a fairly concrete recitation of my own personal dream images, included this refrain: "I can tell a story/I often aim to please/And I will tell about the things that bring me to my knees/ round and round the circle/ we try to understand/our dreams are on the table and in one another's hands/".

Five years after this song was recorded, I got some important training from another woman, Mary Pierce Brosmer, who'd years before, followed a dream she'd had to create the founding school of Women Writing for (a) Change in Cincinnati, Ohio. I put up flyers around Bloomington and invited women into a circle to bring forth story in an intentional way. Six and a half years after that, today, lots of women have participated in WWfaC Circles in Bloomington. They've shared their stories, their truths, their poems, their fiction and yes, their songs, and many of those women are finding that they are making art out of their lives. For some, what were once dreams (about publishing, about standing up to read in front of audiences) are coming true. And for some, none of that matters. They simply relish a seat at the dream table. They've written their ways to wellness and greater clarity and find other areas of their lives enriched by having a connection to a women's community that aspires to the most grounded aspects of the conscious feminine.

I write this post on the eve of our 38th public Read Around*. I write on the heels, just the other day, of having witnessed one woman in our community stand up in front of 60 people gathered to celebrate her, and read, in a decidedly unwavering voice, from her forthcoming poetry chapbook. The next day, 14 young women in our Young Women Writing for (a) Change program, ages 11-13, stood up to read in front of a packed audience of friends and parents. They spoke with poise and fierceness in poetic and sometimes plain words about what they see when they look in the mirror and beyond it these days; the unsparing truths of girls becoming women.

I write in amazement and gratitude for what has come forth out of a rich community of telling, trying, and being tried in only the ways community challenges us. I write in reverence to my own dreamlife and what it helped bring forward in me and through me. I write in reverence to the creator of and legacy of this unique work and it's particular "way", and for what is carried forward by so many now across several generations of writers in our circles.

Natalie Goldberg says that through writing we all put down our individual roots and if we are courageous and persistent enough those tendrils will reach the deep underlying reservoir of spirit we all share. Courage and persistence. Courage. Persistence. Connections. Plant life transforms, the metaphor shifts--we are swimming toward the reservoir. Following our words and our dreams on fins, wings, and sturdy feet.

BLR for the Poplar Grove Muse

* Spring Read Around is Wednesday, April 13, 7:00 PM Quaker Meeting House of Bloomington near the corner of Smith Road and Moore's Pike on the East Side of town. This is a women's event. Men, please join us at the end of May as WWfaC is Featured in the HeartRock Poetry Series May 27th. 7pm.