Your Own Back Yard – Michael Gillan Maxwell

5 days and five nights at Omega – 5 Tai Chi classes – 1 Qigong class – 4 guided meditations – 1 intuitive counseling/chakra clearing/energy work session – 30 hours of reading, writing and talking about poetry, art and why/how it is an expression of spirit – 1 concert filled with magical music of north Africa – days of rain and thunder, lightning and torrential downpours, sun, moon and the lake like a mirror – 15 vegetarian meals on the outdoor porch – 2 macchiatos – 1 synchronistic reunion with classmate from Catholic school after 47 years – 3 new books – 1 new CD – conversations with remarkable people – loons on the lake in the early morning mist – charging groundhogs – grazing deer – 5 nights in a room just a little bit bigger than the bed – 5 days and nights without meat, alcohol, television, sex and drugs and rock and roll, gluttony, lust, and the rest of the 7 deadly sins (OK I missed some of them just a little bit) – 5 days and nights without reading bad news about the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, war, famine, pestilence, economic collapse, Tea Party extremists, suicide bombers, ecological disaster and on and on, 6 clean T-Shirts – 1 umbrella – 500 miles of driving hard – radical receptivity – trying to convey with words the unsayable – trying to know the unknowable – pushing beyond the safety of the comfort zone – taking your first thought and following it down the Byzantine maze until you no longer recognize it as yours – letting the piece take you where IT wants to go – gazing at things until they gaze back at you gazing back at them gazing back at you – calling in energy from the 6 directions – shamanic healing tent outside my window – waning August full green corn, sturgeon, dog days moon –