Hi everyone.
Come celebrate the spirit of May Day with us!
(Link above!)
Please join us in the wonderful alchemy of writing together in our notebooks, reading our work out loud, honoring the magic of our turning world and building connection and community on this holy day.
Riba
Hi everyone. One more little note about my class.
Yes, the “Reiki for writers!” is a shameless marketing ploy on my part. ;-)
But it’s true, too!
Once our latent healing abilities are awakened, the reiki is there for us for everything we do with our hands, be it writing, planting tomatoes, kneading bread, making any other kind of art. Our ability to allow the creative life force move through us is enhanced in all ways.
Registration closes April 7th for our Online Women’s Reiki class that takes everyone from scratch through all three reiki degrees. (The first class is at 11am on Friday, April 24th.)
It’s dana-based rather than fee-based, so you can give what your life allows.
Here’s the link with all the details in the Meetup site.
And please let me know if you have any questions. I’d love to have a good little group of us to do this work together.
Riba
_________________
Riba Taylor
Desert Writing and Reiki group
🧚🏽♂️💜🙌🏼
Just wanted to let you know I’m offering reiki training online now! (Also still in person for individuals or small groups.)
Here’s the link for my Meetup event.
I hope to post more to my blog soon, too!
May you all be well. 🧚🏽♂️🧡
Riba
[Editor’s note: I wrote this little piece on December 12th in response to that day’s prompt from the annual poetry advent calendar by Two Sylvias Press.]
I wake to white crowned sparrows whispering together beneath the bougainvillea in the corner of my little courtyard. The light is just returning. I am wide awake in the early morning, unusual for me, no gradual coming back, no desire to turn over, sink back into sleep. I had a dream, and my body somehow knows it was big. I close my eyes again, lie still, hoping to bring it back. I am flying over a narrow market street, small shops with colorful awnings, people milling, filling the road, no cars. Morocco comes to mind. I have no idea why. It is a steep street, and I am flying low, heading downhill. I can see faces. No one seems alarmed by me. In waking life, I’ve always suspected we used to know how to fly. I think people escaped from Atlantis by flying when it sank into the sea. I believe there’s something in our heads that controls flight. Maybe the pineal gland? We used to be able to activate it at will, a lost art, like the ability to wiggle our ears. When I wake up I think, oh, flying is the seventh sense. And I wonder if there might be more.
Just a quick late note about our winter solstice gathering for writing and ritual.
Here’s the link to the Meetup event if you’d like to register and join us. :)
Winter Solstice / Yule — Full Circle
Sunday, December 21, 9:30am Pacific time
May you all have a sweet holiday season.
Riba
Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times has an article on the front page by Ana Ceballos (reporting from Washington) and Seema Mehta (reporting from Los Angeles) about how passing California’s Proposition 50 might not help change house control. I read the entire article, as usual, hoping against hope to find something about how wrong it is for us to be trying to rig our elections against Republicans through the 2030 election cycle.
Today I finally found something. (I should note I haven’t done any actual research, have only kept my eyes open whenever I read something about these gerrymandering efforts nationwide, hoping to read that someone else is disturbed about this, too). The last four paragraphs of the article give us the opinion of Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communications & Public Policy at Northwestern University who believes the fact that this “redistricting trend is gaining traction is part of a broader problem.”
“It is a symptom,” Nisbet says, “of this 20-year trend in increasing polarization and political tribalism.” He argues that “both parties are sacrificing democratic norms and the ideas of procedural fairness as well as a representative democracy for political gain.”
This is stated more clearly and succinctly than my arguments in my earlier post for Governor Newsom and California Democrats voting in tomorrow’s election. But his message is the same as mine—this is just so wrong.
“I am worried,” Nisbet says, “about what the end result” of these efforts to rig our elections will be. People on both sides of the aisle should be worried, too. Frankly, it terrifies me.
I sit down on the Adirondack chair, on the little raised deck like a dais, my bottom sliding over the wood, surprising and smooth as if it had been polished. (Now I want a chair like this.) I am on a ridge at Descanso Gardens, looking north over La Cañada and the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. I breathe, sigh, stretch my neck and shoulders, so tight these days. I try not to feel uncomfortable as people come into view and spot me sitting there. (I am so close to the intersecting paths.) I am glad when they all disappear again, and I remain. I rub my hands across the arms of the chair, soft against my palms. In the stillness of this almost-wilderness, I am the grateful, quiet queen of my domain.
No Holds Barred 