Joseph Rastovich

I don’t know

so I flip a coin

heads or tails.

The beginning of new stories,

paths and tales.

The tale we were told.

What we tell ourselves.

What we weave together.

The primordial tale of our deep and ancient history.

Tales of how we once had tails or what if had them.

I would think mind would be bushy and curly. Perhaps with bit of colorful paint, leaves and pine needles.

In my excitement I would invariably knock things over with my exuberant tail especially when I meet the people I love or sit down for a fine meal.

Dancing would be a whole other tale.

The tails of horses, dogs, cats, lizards, cows, lemurs, rabbits, birds, beaver.

All relaying their individual personality.

But with heads or tails perhaps we should look at the edge which is neither one or the other.

Gold luminescent as the sun.

The egyptian god “Ra”.

Silver luminescent as the moon.

Gold of fire, of lions, of greed, of allure. What can compel people in ways beyond nature.

The first money. Limited in supply creating differentials of power. Yet we cannot eat not use as medicine.

And yet there is magical allure about gold even one who knows not the mythology can understand.

Hammered into foil and adorned on walls, pots, and sacred books.

Of frankinscence, myrr and spices. Of jewels and mystery.

Born in space we ponder the journey it’s been on.

And my body is golden. My mind spirit of intention as gold. You have the same value as me and the trees.

A bee buzzes to pollinate fragrant flowers.

The raven, crows and magic play and tease in their shadowy ways.

The sheep dog of black and white focuses attentively on flocks.

The geese eat their final nibbles of grass before their long migration.

The cougar slinks quietly with poise and confidence.

The skunk is bold but easily offended.

The bumbling beetle keeps going about it’s diligence.

The ants toil selflessly to create a super organism of the intelligent colony.

The emergence of birds creating clouds of one.

I stand on the rock cliff listening to redwing blackbirds among the cattails and the setting sun.

The difference between the domestic and wild.

I choose the wild.

The animals know what we have forgotten.

I look into the wolfs eyes to see the womb of center Earth and expansive space to the edge of all things and no things where it becomes the other realm.

Buffalo and ox and yak with strength and resolve.

The snake slithers in flow like the river

grounded constantly as it sheds former skins.

The beaver of industry and family. The otter and muskrat who splish and splash for fun.

I’ve seen a crow watch sunsets in reverence.

Mirror of the calm lake.

How us as above ground beings fear death.

And how underground beings fear birth.

Until you know they are one in the same.

A child grows. And the old growth goes back.

What goes up must come down and what goes down must come up.

There is no such thing as lightness without darkness.

A sine wave of positive and negative. Oscillation of polarities and where they join in ecstatic hoizon of now union to conceive a new.

A sine wave of vibration. Everything is vibration. Vibration is life. Vibration is oscillation.

In breath and out breath.

The heart beats in three beats … boom boom boom.

I often don’t know which path to choose in the mysterious beautiful rich forest of life.

What is the answer to my questions of which I so much want resolution.

The only thing I know is time reveals all just like the wise wind reveals ancient fossils and treasures. Contentment in knowing as my future self looks back at my present self over the bridge of time across a chasm of uncertainty with compassion.

Between mystery and knowing of oscillation between the two. Let us not forget we were born for the journey and not the end. Find contentment in unknowing like the pure child self.

Every breath, every step, every Earth and moon rotation is a bridge between past ephemerality and future knowing.

Ebb and flow.

Osmosis.

Pendulum swinging.

Butterflies migrating over multiple generations where they set out to begin a trip they will never finish. Yet they do.

Bird flying thousands of miles every year.

Forest mites crawling inches over their entire lifetime.

To go or to stay.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

And sometimes it’s true.

Some migrate because they must and other just because.

Never linear, always cyclical.

To remember the nomadic roots of picking berries and digging roots.

But the grandest migration and most treacherous and more beautiful and most mysterious is the migration towards remembering your authentic self.

The clock struck midnight under the full moon lunar eclipse when I tripped over a mushroom upon my path and tumbled down a hole, a tunnel, a vortex. A weird feeling as my senses change. Am I dying as my thoughts echo outside myself. Darkness then gray then white then rainbows. Cold then hot then just right. Silent then explosion then birds singing and a creek of sparkles trickling. The wind caresses me and blows my hair and clothing off till ker thunk crash and splash I tumble through the glass ceiling of mirrored silver breaking the reflection of what I knew to be myself. Suddenly I stand upright yet upside down such that my feet are on the bottom side of aboveground. Myth and story and meaning and nothing and chaos ebbing and flowing.

I follow the snail leaving a path of slime as the werewolves follow behind lapping it up. The trees reach out to me with their branches leaving me smelling as the forest. Then I pause at a mountain stream waterfall to encounter a catfish old with wisdom who told me … you already know the answer, you must trust yourself.

The black dog chased the white cat.

The white cat was chasing a yellow bird.

The yellow bird was singing atop an oak tree with swing.

The swing was swung by children who became grandparents.

The grandparents have stories.

Stories create reality.

Reality is subjective and not black and white.

Black and white symbolize dichotomy and polarity.

In polarity it is the space between which is magic.

Magic is beauty.

Beauty is indescribable.

Indescribable yet we try to find words.

Words are spells.

Spells are ritualistic intention.

Intention without expectation is the key to happiness.

The moon.

Everchanging

yet constant.

Playing with the sun and Earth.

Cycles, phases, and ocean tides.

The moon knows the feminine.

And the feminine knows the moon.

The waters of the Earth

and our selves

ever influenced.

To think our ancestors

from 10,000 years

have observed the same white

and sometimes orange

sphere in black sky.

All the emotions

thoughts and experience.

The significance in witchery

and gardening

and self-knowing.

What is time but relationship with cycles.

The time of the moon phase.

The Earth around the sun.

Our footsteps, breath and heartbeat.

Mysterious dark side of the moon reminds us of the hidden side of our own being.

For as much as there is known, there is as much unknown.

Love.

Beautiful.

Deep.

Real.

Let me be.

Let me be free.

Let me be me.

I can only love deeply.

There is no other way for me but to Love physically, emotionally, spiritually, logically.

Wholly.

I Love the soul.

I Love a person forever.

And they become a part of my story.

But I do not create expectations.

My intention is to uplift, inspire, heal, explore, create, Love.

My intention is to be.

Authentically.

But no expectations.

I do not dwell in past.

I do not dwell in future.

I exist here and now.

I am a wild animal.

Who cannot be constrained.

For as much as I walk fast

and talk fast.

For as much as I’m a man of action.

I move slowly.

Developing growth rings like a strong tree.

I care about you for your essence.

But I cannot deny the present.

A polarity of steady roots growing deeper as the moon changes phase and Earth spins round.

Yet spontaneous green growth like spring flowers who live for today.

To take a step on grass ultimately kills other beings.

Do we not take any steps for fear of causing pain?

Existence is a gamble.

But it is always worthwhile.

The pleasant times are precious.

The challenging times are lessons.

I am grateful for all experience.

It is what I signed up for before I was born.

Let me walk gently.

Let me be silent.

I want to see the faintest candle in the distance.

I want to hear the softest bird high upon a tree.

I want to smell the medicine I’m surrounded by.

I want to touch in way that is felt without movement.

I live for the sensual existence of observation.

The magical reality of which I live.

I’ve waited so long underground to live aboveground.

Just like the dormant seed or the mycelium.

I have no motives.