What lies in the shadows...

Yantra of the Ancient Skins

It has been raining almost every day. The yard is loving it, looking more and more like a (desert) jungle all the time. The henbit has bit the dust, mostly, but the lamb's quarters and purslane are coming up all over the place. I ate the first few mulberries, and shared them with my husband and child. We all enjoyed them. Perhaps will be a new task to create cuttings from our quickly grown tree and plant them further away from our domicile.
I feel in a better state mentally than I was this time two weeks ago (or even less than that), though there have been some great ups and downs in my life this last week. Sigh. I've been digging a new garden plot out in the front yard, along the fence; a square-foot garden, 16 square feet for each plot, though instead of a big square 4'x4' I made mine a rectangle to better use the fence for support for the tomatoes (as I suddenly have more than I intended on planting this year). It looks like a grave. Out in the front yard. And appropriately so, for all the happenings lately. I rather like it. I hope to finish it tomorrow and then transplant and bury seeds. I'm planning on adding an additional plot of equal size in the falltime, and then one every subsequent year until we feel overwhelmed with gardens, or run out of room.
The night around when my son was born was stormy and rain beat down on the roof and windows. It was exactly how I imagined the night of my son's birth would have been. (Though I don't actually know what the weather was, as I was buried deep within floors and walls of this huge building. I'm fairly certain it was a clear night, the night he arrived.) I pretended that this was the rebirth, two years later. The rain washing away any residual pain or animosity.
The nights leading up to my rebirthing night were restless or full of dreams. A long, treacherous ordeal of post-apocalyptic life, always on the run, always on edge. Swimming through a vast river full of unseen horrors, trying to grasp at me as I tried to swim out of the current. Hiding from the tribe of hunters, their pelts and furs covering their vehicles and abodes. The flesh hunters.
In a way, I felt better after having the dreams. Better after feeling down, down in the mud. And rightfully so. I need the lows to feel the joy of the highs. Without that distinction it is all the same feeling. Nothing.
I've been reading more on the Buddhist concept of 'voidness' - and I find the current book fascinating: the Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree - though I have trouble with ignoring the senses, not letting me feel. I like to feel. I even like to feel 'bad', though sometimes it doesn't seem that way when it is happening. Perhaps that is my trap, and I am destined to go through endless cycles of death and rebirth everyday with each thought that arises...