in the spirit of always moving or just new places,
i've started writing here: moderncommunities.blogspot.com

here might still be a good spot for
writing collaborations with jah and others
but heading over to new spot for
occasional personal stuff and more,


peace friends,
pray for me

present time,
that is,present moment which is
goal of buddhist meditation
i guess,proper fixing of memories
upon the canvas of mind
paintings we've flung into the
back of our closets,should have
lit a little warm fire
with my wheelbarrow filled
countless mistakes.
present time,
we write letters beginning or
ending of the day
while i don't write about
worrying about the moon
while i write about
proper fixing of eyes on
insides of books or
ears on funny chanting,
proper focus on lines left by
chain harrow, dragging along
to break up manure but keep away
from horses not to break legs,
present time, seeing the moon up high
in baby blue fall sky, button shirt collar
up tight against breezes in the shade,
present time jobs to ready for winter.
not writing much most days, worried
that folks don't need to hear about
chapped palms and the swinging of
axe,

(collaboration by jah and matthew,october)

thanks to grandma wheelock for amazing,handmade costume!

a,


love accepts
many hard mornings and afternoons,
bless you as we struggle with
our humanness.
last night,noah and i were
on our way to brush our teeth
before bedtime and we saw
you kneeling before his bookshelf,
culling lesser favorites from the
bursting shelves,
i saw the altar everywhere
and hoped our mistakes were
forgiven,our hopes
magnified,

now i want to learn to
say a prayer everywhere,
starting with your
early morning face,


love,matthew

happy birthday to amanda,
dear one and love of my life!

i just ordered noah & jonah these wonderful wooden bowls to eat from, complete with wooden spoons. noahs spoon will have a snowflake on it to represent winter, & jonahs comes with a moon on his. i plan on ordering the other three seasons of spoons, along with the sun spoon. my mama heart imagines giving them each their little wooden eating bowl when they are my age, or when they have a baby of their own. of course, who knows what will happen. i try not to be attached to Things but these had such a sweet sentimentality all on their own, i couldnt resist.

not to mention i love the idea of not using plastics, especially after the tiniest bit of reading ive done & all the leaching, etc.

also, a maple teething ring for jonah.
and a rainbow colored broom for noah.

i need to buy construction paper so we can start making our paper chains for christmas!

...

its not that i didnt feel like a mother when i had noah, but having two certainly makes it Clear & certain that i am a mama. i dont know how to describe it, really.

every sunday at 4pm my belly twinges; every monday morning at 4am i am awakened by the memory of jonahs soul leaving my body. 8 am on tuesdays are when i smile with noahs birth memory.... counting his fingers and toes a million times & just utterly amazed at his presence, his little moon face.

october & november are so special to me; its when matthew & i met.
its when my soul found its music.

jah,


joy letters of yours,
hearing about your mornings is like
faith or practice
i need to be reminded of,
it's a face i need to be
shown again and again,
but

you'd see me known
smiling upwards,tickling the earth with
thankfulness,days of rain
(write that and then think of poor
states with fire)
right before sleep
hearing the rain tinker on the
roof over the bathroom
waking up still pitch black
bright cloudy sky,world still asleep,
roadways shiny with rain,


imagine you sitting right up
in amazing silent night with
song welling up inside you,
patience it takes to listen and to
not rewrite nature song,

peace and love,matthew

first days back to work are always the hardest.

i am the first to admit that on the whole, i am a better mother & wife, having a job that takes me out of the home for a few hours a week. being gone about ten hours a week helps me to utilize my time Here at home much better; i am able to focus more on just being Present with my children & not dilly-dallying around on the computer or reading my Own book when i should be reading books with noah & jonah. i try to always be present with whatever we are doing; when i am nursing jonah i try (hard & sometimes impossible as it may be) to Just Nurse Him... to stroke his hair & hold his fingers. to have those tiny, unspoken conversations with him and with God. sticking my nose in a book during that time, or focusing on the tv, or talking on the phone... all those things make me feel like im wasting such a precious gift. i am so lucky to have the two little boys that i do; i am forever grateful to be given the opportunity to raise them & enjoy them & cherish them.

& i say all this, that i am a better mama & wife when i have a job outside the home, but at this very moment, i dont feel quite ready yet. & while i am so grateful to work for a company that, in the end, has Always worked with me regarding my schedules & time, has allowed me to ease back into work-mode; this is a place that i can leave from in a moment's notice if i need to for any reason... the management Does really respect family life and our needs...
but i dont feel very ready.

and how sad it is in our country that women are considered Lucky if they are given more than six weeks maternity leave; that its considered considered almost a crime to complain if you are given more time than that, especially if it is paid time. that the post-partum period is viewed as "over" after your six-week check-up... as if you yourSelf werent born again into another mother, the mother of This newborn. as if your hormones are even balanced by then.

& so all my complaining & kvetching about returning to work, i realise, is totally normal. because emotionally, spiritually, i am not ready. the thought of leaving my newborn, even for just three hours, every day, brings me to tears.

but i will do it, i Am doing it, because that is what our family needs to do at this time. and because i know its not a feeling that will last forever or a situation that will last forever. because i know i have the spiritual, physical and emotional support i Need as a new mother. because i know i will be able to draw from my own experience when i become a birth & post-partum doula, and i know this is all part of the experience *I* need to have.

but today, today i do not feel ready.

Brother,

I think it might be the
darkest before dawn
when I am wrapped in
warm blankets with my
feet on the hot belly
of the dog.

The trees are darker then
the 6am sky on mornings
when I wake up with worlds
floating in front of my eyes,
dreams of small apple
orchards and rootstock.

Most nights I wake a few times
at least and always there is
some fiddle tune or other racing
along, I dare not hum it and
disturb its careful nesting.

The maple tree outside the
living room is making its
yearly mess of the yard but
don't look for suffering on my face.

Joshua

jah,




i see the path you're on is
work,which is throwing the
body against the wheel,it's
own meditation in the fields,
sharing secrets with the
insides of barns

don't share everything so that
one here doesn't touch
reality,just imagines,
dreams,creates now the mythic
jah among the new england wood,

i see the path you're on is
real,and defies my speculation
because the weather can't
enter my pretending
so you spend a fine minute
buttoning your coat and i spend
a fine minute with a shadow
out of corner of my eye
tricking me,

peace,m

1,noah after bath and haircut//2,jonah sleeping//3,amanda before the cut//4,amanda after the cut,beautiful always//

Matthew,

Now I am starting to hide out in Maine,
lower Maine o Southern Maine just next
door to all my childhood memories though
it is much colder in Maine o Southern Maine
where the frost is thick on grass and windows
long before New Hampshire dons it's thermals.
I am working on a horse farm and soon to be
living in a small apartment in the horse barn
and in the summer I will be farming a couple of
acres and still fixing fences, feeding horse, six,
donkey, two(which shall be trained to carry loads
to back fields and I will build log tie-off post like
old west saloons), goat, one.
Now I drive tractors and wear union suits and
suspenders and thick pants, lined vests which will
give way to thick boots, flannel lined pants and woolen
jackets. A portion of the land has been turned in
my Maine o Southern Maine in whom I jab my fingers
and grind around the soil and act like it tells me something
when really the only telling that is done to me is when the thorns
pull on my flannel'd arms and tell me to slow down,the birches
a wash of yellow yelling look up, the staunch and tired
evergreens shouldering another long winter.

Joshua

Mei,

The only place I get reading done is on the toilet, maybe grab a few pages during commercials during the football game. Begging for the time change because it is too dark in the morning to actually feel like getting up. Short work days, 4 hours on the farm a day, mostly little chores. Pull down a few bales of hay from the barn, toss a flake to each horse, some fresh water, then off to the fence. I stop and mop my brow with my hat and walk over to the crab apple tree or the grape vine and chew on a little something. Suspenders to help keep pant legs out of the mud, new boots that add 3 inches to my height, lined vests and wool flannels to keep me warm. Fall is sitting on us right now, leaves starting to pile up, neighbor on his roof brooming the acorns off, geese constantly overhead honking and migrating, tomorrow ought to be first frost so soon I will be living on apple cider mulled in my thermos. Gotta learn to sit a horse, to swing a sycthe, to raise a pig and build a chicken coop, these are all my days.

Joshua

gave into them that said
God is no different from
God's form,God's names
especially God's names
especially God's names in
prayers that dance around on the
inside of your mouth
God is no different from
God's form,God's names
especially God's form
especially God's form tho
i get nervous and can't hold my
gaze,not even to my brothers and
sisters,don't they know my doubt?

especially God's names
i come back again to where i
find joy

chewing on something chico wrote in recent entry//vol.2 of aindra dasa's 'vrndavana mellows'//amanda's birthday coming up//find something to read//

nusrat fateh ali khan - allah muhammad char yaar,




battles - atlas,



han bennink solo video,




the upsetters - soulful i,

wanting to feel the cold wood floor
against my already cold toes.
hot coffee with a generous poof of
whipped cream on top.
pumpkin spice,
smells that conjur nostalgia
but not of anything specific
just
warmth.
i remember now,
its the second six weeks that are hardest for me,
after birth.
nothing specific,
just adjusting,
changing,
losing
and gaining.

ii,

probably auditory,
reaction to holy names of
God,waiting for
authentic lightning to rain down,
mercy to the whole lot of us,

going in circles forever,
often repeating seeing
patterns in places,
their pottery thrown and retrieved,
mercy to the whole lot of us,

vessels exist,
we have yet to really
fill ourselves with a lot of
devotion,write it down as practice,
mercy to the whole lot of us,

couldn't have extinguished
quietness,echoes to the
highest beams and fills windows,
this place without names,
mercy to the whole lot of us,

one day you and i
cut off all strings hanging off
ends of our clothes,
fabric to hang on the altar,
mercy to the whole lot of us,

A,

what work i've to do
in myself but first
memorize these prayers of yours
that each breathe and turn a wheel,
we don't need reassuring,we pray for
encouragement for this holy act
call and response among the
building blocks

how we know it is temporary,
we laugh in the morning and at the
end of the day
in between,we learn more patience
be honest,refill juice,
sing songs,among thousands of
little activities,like
reciting funny phrases
twenty times over

these letters of mine only pay
homage to the afternoon sun,
while you reside on the
early morning moon,

love,matthew