in all my weakness

I saved a bumble bee stuck between my upstairs window and the screen during this week's rite, or at least I hope I did. I caught it with a tupperware bottom and a wedding invitation top and set it free outside, where it zoomed off so fast I couldn't see the direction. It may smell different now, though; it could be torn apart at the hive.

It is that all-stakes queen-bee-of-the-summer-time: time to live, time to die, time to get torn apart limb by limb with bumblebees and dragon flies and raspberries and blackberries with their formidable thorns. Daisies are in bloom, Queen Anne's Lace; the droning choir of insects plays nightly. It is a time of birthdays - friends, sisters, mothers, grandmothers. It occurs to me that every dance, every show, every rite I do tries to get at this time, with its re-occurring majesty. There is no loss. There is only gain out of loss - over and over. What a relief. It's not that Jesus invented resurrection, he just did it dramatically. It's not that goddess-cultures don't have rebirth, it's that god-cultures believe in endings, necessitating out-of-nothing renewal. The truth is that life is always behind the scenes, working away, ready to come back - or wait a little longer, until the right time. Lastly, nature plays in strength but even more in weakness. Weakness takes the glory in the end. Our sisters in all their forms prove this to us over and over.

This is my last weekly rite.  I've been doing these rites every week now for five years and four weeks: a total of two hundred and seventy-two. There's completion of the collection at this point, though their work is only just begun. So, read back, read again, read over, read under. Watch with eyes open, watch half-lidded, watch with eyes closed. Listen. Sing. Dance. Play. Rite. The plot continues to thicken. The story isn't over, but all there.

without words

I am cursing my creative process. At the same time, I know it is all I can do. There is a Martha Graham quote in her autobiography Blood Memory, the caption for a picture of her, late in life, sitting with her feet up in the house seats of a theater, looking frail and vulnerable. It says, "The pauses between rehearsals in a theatre are the most agonizing. All you can think of is where you failed." This is the image in my own mind this week.

time

The new mantra is, "You can breathe at any time."

Yesterday I finished watering the garden at noon, in the midst of two weeks of no rain, in the midst of a hot humid spell. It is the solstice! And the sun holds forth in this do-se-do upon which the world turns. I feel the yoke of it, the bend, the stakes, the leaning out and squealing as I round the carousel on the best horse, ring in hand, tossing for my fortune. It is the time of spheres, of all things shining and beaming - of round flowers with four, five, one thousand petals, of faces, smiles, yellow, sunflowers, chamomile, and poppy. And balls of every sort. This is the apex of all games. Here, so subtle, so invisible, one contestant cedes way to the other. The ball shifts to the other court.

12:00 noon! Dragonflies out! See first one of the year appear on the horizon with a boom of thunder. It zooms over me. It banks, dives, ascends,  reverses, zig-zags and circles over the garden.

Then another appears and they race each other, these two experts, these two daredevils, high flyers - taking deadly aim, taking no nonsense, taking charge. They say, ma'am, we'll handle everything from here on out. They show you exactly what they can do: fly right up and look inside you. They see everything but remain discreet. Intimate but distant. Supernatural stars.

dog me around

Back from New York City and bewildered by the Vermont summer acres sprouted up and out past recognition all around me, obscuring everything. By unfamiliar acres of my body. By conjunction of the two landscapes, and how the tube between - with dry or steady or suddenly surging intravenous drip - creates alternating vacuum and pressure. I could wilt like a dehydrated sprout or burst like a dandelion pod and fly away, or just drift on the platform waiting for the train. I'll keep my suitcase packed with one white dress.