My Lion's Roar


I’ve just come off of an all-too-familiar fiction binge.  This time it was the last two books in Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam series followed by Octavia Butler’s Earthseed sequence.  I have a penchant for the semi-dystopian speculative writing of women, it would seem.  

But what’s this feeling of fecundity? Of richness?  Of just-about-to-be born?  I don’t have XX chromosomes so the likelihood that I will go through labor to birth a child is low.  Maybe I’m not acknowledging the labor I need to go through to birth the progeny of my heart.  How many beautiful minds have I made love with to gather the genetic seeds of this child, these children (what if they’re twins or triplets?)?  So many.  Carse.  Butler.  Le Guin.  Atwood.  Trungpa. Mipham the Great.  Mipham the Sakyong.  Blake.  Choleridge.  Hayward.  Whitehead.  Wittgenstein.  Varela.  Gentner.  Rosch.  James.  James.  Linda Barry.  Bucky Fuller.  Rolling Thunder and Doug Boyd.  Faulkner.  Huxley.  Saul Williams.  Kranz.  Lobel.  McLaughlin.  Geoghan.  Ubungen.  Paul D. Miller.  Rilke.  

Threads feel like they could be woven right now though.  I want to help.  How can I help?  Or perhaps, with more relevance, who can I help?  If I know or find who I can help, I think I’ll be lead quickly to how I can help.  Something about poetry.  Something about notebook practice.  Something about the depth and breadth of intimacy and caring in relationships.  Something about the flavors and textures of experience.  Something about the precision of meditation.  Something about the wisdom of feeling embodiment.  Something about telling truth by writing fiction.  

My responsibility is to my teachers, my lovers and my students.  My siblings in blood, in dharma, in life.  Everyone falls into one of these categories.  Some into multiple.  

This is my lion’s roar.  

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