Two Tales of a Mouse

On a plane right now over the ocean, headed for Dallas where I'll figure out how to move gracefully through customs and then head on through to Seattle. 

A party is waiting for me there, and my family and friends, my home and kitty cats and the river, trees, and energies of the place that I steward in Snohomish, Washington.  Soon my vibration will shift again to that of the Pacific Northwest, of Our Sacred Acres (OSA), the home I've made there, and the Kin that are coming to celebrate what we've co-created through Mercury's Outpost:
 

Head dropped, sweat still dripping from the ends of my super-spiraled curls, a deep, deep grief has been gripping my heart this morning.. just as I had ever-so-briefly gripped what quickly dawned was the most precious gift of all the things in all my bags.. and that I would have to give it up.  
 

Strangely, as my breath finally quiets, my lungs stop burning, and my senses return from losing them running back and forth through the airport fully loaded, I notice my mind looping back to the little mouse who kept me company at night in the old mill on Lago Atitlan. 

 

Random "if's" run through after the mouse..  If I'd been more persistent when I felt called to leave the hostel earlier in the morning, I'd have had plenty of time to solve this.. If the driver and I could have understood each other, I wouldn't have given up trying and waited him out.. If the security people didn't see me as some gringo hippy with feathers in her hair..  If, if, if...

 

Listen..  Listen to others and most importantly, listen to yourself, is what I hear from that sweet little mouse whose footprints danced around me, up and down the stairs near me, and occasionally right up on me while I slept. 

 

Listen to that little voice inside, guiding your feet, your heart, your mind. 

I can recall at least three times that I stood over my bags to be checked, feeling like I was forgetting something, missing something..  I didn't slow down, listen up.  I've lost plenty of metal going through airports in my days.. it's just, it never meant that much to me before, I guess. 

 

Just stuff, right? Ow...   *sigh.

I am not excited at this moment of reflection and evolution.  About going home, about the projects, the places, the presents..  I feel emptied and in tuning to that, I find clarity in it being the true gift for me after all, from this trip to Guatemala.  To give all I have, to be received fully, to be grateful for the experiences themselves, and to quit holding on to shit.

Let it go, I said…  without even knowing what I might
be asked to let go of.

Stand up, look around..

Then scale that down, too..

The mill was full of bats and mouse poop when I first checked it out, and after cleaning and clearing and setting the sacred space, I continued to sweep it regularly as the wind would howl and blow dirt back in through the open windows every few days, and the mouse poop would fall through the holes in the second floor.  There may have been more than one mouse, but I only ever saw or heard the one, and it actually visited me first in a dream, the night before casually coming out to sit under my chair as we held council in a sacred circle one night.
 

My dreams had become very lucid a few weeks into this trip, and I was doing a LOT of flying.  Flying up over and around, checking in with the dream state by holding my arms out in front of me, marveling at my hands, at the freedom of movement; and, delighting in the awareness that while my body was prone on a pile of blankets, arms folded under my chest on the second floor of that mill..  here I was consciously stretching them as if I could reach right through the wide wooden planks of mill's second floor.  I even visualized my dream-body arms sticking out of the ceiling below, and that's when the mouse revealed herself and I watched her scamper about for a bit in my dream.

Once I was sure I was dreaming and could do what I wanted, I knew it was to free-fall for a looong time.. To totally succumb to the force of gravity, and revel in that breath taking, tummy tumbling feeling that compelled me to chase rollercoasters as a youth.  So I rose up into the sky, straight up, up and up through clouds, into darkness, into cold nothingness… and then stopped.  Stopped climbing, then stopped moving, suspended in space for a timeless moment, then relaxed completely as I felt the familiar rush, felt my body changing direction, my torso toppling forward from vertical to horizontal, and just..  Let myself fall.  I dreamed of being a falling star.

In the twinkly light-filled crevice of night sky between volcanic ridges that rose above the lake, we saw a lot of shooting stars.  I remember so clearly the first one, I was having a conversation about being super conscious with words.. that our breath carries our prayers and that I work always at being aware what I bring into the world with the intentions that ride into reality on those words.

Then a huge meteor shot across the sky above Joe's head, and I shouted, "Holy CRAP!"

The irony was not lost.

It was multi-dimensional, too, what with the sanctity of sanitation that had become thematic at Camp Nuevo Mundo.  As the images flashed of digging (and utilizing ;) ) the eco-toilet holes, of all our holey socks and shoes, of holistic health practices and the holes in our bliss bubbles, I saw so clearly that EVERYTHING really is holy..   I know what I know, I know what I don't know, I know it's everything and nothing all at once, I know shit is silly and shit is sacred and that the only thing you really NEED to know, is..

Everything, from the compost to the holes - the no-thing - is sacred.
 

So let's fall, together.. into the sacred-ness.

 

Well there you have the first tale.. the other tale, is one of TWO mice.

  One  that is mine, and one that looks like mine, but is not mine.. because somehow I now, have two.

Dear Odysseyians...  Is it yours? 

Hold on to that key in a safe place!

~*~       ~*~     ~*~       ~*~          ~*~     ~*~       ~*~

NOW THEN.... 

I am super stoked to end this blog with a HUGE PLUG for what I am dreaming of how to get back together with my TCN and PNM Kin..  Here's where we practice, dream, plan, and do, and CELEBRATE <3