And falling into Fall.
It’s autumn.
Hello my favorite season.
Though it’s not the same as where I grew up in Wisconsin, the changing light does signal to me the season is upon us.
The crisp cutting of the wind, the smell of the few deciduous trees in the neighborhood turning their green to gold, red, yellow.
The smell of beach bonfires.
A shift, a tilt of the earth.
An owl overhead.
A barn owl.
A white barn owl hovering above me, my heart beat against my chest.
Was I really seeing this?
Its wings a blur of silent fluttering as it shifted in the blanket of air moving over the dune then it dropped.
So fast.
A blur.
I ducked my head.
I literally thought the bird was diving at my head.
I have had birds swoop me for my hair.
It is not the most pleasant experience, just let me tell you, although my best friend in Wisconsin thought it hilarious when we were walking in Olbrich Gardens and swallows kept swooping into pluck at my head.
The owl was coming for me, I know that, I can see it, it was a sign.
Yeah.
Like that.
I believe in signs.
Is it odd?
Or is it God?
I sent a message to a friend of mine that I had gotten to reconnect with out at Burning Man and I told him the story of what was happening in my life and the owl in the dunes last night.
He’s a shaman and his animal is, yes, an owl.
Although not a barn owl.
Here is a decent link to some of the spiritual significance of a barn owl.
And I mention that it was a barn owl, as I have seen a Great Horned once riding my bicycle through Golden Gate park, but never a barn owl, never so freaking close, never silent and there and hovering over me.
Whew.
It was intense.
I felt like a ghost had walked on my grave.
I instantly thought of death.
And death not of myself, but of another, then I realized, no, not death, change, extraordinary change, wild change, a deep knowing that the world is about to become something else, a gigantic shift in my perspective.
I came home and cried a lot last night.
I was cold in my feet.
My hands were cold.
I wrapped myself deeply in my blankets, my heart sore.
Tender.
Vulnerable.
In these moments.
A small knowing opening.
A change creeping in the open back door with the cold wind of fall.
What is working?
What is not working?
I wrote a lot of inventory last night, stashed the blog I had been working on, posted a part of it earlier today, it was incomplete, but complete at that.
I got up early, then went back to bed.
I fell asleep, as the cool morning grey light was sliding in the cracks between the bamboo blinds on the back door, silvery and shined with the coming of day.
I did not get up and go to yoga.
I got up, instead, and read some of my readers and knelt by my bed, I prayed.
Earnest and with longing and with a much lighter heart than when I went to bed.
I washed my sheets and made my bed a new.
I started fresh.
I showered.
I made breakfast, persimmons, another sign of fall, and apple in my oatmeal, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt.
Hot fresh coffee.
Writing, my morning pages.
Then.
A message to my friend, the one who has an owl on his business card.
I told him the situation.
I told him what was on my heart.
He told me the owl had come for me.
Yes.
I felt that.
That it was a deep knowing, to look inside.
He suggested some inventory and that I share it with the clearest person I knew in recovery.
I did that last night.
Guess who I talked to shortly thereafter on the phone?
Yeah.
Like that.
I got some great guidance and a wonderful suggestion.
And I took it.
Strong signatures of barn owl symbolism are abundant creativity as well as fantastic capacity to produce well beyond what others may do. This productivity will not always be visible either since the barn owl hunts primarily at night when others are sleeping. The barn owl is monogamous which speaks of a steady commitment to what you are producing in the world.
Oh yes, that too.
I am here to produce for the world.
Through my writing, through my connections to my community, through school, through love and how I just move through this life.
I feel really blessed to have the experience.
And I don’t have judgement or scepticism about what happened, there was so much happening, that it was what I needed to see.
I needed to see it, then look inside, see what was right with the experience and what was not.
Then to get some outside perspective and to really listen to my heart.
You know what happened today.
Nothing.
And.
Everything.
Clarity.
I wrote on a pink piece of paper and folded it into a small square.
I stood by my hot pink bunny bank from Paris.
I stroked his nose and whispered a prayer.
I looked up and saw the photograph of my mother and father one Christmas long, long ago, 1973? And saw in that dark hair and in those dark eyes a kind of sweet soft mystery and a deep love.
Good bye father.
Good bye to all those old fantasies held onto like a stubborn child.
I Shepard that small girl, daddy’s girl, along with a warm hand.
Not any more my dear.
Time to grow up.
Time to sit and let the sun branch out its warm fingers on your back, a strong hand, a warm guide, and let the wind lift the curls off the back of your neck.
And when you see that last leaf fall from the beech tree.
You will know.
The kiss on the back of your neck.
And the knowledge that all along.
You just had to come back home.
Sitting on this bench.
In the slanting autumnal sunlight.
Of the spirit.
Rich.
Golden.
Blessed.
Graced.
The beat of silent wings above your heart.
Love.
Love.
It always comes.
Right.
Back.
Here.
To you.
To me.
Always.
This.
Profound.
Love.
Auntiebubba 