be here now: when other places dwell in your presence

April is National Poetry Month. A time to read between the lines and infuse romance into the way we walk, and into the grass that grows beneath us. Some poems leave me with a gaping hole in my chest, but I prefer something airy that lifts me to a mountain top in Italy.

I prefer lightness.

I resonate with angel wings.

I pick up poems that are shavings from the full moon.

Silvery threads weaved into sonnets.

I returned from Italy, and a friend gave me a collection of twentieth century Italian poetry. An anthology with original works in their dialects from Umbria, Tuscany, and throughout the peninsula. He gifted it to me on the Winter Solstice as we stood next to a lake and watched the sun on the shortest day of the year sink into a waterfall's edge.

Pining for a place that brings me wholeness, but salving my nervous system with chimes of be here now. It carries me from place to place, one moment of silent lakeside sunsets and then to the memory of mountaintops. When something is so deeply beautiful; so intricately known to the ones' self, it is not a story to tell in a string of 'and then's'...

But let me tell you this, because everything really starts with this moment 3 years ago:

The first time I received a reiki treatment, I could not stop crying. Everything- all the fear, all the guilt that I held clenched in my solar plexus came through. But it was gentleness- it was knowing. It was ME. It was me in my most pure form on a table in the hands of a master healer and I swam out from my tear ducts. All of it came surging through without judgment, but rather, wholeness.

She told me truths that only I could ever really know to be mine-

• Yellow

• Woods Connection

• Elemental Realm

• Alternative System

• Greenery + Ancestral Roots

and each of them has served me, held me, and been my compass. I received this reiki the day before I moved to Amherst, MA for grad school where I-

• lived in a yellow house, where I met the man whom I love

• found healing in the neighboring woods every day

• had my first art show called Respective Elements

• worked in alternative counseling and educational settings

• decided to forgo a job post-degree + go to Italy to take part in my family's apple harvesting process

Each part makes up a whole.

Each part makes up a whole.

Something unlocked, but still had / has doors to open.The feeling of wanting to be somewhere else, wanting parts of me to be someone else, wanting someTHING else, something different than what is present.

I think of this because this morning it is raining. It is 6 am and a porcelain mug of hot coffee rests at my hip. A cat lies on my quads and a book of poetry lays on the floor. This moment, feel, and setting is one that I've visualized when I ask myself "what do you want?". It's happening now. Vision does not have to be flow charts and plans. I know it as a million tiny moments that include clean bedsheets and inhales of mountain air. However you want to get there is up to you. As long as you keep going towards the feel- it is the feel; the visualization; the knowing what is right for you.

In my body in this moment, I breathe in the memory of Northern Italian montagne air and think: "I want to be there". I can hear my labored breathing of 7 months ago, when I reached the pinnacle of a mountain top and found a village, where people mainly live in just the summertime-- but it was early Autumn by the time by feet found its trails. It was emptied.

I saw one townsperson carrying wood, and the other 4 people I saw in total were fellow hikers. I pulled my hand-me-down Northface raincoat closer to my body since the air was 10 degrees cooler, shaded by tall timber, and crow wings flying above-- and I walked. I walked with no direction except the pull of pine trees, passing by vacant homes with flowering blooms stretching over the fences. Just the sound of tiny pebbles and dirt paths under my well-worn hiking boots and I felt one of those million moments right then-- the feel of doing what is right for the soul. Following it. I was told before my trip "The heart IS your compass", and this is what walking in direction of dreams looks like to me:

Clean air.

Crows.

Woods.

Freedom.

That morning I followed a directive of intuition rather than path signs and in the dewy grass covered with fallen chestnuts; I found a chapel lit by mid-morning sun. I tried to open its doors but they were locked, and so I peered through a thick glass window and saw a small room with simple wooden pews and an altar. A part of me from a lifetime that is not this one came swimming up and said "you were married here once". I pictured the lace gown, the townspeople crowding on the slab of rock outside the church doors- I was me, just like I am now, but in a different time when all light is orange and everything is in photograph form.

And so with no agenda and the essence of a memory that brought me straight home to myself from so long ago, I collected split-open chestnuts from the ground and made fairy dens around the trees. Pebbles lined up as walkways and sticks formed tiny ladders tied together with yellowed grass. Early October signifies my offering back to the world-- it is my birth month and tie to the physical world as well as spiritual and familial. When a surge of feeling comes rushing {like the church on the hill} I have to give back and pay respect to what is rising in me. My go-to for this is to connect with my younger self in an attempt to bring all energies in sync. My Mom's energy waves through me-- quite literally a life giver. It is so careful, so loving, so true, that the mission of making mini villages out of leaves and acorn caps becomes the ONLY mission to pay mind to-- because together it is what we have done in the month of my birth for all of my life. And that morning by the chapel I was there in that moment -- be here now-- and so were my other energies, coming in to tell me that the heart is the compass and it will bring me to where I feel complete.

Flowers that grew freely had blooms bigger than my outstretched hand, and were a breed that I'd seen in US floral shops with a price tag too high to buy. I couldn't believe I was there at the time- on top of the mountain, in Italy, so in awe of all that existed in front of me. I mean this as I write it: every step got more beautiful. I had a reoccuring dream when I was younger where I would be in a Victorian house, and each door led to a secret room I had never found before, with another secret door which led to an even more magical room, and in the dream I would think: there is so much for me to discover in here! I would want to pause in every room to touch the belongings and enjoy its wallpaper and sunlight, but then I would see the brass doorknob and keep opening- keep going.

I felt this in Italy, on the mountaintop.

Every field had a different tangled plants; each patch of woods had sunlight hitting it differently. And though I would stop and take it in (clamping my eyes shut and open in the familiar fashion I've described here), I kept going out of excitment to find more. Paths led to homes showcasing windowsills spilling with flowers and I told myself, "you are safe here". Out of my comfort zone, away from my country, yet still an allegiance to the land no matter what grounds I stood on. The village itself, was a surprise-- a hidden sacred gem that I found because it was time to. Resting on the grass, I took a swig of water and wondered: would I have found this place should I have come to Italy with my partner, friends, or five years prior? Five years after? In the Summer when the Inn is open and villagers are cooling off from hot heat down at the base of the mountain?

When and how I found it was what I needed; entirely. This is how following intuition; trusting that compass works. It will lead you to landscapes and colors that remind you of something only you know to be true; only you know the mammoth meaning it serves you and your purpose and presence. Because I have been there, because it sustains me and lives in both my brain and heart and life-footprint, I can be on the couch in Amherst, MA and locate the mountains in me. I know where to go now at any age, at any stage, in any emotional landscape. Longing exists because of love of a time and place that cannot be recreated- yet it is in us, and will guide us to where we need to be.

The unbelievable thing is that a vision board I created in early 2017 nearly echoes my experience in Italy (which was late 2017)... when I came home and saw it leaning on my bedside chest, I thought it was created in the mountaintops with me-- even down to the colors, light, and animals collaged on the board. When creating, allow yourself to be drawn only to what speaks to you, even if you do not know WHY yet. You will know. It will come to you. And you may not have to climb a mountain to find it, although the air you'll breathe is worth it.

LA PIOGGIA NEL PINETO

"Silence! At the edge

of the woods I do not hear

the human words you say;

I hear new words

spoken by droplets and leaves

far away.

Listen. It rains

from the scattered clouds.

It rains on the briny, burned

tamarisk,

it rains on the pine trees

scaly and rough,

it rains on the divine

myrtle,

on the bright ginestra flowers

gathered together,

on the junipers full of

fragrant berries,

it rains on our sylvan

faces,

it rains on our

bare hands

on our light

clothes,

on the fresh thoughts

that our soul, renewed,

liberates,

on the beautiful fable

that beguiled you

yesterday, that beguiles me today,

oh Hermione..."

- Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italian Poet