Everywhereness

I conjure her 
into being
from within
my womb’s yearning
manifested for an imaginary moment.
I pretend that her silky plump chub
slides against my skin
as she giggles her tiny melodious babble
and sings about wherever she came from. 

She feels so real.

I give in to fantasy and become her captivated attendant
alongside the floating toys and baby shampoo.
Splashes of water cascade
all over the linoleum,
a gift from her newly found feet
in the wonderment of being alive.
The dewy warmth envelops us
in this nightly porcelain ritual 
and we fall in love
all over again.

I think of you.
Did you lift me out of the water
hands held high
under my armpits
tickled pink like our cheeks in the heat?
Would you pat me dry 
the way you would pat me on the back?
Three little taps, as if to transmit
the words you longed for but never received from your mother.
Or was it rather, “that’s enough now.”
A product of your Irish upbringing
trickling out
no matter how hard you tried
to scrub away well-meaning neglect.

Floating in the amniotic fluid of revery,
impermanence permeating.

Unmoored by your absence
my heart swells with its familiar ache

Grief has taught me not to resist its grip anymore.
So I allow each wave to melt me further,
like so many hundreds of times before,
into the tenderness that you embodied
before you left.

Wide eyed, fresh, in gratitude
for the simplest touch.
A crone
who evoked the wisdom
of a newborn.

Reaching back into this present moment now,
I find myself alone in a bathtub.
Neither you nor her, my little fanciful longing
in the shape of a baby girl.
Just the sound of the faucet dripping with time.

Somehow, in the wake,
I remember the everywhereness of you
waiting to be felt in the steam and the quiet.

And I know,
I will carry you forward,
If I ever get to meet her.

“I Had to Die to Fly”

I felt inspired to share an old favorite tune on this rainy afternoon, for me/for you. After a lifetime of struggling to share my voice I was delighted to feel the sweet calmness as I played with the intention of sharing it online, with “mistakes” and all.

The lyrics felt true when I first heard them. Now almost 15 years later they've taken on a whole new dimension of meaning.

The song is called "Kite" by Sarah Siskind from her album “Say it Louder”.

I'd almost forgotten
What the sky felt like
But now with abandon I'm
Soaring like a kite

So if I seem scattered
Just let me be
I want to matter
Just me being free

[Chorus]
Never meant to hurt no one
In this life
I didn't know I had to die
To fly

I'd almost forgotten
What my skin felt like
But now I wear it
Like the fabric of a kite

I let love run through me
I let it rule my world
Like I wanted to be
Since I was a little girl

[Chorus]
Never meant to hurt no one
In this life
I didn't know I had to die
To fly

So if you see signs of
A speckled bird
Look even closer
That's me in this world

I Came To It Slowly

I came to it slowly
The infusion of alive in everything.

I love this wall, I told her astonished. 
I stood stunned. Transfixed.
This wall is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!

She giggled. Like she knew what I was knowing.

The darkness,
The monstrous beast,
That I had discovered
In the bowels of my despair
The one I had gone to bed with
And made love with
Had shed its coat
And revealed the most intoxicating love
Underneath. 

And I felt it in everything.
The wall.
The plant.
My hand.
My heart.
The wind outside.
My mother’s face.

I became a whirling dervish
In passionate devotion with life
In the mundane ordinariness of my living room.

I’m Scared

Not right now. But I was. When I was about 12 and my mom had to make the difficult decision to leave the country and move to Spain with my dad so that his sisters could help take care of him. He was sick with cancer and it was a 24/7 job to keep him alive. My mother was beyond depleted and could no longer do it alone. Of course my sister and I wouldn’t be left totally by ourselves. Our aunts from our mothers’ side planned to come in a rotation to look after us. And our mom would come home every month or two. 

But during a recent Kiloby Inquiries session with a colleague, I was able to touch into that 12 year old girl - absolutely frozen in fear with no way to express it and no one to listen. In opening to that fear I could see how it has completely ruled my life till now. The barrier to that frozen and understandable survival response started to thaw and I could feel how so many decisions and experiences in my life have been dictated by this underlying fear. Keeping me small. Keeping me hidden. Making me sick. 

Feeling fear. Allowing it to be felt in my wise body with my full presence of being. Experiencing it. Moving with it. Dancing with it. Hearing what it has to say. Listening. Truly listening. It is an amazing gift. 

Afterward, I felt light. I felt soft. That I am safe. I have been running from the very feeling of fear itself. But all it wants is for us to turn toward it. That’s all. That’s all that is asked. Something so simple and yet we can spend our whole lives attempting to get away from it, fix it, numb it, heal it, clear it, conquer it, meditate it away.

The Kiloby Inquiries are a set of skillful tools to help us navigate our inner world with compassion and greater clarity. By tapping into the space of awareness that we cultivate in meditation and then turning toward our thoughts, our beliefs, and our emotions (as opposed to away from) we find the beautiful touchstone of presence without the spiritual bypassing.  

I’d love to introduce you to this awareness-based somatic practice. It is for newcomers and for seasoned spiritual seekers alike. All are welcome. If you’re curious, I’m available for a free clarity call to talk about it and how this practice might support you.

We are learning together, friends. And I wish you so much peace and the knowing that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

With love,
Amaya

Mountains for the Forest

I visited my old house on Marmot Road today. A somewhat irregular ritual. I never consciously plan to go. But often, I’ll set out for a walk and I notice my body drawn there. As though my very cells know that spot on earth so intimately and that part of me still exists on that land. I go back to reclaim that part perhaps. Or maybe it’s just to feel the closeness. Like visiting family. 

It’s so different now. Fitting. I am so different now. About six months ago, a wildfire tore through the neighborhood and incinerated every house on that street save for my old home and my neighbor’s to the left. It’s still quite shocking to walk by and see what was once a very sweet and unassuming cul-de-sac with a few quiet families tucked into an orchard of ponderosa pine trees. Now it feels like a very lonely corner of the world. But not without its charm still telling a story.

I walked by 17520. The house I lived in for eight and a half years with my mother. The faded wooden front deck is still undisturbed. The top step where I spent many evenings desperately trying not to smoke cigarettes and failing. The same front step where I secretly filmed my mom sitting in her light brown folding chair, she thinking I was just taking a picture. The evening light was coming in so softly through the trees and creating an angel effect around her white hair. That was her first venture outside in two months after spending the summer inside on hospice and then having a miraculous turnaround. She sat in that same perch the next summer when my sister and I went out and planted a bunch of lavender and Russian sage in that barren front yard, an attempt to brighten up the view from our high-desert home. That was the same deck that I would return to years later, a couple of months after moving out and only a couple of weeks after her death, to lay on the top landing and lean against the front door, heart broken in pieces, attempting to feel the closeness of her body from the wood and figured glass.

The biggest ponderosa out front has been felled recently. The tree that used to hold the address sign. The one that the 0 kept falling from and my cousin Patrick fixed for me when he was visiting that one time. 

I look to my neighbor’s plot to the other side. The log-house is completely gone, burned to ash. What remains perfectly intact is the driveway that S expanded in order to create a makeshift basketball court for his young son C, an aspiring NBA player, to practice 3-pointers. The basketball net is still standing with C’s full name painted on it in big bold white letters. An indestructible testament of a father’s love for his son. 

Across the street, I see where K & A’s home used to be. A home, she told me once, they built in the 70s when Lake Shastina was first starting to become a residential neighborhood. That’s where they had their family, where she painted in her studio, where he sang his favorite Frank Sinatra tunes, and where they cared for their young disabled granddaughter. The sign they hung on the tree out front, the one that says “Still Camping”, magically remains untouched.

In the far corner is where E & S’s home used to be. I never knew them very well but spent a few moments several days a week with their dog Oliver who spent much of his time in their front yard. He was very sweet but very afraid of strangers. So each time I walked by I tried to assure him he was safe and that I only wanted to be his friend. Sometimes it worked and he would come up to the fence and wag his tail in delight. Most of the time it didn’t work and so I would give him a wide berth while he barked at me passing by. “I hear you, I hear you, Ollie” I’d say to him. 

C’s home, the only other house besides mine that wasn’t burned and remains the only house completely intact. To my knowledge it didn’t receive too much extensive damage. I feel the kindness in that. C’s husband died suddenly a year prior to the fire, soon after they bought that home as a retirement gift to themselves. She’d felt enough pain for one year. This was grace perhaps. 

I reflect on how much my life has changed dramatically since those years in that house. And how at the time it felt like I would be stuck there forever. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. And now, with most of those trees dead and gone, leaving only dirt and soil, there is no longer a forest to not see. But what you do have are the mountains revealed behind it. You never could before as they were hidden behind the tall majesty and density of the ponderosa. The soft curves of the Eddys with snow tops offering a felt sense of all is right-ness. Can’t see the forest for the trees. Can’t see the mountains for the forest. But now you can. Now I can.

Holy Holy Rage

This rage is holy
She slices through the core of my being
And opens a portal to my higher self
I let her burn through my veins
I surrender to her fiery promise

She liberates me from a lifetime of smallness
From decades of fear
And catapults me into dimensions unknown

The key is discovered to be “no label”
Without a name this holy rage becomes
An elixir
The missing ingredient to my wholeness

Without a name I feel the radical alchemy
That transmutes her into divine power
Like a caterpillar to a butterfly
She can fly now

In her new form, she does not need to attack
She does not need to cut or kill
She does not need worn out tactics, manipulations, or passive aggression
She simply thrives as full embodied power
In my belly, in my womb, in my yoni
I come alive

And I can look out at what seems apart
And have fierce compassion
And fierce boundaries
I can say yes and no simultaneously

I place this rage on the altar
With rose petals and lit candles
And I rub her feet with scented oils

She has come to set me free
And I bow in wonder

I Fall Back

Sometimes I choose the tea tree shampoo
To use as body wash
So I can feel tingling 
In the soft folds of my skin
Where only my lover’s hands can go
Or my own

So that the energy of creation
This fiery heaven
That runs through my blood
At all times
Can feel activated and experienced 
On the outside 

Sometimes, secretly,
I touch the air
As though it were a canvas
I paint my passion and my confusion
With my eyelashes
And my spine
And my tailbone
As I walk through the grocery store

I attempt to accept
For the millionth time
That I don’t know
Anything
Beyond what is present here 
In this moment

And I fall back.

I fall back 
Into the familiar
Yet foreign
Embrace of creativity

This old friend 
My first love
Who I locked away
To chase some idea of perfection
Beyond my own beating heart
Just as it is.

Little Maa

It was a crush of yogis and spiritual seekers. Some old timers, some brand new on this quest to unknowable enlightenment. Wearing cheap scarves with Om symbols printed on them that we bought at any of the small shops that surrounded the ashram. The dress code was long punjabi style tops with wide cotton pants, mala beads (a must if you’re a serious seeker), an aforementioned scarf draped over your front for modesty for the women, a white canvas messenger bag from the ashram bookshop with a red outline of the mountain and Om Namah Shivaya printed at the bottom. I’m sorry to poke fun. I was one of them! Our hearts were full of sincere longing for Truth. So we had come to Tiruvannamalai in Southern India, to the foot of the Holy Mountain Arunachala, the Guru of Sri Ramana Maharshi, to hopefully get a glimpse, a taste, of the untouchable bliss of perfect peace. We just didn’t always see the absurdity of the zoo, of our attempts to play the role of “spiritual”. The extreme poverty that pervaded the region while we vied to look the most “understated travel chic” in our culturally appropriated garb and appear the most holy, the most enlightened, it's just…sigh. It’s innocent, I recognize. Complicated. Also a checkmark on the evolutionary dance card. So it is what it is. We learn and we move forward.

That day was particularly swarmy with western seekers. Krishna Das, the famous American Kirtan singer, was coming to play at Ramanashramam to celebrate Ramana’s Jayanti (birthday). We all were dutifully queueing up, waiting for our turn to find a spot within the large library where the concert was to take place. When they first started letting people in, it was like we became a herd of cows all pressing to get into the barn for dinnertime. I overheard someone behind me say, “I can see the headline now: 10 ppl dead in Tiru, crushed by a mob of peaceful yogis trying to get into a concert” Ha.

Eventually we all got in and filled that space from top to bottom. There was hardly any room aside from our tiny little assigned spot on the floor. I was seated beside a friendly acquaintance on my left, a large Russian man in front, and on my right were a couple of very exuberant Polish women. I was happy. Uncomfortable! But excited to be there for what felt like a once in a lifetime experience. 

KD came out with his band and they took their place on the stage. It all felt so casual and sweet. You wouldn’t have known these people were famous if it weren’t for the raucous applause that erupted in the hall when they entered.

When he began to play the harmonium, we were all hushed into silence. The droning sound took over our senses and lulled us into a deeper space of awareness. When his voice joined the instrument, an ode to Ganesh the Elephant God, Remover of Obstacles, as is traditionally sung at the beginning of all Kirtans, our hearts began to open and music became our shared language. Several times over the afternoon, I was moved to tears. The magic of unified voices, the devotion and joy of singing to the Divine, the Oneness felt in the room - it was beautiful and rich. 

There was one point in the concert that I will never, ever, forget. As KD began to chant “Om Shree Matre Namaha”, the opening words to the honoring of the Divine Mother, Ma Durga, we all felt the power of Her take up the room. When the key changed and opened to “Jaya Jagadambe, Jai Maa Durga Jai Maa Durga” my heart melted. Pure nourishment for the soul.

It was during this Durga chant, that my eye caught some movement slightly to my left. I peeked over and saw a little girl, maybe 5 or 6, crawling and stepping over people. She slowly made her way through the crowd, her arms flowing and spiking like a cobra, tongue out, hissing at whoever tried to tell her to sit down. It was clear her parents had taught her about the Goddess and she knew exactly what to do, how to be. She knew Her. She was Kali Ma. She had come to knock us out of our slumber and into the Reality of the Divine. The Divine on Earth. 

Some people tried to control her, to discipline her if she knocked over someone’s bag or crawled over a lap. And she wasn’t having it. She would not be tamed. She would not be tamed, hallelujah! For this one moment in time, for this one song, no one could claim ownership over her. She was the Goddess incarnate in a tiny little body and we could only stand in awe of her majesty. 

I saw myself as a little girl. The wildness of her. The wildness that I had been. In all of my bigness and play and drama and demands and fire. How my mother tried not to control me, she tried to give me freedom to express. And yet I still learned to get small eventually. I still learned to willingly step into the prison of conformity. My mom didn’t have to tell me. I just mimicked her. And I mimicked what I saw around me. And this Little Maa, that hot January day in Tamil Nadu, reminded me of my wildness, my bigness, my untame-ability. 

And now, these however many years later, I feel her coming alive again. I am beginning to feel this flow of creativity, of femininity, of power and fullness and boundaries and passion for all of life.

Jaya Jagadambe, Hey Ma Durga, Hey Ma Durga.

Heaven, Maybe.

I was driving down I5 between Ashland, OR and Mt Shasta, CA where I live. My mom had died six weeks earlier and I had been carrying around an enormous cardboard photo of her from the memorial service. I had it with me anytime I had to leave the house because it made me feel like she was with me at all times. It felt a bit weird. I was a little embarrassed. But my longing for her was far greater than any fear of being judged. So there I was, talking to her in the rearview mirror as she gazed at me from the backseat with her bright face and that oh so familiar playful look in her eyes. I cried, telling her for the millionth time how much I ached for her. 

She had spent 6 years bravely living with metastasized breast cancer and I had spent those 6 years by her side as her devoted but exhausted caretaker. By the time she neared her death, we both knew neither of us could go on in this way. We had spent so many immeasurable intimate moments together but by the end, our bodies, both hers & mine, could not go on any longer. It was time. 

Well that day, as I drove along the I5 corridor over the Siskiyou Summit mountain pass, I was listening to a song by The Wailin' Jennys that a friend had just sent to me. It was from their album “Fifteen”, a collection of covers they recorded a few years ago. As I listened to their sublime three-part harmony, Dolly’s lyrics echoed in the car between my mother and me:

 “It's been a long, long time since I've known the taste of freedom
And those clinging vines that held me bound, I don't need them
I've been left, a captured eagle
You know an eagle's born to fly
Now that I have won my freedom
Like an eagle, I am eager for the sky”

At that EXACT moment, a large bald eagle flew by my car, maybe 100 feet away. I was high up in the mountains driving over that pass so it’s like I was flying thorough the sky. If I had been standing outside observing I swear I would have been able to hear the rush and power of its giant wingspan. 

I gasped in awe and wonder, blinking a few times, not sure if I what I had seen was actually real. It all happened so quickly. The eagle was there and gone in a few brief seconds, flying off to wherever it was headed. Heaven, maybe. The feeling of magic was so enormous I was left dumbstruck.

I looked back at mom twinkling behind me. I knew it was her. She was singing about herself. She was also singing about me. We had both been that captured eagle for so many years. We had both won our freedom. And we were both eager for the sky. 

As if that weren’t enough, every single song that played from that album onward was like her singing directly to me:
“My mama loves me, she loves me, she gets down on her knees and hugs me! Yea she loves me like a rock”
“You are not alone, Laying in the light, Put out the fire in your head, And lay with me tonight.”
“If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less, Keep me in your heart for a while”

I wept the rest of that car ride home. A mixture of utter sorrow mixed with the tenderness of hope. A hard-to-describe feeling. Poignancy hits close to the mark I suppose although it doesn’t quite capture the intensity of that very real, very human, very other worldy moment in time. It was as if every grief stricken daughter in the world had nestled into my heart and poured out their pain with me. And as though every mother in the world heard our cry and scooped us up in some magical eagle feather woven baby wrap and sang to us until we slept.