Then kings who have followed a star come from across the world and offer kingly gifts to her little wee one. She ponders all of this in her heart as she nurses her tiny baby God.

Then, imagine the fragility of a new mother at this moment. There is a decree to kill all babies in the land and so she and her baby and her elder husband travel to a foreign land where they know not a soul until the threat of danger is passed which is many many years. She knows it is because of her baby. Imagine how she felt when all children up to the age of two were attempted to be murdered in the land. What sorrow – what fear – what devastation in a time when JOY should be what is felt.

She was not even able to show her baby to her family – or to her cousin Elizabeth or hold baby John. Two cousins destined to work on the same path in life, did not even meet until their mid-thirties, two children who were saved from the massacre.

I find it quite a story regardless of one’s spiritual tradition. Today I honor her and the courage of a teenage mama.

Today is the Synaxis of the Theotokos – honoring the nativity of her giving birth to God. My holidays will continue tonight at the service in her honor. Regardless of it being the most Patriarchal church in the world perhaps, The Orthodox — the reality is also true that they never moved The Blessed Mother off of the altar. And today we honor her – millions all over the world are singing the hymns of a new mother and her little child of light. Tonight I shall pray for you and for me, and to what we are giving birth to together in 2012. If you feel so inclined, you might try to find a service in your own area, it will be by candlelight and she will be chanted to. Google Orthodox Church, your town, USA. Even if it is in Russian or Greek or Serbian, the feeling will come through.

With all my heart — and gratitude to you — my global community whom I adore a part of my very daily breath -

thank you.

I love you

shiloh sophia

p.s. my friend just sent me this clip  – Breath of Heaven

Move into one’s skin and call it home?

How does one feel good enough to yell out the window while driving very fast and listening to music that is too loud and shout love to the wind?

Today is Christmas Eve and I feel today…like I do indeed belong to my life. It is an extraordinary feeling made up of a lifetime of ingredients. Sunlight. Warm wind. This downtown cafe in Fairfax with live music every Saturday morning. The bustle of families and little ones. And a decision to be by myself right now. There are many places I could go this holiday…but I am choosing to spend it in the creation of myself belonging to myself. This is the return of the light for me this year – the dawning of Christ in my heart is that I am ok here on my own. After 16 years of marriage it is really something to approach the holidays and have it be an almost foreign experience. The only thing I could think of that would make it work was to move more fully into my skin. So I did. I rather like it in here.  My still healing heart is allowing this moment. The Red Madonna is allowing this moment of feeling filled with faith and just a sense of – I am ok. Really truly – OK. I made it.

So I wanted to write you…and send you my good wishes and feelings. Invite you to occupy your own body and life. To encourage you to belong to you this Christmas. I know it is not easy cuz I been trying it myself. But since today it is happening I had to write it. What else are blogs for?
This sense of being all alone but being connected to everything and everyone is new for me. Before I didn’t know how to be alone and be connected. It takes practice. There is light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a train, it is the Lord.

After this I will go to Vespers at the Orthodox church and go home to paint Mary and her baby Jesus in a house filled with candles.

Loving you

Shiloh Sophia

My Mama, Caron McCloud, recently participated in one of our online classes, Leading A legendary Life. During the course there is a fair amount of writing that needs to happen — and she wrote this incredible story. The next five mondays you will get one chapter of Cloud and Her Mama delivered to your inbox. Are you ready for the insight into my creative beginnings – well here is more than you ever wanted to know! My mom, is my best friend, and I am humbled and tickled by these sharings…thanks Mom. I am super blessed and I know it.

The Legend of Cloud and Her Mama
By Caron McCloud

Chapter Five

Cloud always made the best of things. After all, she was an artist and artists were innovative. She made a game out of being the “New Kid in School.” When people asked her where she was from, she would answer “Highway One O One.”

When a little girl Cloud’s mother always dressed her in plaid dresses as all of her school pictures will testify. In only one is this classic standard substituted with a black turtle neck. When her cousin Bridget saw that one she exclaimed, “How did Cloud get out of the house without being plaid?!” Some say Cloud’s mother dressed her that way so she could “pass” and make people think they weren’t as wild as they were.

They always shopped for school clothes at Macy’s and for quality rather than quantity, during which Cloud would be thoroughly indoctrinated with the reasons for doing so. She would have preferred the quantity, but over time she came to understand and agree with her mother’s wisdom in these matters.

One year, following one of their moves, as September loomed on the horizon and she was to start a new school, she asked her mother when they would be going on the shopping trip.

Her mother sat down with her and explained that she needed every cent she had to re-invent her design business and their budget could not accommodate the classy Macy’s wardrobe she had come to expect.

This came as quite a shock to Cloud and she said she wasn’t going to school. It was apparent that this was a right time to address the subject of finances and career and her mother told her that if she wasn’t going to go to school she would have to get a job.

Further consideration revealed that there was not going to be any employment available to Cloud that she considered up to her standards. Cloud said that in a few more years she would join the service. Her mother told her that would be fine but further consideration revealed the rigorous hours and the wardrobe would not suit her standards either.

Cloud said she was going to marry a rich man and her mother told her that would be fine and that they needed to get to work on her immediately so that she could become all the things that a rich man would be looking for in a wife. Well the idea of having to become something specifically to please “some man” was definitely not in accordance with Cloud’s standards.

“Okay Mom,” Cloud said with no sign of further frustration or disappointment, “just give me what you can. I’m going shopping.”

When Cloud returned she had totally re-invented herself. She was delighted and delightful modeling the treasures she had gleaned from second-hand stores, and so was her mother. Among her outfits were red paisley pajamas bottoms with a black T-shirt and a blue and grey striped silk neck tie. A fuzzy pink fifties angora sweater with raggedy jeans and beat up cowboy boots and an impressive assortment of bracelets and chains. Cloud had gone “Punk Rocker”.

She enrolled in the new really “straight” school in upscale Walnut Creek, got the low down on all of her teachers and before classes started, went around and formally introduced herself to each of them.

She walked into the history class with her blonde hair streaked with various shades of red and black and in permanent BOING. She walked right up to the teacher and introduced herself. “So nice to meet you. I’m Cloud, and I hear you don’t give out A’s in your class.”

He had no choice except to shake the hand she stuck out with the four-inch band of little pieces of string from under her bed all braided and woven around the wrist, as he said in a stern voice, “Very rarely young lady.”

She said, “Well, I just want you to know you are shaking hands with the ‘young lady’ you are going to be giving A’s to this year.” And he did. He had to, because Cloud worked hard for those A’s and he was quite happy to have someone to give them to for a change.

When she told her mother about this her mom said, “Honey, why did you want to set yourself up like that?”

Cloud said, “Mama, the next time he sees a kid come in that doesn’t fit his pictures, he’s going to remember me, and he’s going to think twice before he passes judgment.”

When her mama had told her that she thought Cloud was working too hard to try and pull this off, Cloud said she was working for those other kids. According to folks, who claim to know, Cloud is still working too hard for those other kids whether they come from Walnut Creek or the wrong side of the tracks.

~ ~ ~

Caron McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semi-finalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three tmes entered, and in 2000, besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists.” She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “PoetsWest Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest periodical, “Saltwater.” She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, “Windows in the Sky,” which is periodically played in Washington on PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, Besides publications in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, and has recently published RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women, for which her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. McCloud is currently working on a book on Qabalah, Living the Tree of Life, to be used in a workshop format.

My Mama, Caron McCloud, recently participated in one of our online classes, Leading A legendary Life. During the course there is a fair amount of writing that needs to happen — and she wrote this incredible story. The next five mondays you will get one chapter of Cloud and Her Mama delivered to your inbox. Are you ready for the insight into my creative beginnings – well here is more than you ever wanted to know! My mom, is my best friend, and I am humbled and tickled by these sharings…thanks Mom. I am super blessed and I know it.

The Legend of Cloud and Her Mama
By Caron McCloud

Chapter Four

Cloud wondered if this moving on just ran in the family. After she discovered Rumi, she was comforted and inspired by his poem that begins, “Come, come, whoever you are! Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving….”

One time when she went to visit Grandma Cloud she found her putting things in boxes. When she asked her if she was moving, the little old lady just smiled her famous Mona Lisa smile and said, “You never know. After all, I’ve already been here six months.” And when Cloud’s mama decided it was time to move on she usually moved her mom right along with them. She’d ask, “How would you feel about moving, Mama?” and the grandmother would just get up and start packing without even asking where.

Cloud never had to help with the packing and moving. Her mother said that their moving wasn’t her fault and wasn’t her job. She would take Cloud up to the mountain to stay with her other mother, Bayou Butch and the goats, her Sifu Aunti and her wild red-headed cousin Bridget who she wanted to marry when they grew up.

When her mama came and got her it helped Cloud some that she always told her they were off on their “Next Great Adventure”. There were things in the car to eat and music streaming from the tapes made up of songs her mom had put together and called their “Movin’ On Sound Track”. They made a brave start with Willie Nelson singing “I just can’t wait to get on the road again.” When the Grateful Dead came on sweet and mournful with “If I knew the way, I would take you home…” they grieved the going some, and wondered if there would ever really be a way home for them, and figured probably not until Jesus comes. But when Janis Joplin started singing “Bye bye Baby, good-bye,” with Big Brother and the Holding Company, followed by Barbara Streisand’s “Anyplace I hang my hat is home” they felt like they were tough enough. By the time Gerry Rafferty’s “City to City” was harmonizing with the sound of the road, the going was easy and they settled in to play their car games: “Shiloh says, seven sparrows sang soulful….” And sometimes they would play “Talk Show” and her mother would interview her about her brilliant achievements regarding her career in art and poetry. The car game her mother liked best, however, was when Cloud would spontaneously make up stories with involved plots and a full cast of characters with dialogue of depths that utterly amazed Mama.

When they got to their destination they would drive all around the new town, eat at some really neat little cafe, usually go to some beach not far away (as though a beach made everything okay) and then go to their new house or apartment.

All of her materials and stuff would be neatly arranged on shelves her mother had made for her brand new room with a brand new flowered comforter and sheets with matching curtains her mom had also made, and the pictures of the mermaids would be on the walls. And there in the middle of her flowered bed, she’d put the big baggedy raggedy teddy bear she’d had for as long as she could remember and who went everywhere with her. The bear had more than one name, and some of them were secret.

Cloud always loved her new little rooms, but she still cried for the first few nights when she went to bed because she missed all her friends and was just getting used to her mom’s last husband or boyfriend, and it had all happened so fast, and no warning, and besides — she didn’t know how long the new room was going to last. When her mother was old and regretting her regrets she would wonder how she could ever have thought that sparing her daughter all the details leading up to their moves would be less traumatizing than keeping her informed as the details occurred.

Cloud often took her bear and got into the big bed with her mom which would be in the living room and fixed up to look like a couch with lots of paisley silk pillows and velvet patchwork quilts her mom and grandmother had made of red gold and green. And purple. She would snuggle in and pretend that they were Arabs or Gypsies, whispering to her bear, “Wow, if you could talk, the stories you could tell!” because she told the bear even more of everything than the everything she told her Mama. And some say she still does to this very day.

~ ~ ~

Caron McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semi-finalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three tmes entered, and in 2000, besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists.” She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “PoetsWest Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest periodical, “Saltwater.” She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, “Windows in the Sky,” which is periodically played in Washington on PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, Besides publications in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, and has recently published RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women, for which her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. McCloud is currently working on a book on Qabalah, Living the Tree of Life, to be used in a workshop format.

My Mama, Caron McCloud, recently participated in one of our online classes, Leading A legendary Life. During the course there is a fair amount of writing that needs to happen — and she wrote this incredible story. The next five mondays you will get one chapter of Cloud and Her Mama delivered to your inbox. Are you ready for the insight into my creative beginnings – well here is more than you ever wanted to know! My mom, is my best friend, and I am humbled and tickled by these sharings…thanks Mom. I am super blessed and I know it.

The Legend of Cloud and Her Mama
By Caron McCloud

Chapter Three

 Cloud appreciated the fact that her mom didn’t make her do dishes or take out the garbage. Mama Cloud would say, “Anyone can do dishes. That’s not something you have to learn how to do. Go learn something, read, study history, draw pictures, memorize a poem — something important.”

She also appreciated that though her mom was very tidy and organized about the whole house, she let her do “her own thing” in her own room, and Cloud was a very messy kid. Because, not only was she a “Material Girl”, she was an artist. She needed a lot of stuff to work with. Her mom always said, “When we move” (which was really often) “we have to rent one Uhaul truck for the household stuff and another just for Cloud’s stuff.”

The problem was that after a certain amount of time her mom would come in and clean her room and when Cloud came home to find her room all orderly she would go into shock because she knew that when she looked under her bed, there was going to be a big black hole where a lot of her “materials” used to be.

Sometimes she thought her mother to be really insensitive. How could she possibly have thrown out that lonesome fuzzy pink sock and those broken-in crayons, and all those papers, and pieces of papers, and puzzles, and pieces of puzzles, and string and pieces of string, and that little lone red Barbie doll shoe, and little blonde Barbie doll heads, and coloring books, and, and, and…..

Didn’t her mother know she was a great artist? Artist’s needed their stuff! Her mom wouldn’t even put her art on the refrigerator door like the other kid’s mothers did. But then she would console herself with the fact that her mom didn’t put anything else on the refrigerator either. She said she hated “Refrigerator Art!”

It was pretty easy for Cloud to forgive her mama even though she wouldn’t put things on the refrigerator, because when she really liked something Cloud had created she would frame it and hang it on the wall along with all the other art her mother collected. Some of the things she had made when she was just a little girl would still be hanging on the walls when they were both old. And, not that long ago she found some drawings, which she had thought the black hole had eaten, in an old album along with pictures of her.

Though neither Cloud nor her Mama could know at the time, after Cloud grew up and left home and her mama got old and sentimental she did give in and put things up on the refrigerator door. Mostly cards that Cloud sent her. Cards with lots of sparkle and glitter. Cards with pictures of red cowboy boots, legendary women on horses, mermaids, forties movie stars, elephants and bees. Cards from all the places and towns where Cloud traveled and lived. The best were from Cloud’s own card line, usually with pictures of the Madonna and Child or the Guadalupe.

Then periodically — like when she used to clean Cloud’s room — she would take them down. She would read the wonderful things Cloud had written in them, calling her things like Mama Bear, Wolf Mother, Daughter of the Bee Queen, and Mommie Cloud. She would tell her she was beautiful and brilliant and funny.

Sometimes there would be poems inside that she had written, saying things like: “If there is anyone God likes to please / with His riddles, rhymes and prophecy / I Have no doubt / that it is my mother.” She would tell her how much she loved her even if she had made them move all the time. She would write things like, “I miss walking with you along all our shores, especially the one where the seagulls sing with their bird breath smelling of Pizza from Waterfront Pizza Parlor. I forever long for home and that home is always with you.” On those future days and shores her mother would kiss the cards, cry, and put them under the cloth on her altar next to the refrigerator to make room to put up the next batch. And some she framed.

The truth is, when Cloud was a kid she didn’t really care that her mom didn’t put her stuff up on the refrigerator. Even then she knew her art was too good to be on a refrigerator door, unless, of course, it was a card. And it wasn’t even so much that the stuff from under her bed periodically disappeared that traumatized Cloud. She appreciated the clean room. It was that when this happened, sometimes it meant they would soon be putting the rest of their stuff in a Uhaul truck. Again.

~ ~ ~

Caron McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semi-finalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three tmes entered, and in 2000, besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists.” She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “PoetsWest Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest periodical, “Saltwater.” She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, “Windows in the Sky,” which is periodically played in Washington on PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, Besides publications in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, and has recently published RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women, for which her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. McCloud is currently working on a book on Qabalah, Living the Tree of Life, to be used in a workshop format.

My Mama, Caron McCloud, recently participated in one of our online classes, Leading A legendary Life. During the course there is a fair amount of writing that needs to happen — and she wrote this incredible story. The next five mondays you will get one chapter of Cloud and Her Mama delivered to your inbox. Are you ready for the insight into my creative beginnings – well here is more than you ever wanted to know! My mom, is my best friend, and I am humbled and tickled by these sharings…thanks Mom. I am super blessed and I know it.

The Legend of Cloud and Her Mama
By Caron McCloud

Chapter Two

“All right Mama!” exclaimed Cloud with sudden exuberance as she rolled down the window on her side of the car, “Let’s get us some TRAFFIC!”

They had been playing their favorite car game which was making up a story with as many words starting with a certain letter as they could muster. This one went something like, “Shiloh says she saw seven sleazy Samoan sailors in search of sturgeon and singing silly sea songs set sail somewhere south of San Francisco into a September Saturday six o’clock sunset …” After a little over an hour on the road Cloud started slapping the outside of the car door in parody of the Goat Ropers, which is what the adolescent Anderson Valley Girls, who were called the Hot Hearts and happened to be cool, called the adolescent Boonville Boys, who happened not to be cool — with the possible exception of Abe and Zack).

Her Mom had already rolled down her window in an attempt to combat the claustrophobia that began to wage war on her just south of Santa Rosa on Highway 101. After cautiously changing lanes just north of San Rafael so that they would end up on the Golden Gate bridge and not the Richmond, she put her arm out and joined her teenage daughter in pounding the side of the car in celebration of one of their all too rare trips back to the city.

“All right!” Cloud again exclaimed in rising enthusiasm. “Smell those fumes, Mamma! Hot damn! Gets you high, don’t it, Woman?! Look at all these people zooming along! Folks got places to go and things to do!” She waved her hand out the window at their fellow ascendants on the Waldo Grade and shouted “Right on!”

“Yahoo!” they both yelled as the freeway sucked them into its large intestine along with a zillion other anonymous flying chunks of metal, and shot them, undigested, out the ass end of the tunnel, through which they (honoring three generations of tradition) held their breath and honked, and then as they exited Rainbow Land (also known as Marin County) they gasped for air and broke into song, “Open up your Golden Gate, San Francisco here we come!”

“Alright Mamma!” Cloud grinned a face full of dimples and twinkles in her mother’s direction, her long blonde hair flying. She raised her fist in a gesture of unity and sisterhood as they sailed onto the bridge,“Let’s go get us a big dose of concrete, steel, and glass!”

As they approached the toll booth to pay the admission to enter one of the world’s most beautiful cities, Cloud placed the toe of one red cowboy boot on the dashboard as though illustrating a point, and then raised her can of grape soda to her mother and issued the definitive words of encouragement to crank them up to take care of business, “Kick ass Mamma Bear!”

Cloud loved the city and she wold have liked going there more often. But sometimes when they went there she wasn’t so happy. These were the times that they weren’t just visiting, but moving back. Again. And who knew for how long. Maybe her mom would move them back to the Anderson Valley. Again. Or maybe to Marin County just back across the Golden Gate Bridge. Again. Or across the Oakland Bay Bridge. Or back to Sonoma County. Or somewhere she’d never even heard of before. Again.

But today she was just going to have a good time. She knew her mama was going to take her to that restaurant on Union Street for the beef barley soup and then down on Divisadero for gelato. They would shop at Macy’s and then they would go back where when she went to school she would know everyone and they would all be happy and running around saying, “Cloud’s back!”

~ ~ ~

Caron McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semi-finalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three tmes entered, and in 2000, besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists.” She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “PoetsWest Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest periodical, “Saltwater.” She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, “Windows in the Sky,” which is periodically played in Washington on PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, Besides publications in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, and has recently published RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women, for which her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. McCloud is currently working on a book on Qabalah, Living the Tree of Life, to be used in a workshop format.

My Mama, Caron McCloud, recently participated in one of our online classes, Leading A legendary Life. During the course there is a fair amount of writing that needs to happen — and she wrote this incredible story. The next five mondays you will get one chapter of Cloud and Her Mama delivered to your inbox. Are you ready for the insight into my creative beginnings – well here is more than you ever wanted to know! My mom, is my best friend, and I am humbled and tickled by these sharings…thanks Mom. I am super blessed and I know it.

The Legend of Cloud and Her Mama
By Caron McCloud

Chapter One

Once upon a time, not all that long ago or far away, there was a little girl whose name was Cloud. She really liked her name and never went through a phase of making up new names for herself like a lot of her friends did. Not even when everybody laughed when the principal in Mendocino read off the names of the kids in her eighth grade graduating class, “Cinnamon, Lavender, Truck, Cowboy, Misty, Cloud, Star, River…”

Cloud had a lot of unruly blonde hair that Cloud’s mama said, “lived a life of its own.” Her mom would get it lassoed and all tied down and then before they could even get out the door it would just leap up and break free with such force that her mom said you could hear it go BOING!

Cloud had dimples even when she wasn’t smiling, which is a good thing because she was pretty serious for a little girl. It did make her smile though when her mom would tell her, “When God made you, she was so pleased with what she had made that she touched your cheek with her finger right there.” And her mom would touch her dimple.

Cloud’s mama was clear that her child’s maker was very pleased with what she’d made, and often remarked that Cloud just kept, as she put it, “…blowing me away!” She said that if she believed in reincarnation she’d think Cloud had been her mother in their last life and liked telling the story of a particular morning when Cloud was about three and had come, as usual, and gotten in bed with her. They had fallen back to sleep with Cloud up high on the pillow, the way she liked, with her arm around her mama’s neck. Her mom says she was awakened by the sound of the front door opening and figured it was her own mama who was supposed to be coming over that morning. So she called out to her. “Mama? Mama?” She said that Cloud was sound asleep but started patting her with her little dimpled hand, saying, “It’s okay Honey. It’s okay. Go back to sleep now.”

Another story Cloud’s mama liked to tell to as to why the Creator might have given Cloud those dimples was one that happened when Cloud was in the first grade. It was Halloween and Cloud wanted to go to the costume party as Fire. Her mama did her best with all shades of red, orange, yellow, and gold crepe paper, with just a touch of blue. Her mama was a perfectionist and wasn’t entirely happy with the final product and suggested that maybe Cloud should go instead as a Fringe Benefit. But Cloud knew she was Fire. Cloud wasn’t a perfectionist. Never would be. Would come to think it as a real detriment to the creative process.

Well, one of Cloud’s little friends was a fairy and Cloud thought she was absolutely beautiful and was so happy for her when she won first prize. When they got home, Cloud’s mama said, “I’ll bet Tamarack was really excited about getting first prize.”

“No,” said Cloud, “Not really.”

“What?! How could she not be excited?”

Cloud explained, “Well Mama, Tamarack gets to tell her mother to shut up. How can she ever get excited about anything?”

Then there was the time when Cloud was about seven and she and her mama were in a big disagreement. It really upset her mama because in the past whenever they disagreed and the mama put her hands on her hips and started scolding, Cloud would just throw herself across the room and wrap her arms around her mama’s legs. Her mama would put her arms around her, nothing would get solved, but everything would be just fine.

This time was different. As things heated up Cloud held her ground, put her own hands on her own hips and said, “You know Mama, we don’t always have to agree on everything.”

Her mom was stunned, and just stood there looking at Cloud for a few minutes before she put her arms around Cloud and said, “I’m going to have to think about that.”

And folks say that she did think about it and, as a matter of fact, was still thinking about it when they were both old.

~ ~ ~

Caron McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semi-finalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three tmes entered, and in 2000, besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists.” She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “PoetsWest Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest periodical, “Saltwater.” She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, “Windows in the Sky,” which is periodically played in Washington on PoetsWest at KSER 90.7FM, Besides publications in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, and has recently published RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women, for which her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. McCloud is currently working on a book on Qabalah, Living the Tree of Life, to be used in a workshop format.

“I want to be used”

What is that you say?

“I want to be used”

Yep, that is the voice of my book talking. The one I went to the beach to work on started talking.

The book started out making was a book of poems, a collection of my writings over ten year. When my mom Caron was visiting she helped me pull all of them, all, oh over 300 pages of them into one document.

After a few days on the beach to ponder….and by the way, one should always take time at the beach when writing a book it began to shape shift into something else it wanted to be. If the book had a voice, which evidently she does, she would have said this:

“I want to be used. I want to be held in the palm of the hand. Sit on the coffee table and tea cart
and the counter at the local bar. I want to be marked in and dog eared and I want scribbles in the margins. I want to be used. If I am going to be brought forth, I want to come out in a way that is useful.”

“Hmmmmmm…you do you?” I would have replied, tired from editing and hearing voices.

“Oh yes, and I want to be beautiful. I want to be heard in women’s circles.
Online and in workshops and on blogs and read aloud at parties and to lovers across coffee and
lit cigarettes. I want to be heard spoken in the streets and I would not mind some socially conscious graffiti in my honor.”

I am not the sarcastic type but I did find myself saying this: “You and everybody else. Well, except for the ‘used’ part, not everybody wants that.”

“Well I think we all want to be useful in some way. We have worked for years on this and I don’t want to sit up on a shelf relegated to the penthouses of peotry. Not that I would mind sitting next to Eliot, Dylan, Rumi or Sylvia. But I am meant for something else. Well why not try. You are always telling everyone to try. To speak their truth. To say it out. And I am doing just that.”

“You are verging on whining now.” I said.

“I want a new form and I won’t collaborate until you listen to what I am telling you. You know I love being poetry just as much as you love writing it – but there is something else to explore here. Will you listen?”

Sigh. So I got out my red pencil my scissors and set to marking and cutting and then stitching it back together with the red thread of hope.

That is how this book my new book, Tea with the Muse was crafted. Part parable part poetry part guidebook. Like the lady said, it is intended to used. We hope you find some use.  I will let you know how it all works out.

I woke up thinking of a note to the universal lover and it said this…
I don’t want to live a life without you looking at me in awe
Without me looking at you and marveling
at the freckle where God kissed your cheek
I don’t want to live each day without you
noticing the curl that has escaped my braids
Without me seeing you across a table
and wondering just who you really are
I don’t want to spend me days not seeing
your fragile power as your magic
Without me feeding you chocolate on a hot day
I want to live in splendor. In fire. In water. In hearth. In winged air.
I want to breathe possibility.
I want to see the color yellow, truly, each time. And point it out to you.
But you will have already noticed that and the bluebird next to the yellow.
I want your breath to remind me of God breathing us from soil into light.
I want to take vibrancy in like medicine for the spirit.
I want the soul’s organ to spin brightly and with aliveness and wholeness.
I want to tell stories to you. I want you to feed yours to me like hot plums.
I want lay beneath bright fronded branches letting light through
and notice how the light makes patterns on your skin.
I want to make altars everywhere I go and include things from your pockets.
Lint. A coin. Some matches. A rosary. A tiny lovenote. A small white stone.
Anything will do as long as it has belonged to you.
Because every day is sacred if we choose for it to be.
Just start with lighting one candle.
I don’t want to be asleep. I don’t want to miss anything.
I want to cry when I feel like it. And laugh even more.
And I want to have as many kisses as I feel like having. Okay?
I want to know what you want. Truly. This is what is important to me.
Do you think I am asking too much?

Perhaps.

At least if I know what I want and give it to the muse for spinning
my longing will not go unexpressed. And sometimes. That is enough.
To embrace it and hold it gently and then send it
as a paper ship on the next wave to California’s white sand beaches.
Or a message in a bottle. My message in a bottle will be covered with kisses.
What about you?

I arrived in at my room at the Ranch and was overcome with gratitude that I had brought my magic mac afterall. Right before I left home, my phone stopped working, and I couldn’t be without a way to tell some part of my story. I am off of e-mail but I have to tell you truth — I wanted to write the first moment I saw the rocky mountains. When I saw the hills covered in sandstone that I used to paint on when I was in my twenties, I wanted to write to you. My husband before now, he and I would climb up an up those hills and collect smooth flat stones for painting – fill our packs with them. Sometimes I would bring sumi paint up there and we would paint stones and leave them. Sometimes we would find a soft flat stone and make love under the pines. That was a long long long time ago now. But the smell of that sandstone makes me think of love.

I was happy to discover enough makings in my magic basket for an altar. There amongst my rhinestone flip flops and my sunglasses was a candle. chocolate. and Quadalupe belt buckles to serve as my icons. My room held single peacock feather for air. A wooden bowl for earth. Fire from the restaurant Root Down in Denver. and a sip of water for water. I had everything I needed. Oh yes. And a journal. Some sharpies. My mac. And my i-phone for my storytellers companion which started working again. And the bracelet I bought this morning from my friend, Heidi of joyfully adorned.

I am here on a vision quest to run with the wolves. I went and saw the chair of Dr. E. first thing. – Clarrissa Pinkola Estes, the chair she would sit in to speak to us tonight. I was immediately sorry I had followed the instructions to make no offering because I wanted to cover her chair with red rose petals and put chocolate with almonds sea salt for her. I wanted the chair to be a throne – red. I wanted there to be fir branches on either side. I wanted there to be a Persian rug for her feet. And so I came to build my altar and spin the first few red threads of the tale.

It must be working – my desire to be new and leave old stories for a while so I could be available for new ones. Because I forgot immediately my intention that I had set for the rest of my year upon arrival. Funny how intentions can slip under cracks of doors when one is least expecting to find themselves intentionless. Ah…but who knows what I have come to gather up. I don’t. I know the stones made me think of love lost. And the morning made me think these words to a lover I do not know but have always known. I know it is time to go swimming beneath the blue Colorado sky that I once called home. And I knew it was time to write you. Writing you captures the beauty and while it may be as hard as bottling clouds to share an experience, we can try…

I will listen for LaLoba tonight and see what bones she wants me to sing to.

Shiloh Sophia

p.s. and yes the altar has a my ragged cowgirl hat  – because I carry the Cosmic Cowgirls with me everywhere I go.

My Writing Desk

Dear Ones,

The noir petit dejeuner means English breakfast black tea. Today I wanted to invite you to a Noir Petit Dejeuner Salon to share what the most important and or most interesting conversation topics are for you right now.

What is on your heart?

What challenges do you have solutions for?

What do you find most compelling in your life right now?

What issues really make you ‘hot’ in one way or another?

P.S. Sorry….I am sure you noticed my grand boo-boo’ (said with French accent please). I was being brave trying to upload my images to my blog from my i-phone. It has only been two years since I had my blog, I mean why not save half an hour and learn the technology!! Well it is pretty obvious how that turned out. Could have been a lot worse than my sleepy photos this morning.

Note to Self: don’t blog while asleep

Sleepy Tea