I appear at her door with footsteps speaking homesick words
And pour world-weary troubles into her waves.
Longing for innocent longing.
She sings to me, just as she used to — but now I understand.
Soothing indifference, pulling my words into her crashing whirlpool,
Sweeping them out with her undertow
Tumbling and polishing them with salt and sand.
And in the space of my empty wordlessness —
Now that I understand her —
She keeps my polished rock words and gives me her song.
Awakened on a new day.
Fresh spirit, eyes clear.
The weight lifted, a landscape bathed in gold.
Air fresh from the season’s first rain, perfumed with fragrant sage.
Leaves cleaned of summer’s dust, Autumnal sparkling.
Moss revived, reborn, like my spirit, soft and green.
✨It’s here!✨
After months of recording and fine-tuning the words, the Varanasi Sage audiobook is now available on Audible! Varanasi Sage is a series of vignettes that describe the deep connection we can feel with nature and celebrates the ordinary miracles of everyday life. Click here to check it out!
“Walk through nature’s bounty in lyrical, nonfiction prose. Each sensory, rich, hypnotic step illuminates time and place, navigating nature’s creation in contrast to man’s destruction. Written in a series of vignettes, Varanasi Sage honors our sacred existence and ancestral communications through the unseen power that connects all. Varanasi Sage explores life, death, and the ordinary miracles manifesting on earth. Journey the depths of self-discovery to find the truest self, connected and whole.”
Soon, it’ll also be on iTunes!
If you want a quick sample, click play on the icon below to hear one of my favorite chapters, A Call to Vision.
North out of Yellowstone, a two-lane road snaked along the hillside and next to a dark blue-green river, white ripples cascading from rocks. Around a bend, traffic slowed to a stop and go. I pressed and released the break with patience born from heart full of bison, caribou, and mineral pools.
Onto a straightaway, we saw a bull elk down river, and knew the traffic jam was for him.
As we neared, we found a crowd of people only tamed by the limited parking area. We got lucky. A car put on its reverse lights as we approached. And just like the others, we left our car with camera in hand to admire and immortalize the stag in our memory.
As we focused on the bull, a man excitedly approached us to point and say, “this is the most incredible thing. There’s a mom over there and baby in the grass!”
The mother relaxed close to the river, her golden back to the crowd, wanting to enjoy the view, but her ears turned back, knowing humans could not be trusted. We walked a few steps further to find the baby behind tall grass. It stood facing us, its innocent eyes on us. Nervous, yet unafraid, knowing its father stood behind in the river, his robust, spearlike antlers facing the crowd. Ready if necessary, keeping an eye toward us as he lowered his mouth to drink.
Listening to the river and tuning out the crowd’s chatter, I remembered the last time — the first time — I found myself in the presence of elk. At an empty campsite on a rocky creek in Oregon, in the cool morning just after dawn, I walked through the mist. Moisture hung low to the earth to make the lush ferns mysterious and magical. I had left my camera in the tent, having taken many pictures the day before. I wanted to lose myself on the winding trail that followed along the creek, beneath trees adorned with moss. As I bathed in the forest, I saw a family of elk drinking. Two cows, a bull, and a few calfs. I stopped, obscuring myself behind a tree, in awe of their elusive nobility. After a few breaths, I stepped around the tree and towards the creek to get closer. They each stopped drinking to watch me. Having their peace disturbed, they backed away into the forest and mist.
We returned to the road leaving Yellowstone after taking our pictures and enjoying the elk. We drove to a campsite nestled between hills. We walked beside a meadow while the sky turned pink and purple, passing deer who leaped as we neared.
The next morning, we woke early, broke camp and continued north to Glacier. A haze had settled in over night. North of Bozeman, forcing us to abandon our plans, the air grew thick and brown.
Smoke from Oregon. Forests burning. Flames intensified by human-created climate change, taking the moss, ferns, trees, insects, and wildlife — the elk.
Under the smoke, my heart burned along with my relations, children of the earth and sky.
Hills that beg you to keep seeking the other side. A sky that calls you to fly up and above to the mountains of your dreams. My Grandfather, who I never met, grew among the grasses and hills, the deer and moose and grizzly, and under that sky who called.
In the vast open space, I understood — I knew him — at last. I understood why he escaped his crib and ran down the dirt road again and again. And why, even though his parents put him in a boarding school to tame his wandering adventurer, they never could. Why he enlisted in the front lines in the Pacific. And why the monotony of a 9-5 in suburbia destroyed him.
I felt him there within my heart, within my bones. I knew why and how his soul could be crushed — a wild bird locked in a cage. He died of a broken spirit long before he left his body.
On this trip, I couldn’t make it to the mountains of my dreams, the road to the sun blocked by Oregon’s smoke; yet, I gained more than my intentions. A feeling of wholeness, of integration, of knowing this man, this mystery — feeling his DNA come alive within mine.
I’ll return in Spring. To let his essence bloom within my consciousness, to let him live on. For just like him, the hills and sky call to my Spirit.
I’m excited to announce that I’m guiding three meditations in this year’s Virtual Burning Man through my camp Namaste & Chill! You can participate from anywhere in the world — and the majority of the world will have access to the virtual playa for free! The environment plays like a game (check out a preview below our event calendar). RSVP at dustymultiverse.com
My Schedule in Pacific Time:
Tuesday – 8 PM – Full Moon Ceremony – Empowered by the Moon – Drum Meditation with Nikki Prizma (also live on Twitch at Shelter in Space)
Thursday – 12 PM – Writing & Meditation (also live on Instagram)
Saturday – 2 PM – Burn the Man Within – Drum Meditation with Nikki Prizma
This piece looks back at my coming of age that coincided with the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001 and took me from disconnection to understanding, West Coast to East Coast. Balancing light and dark, I reflect on my own history and see the striking difference between then and now in American solidarity to honor the dead and pay homage to the grieving. Click play on the icon below to read along with me:
Yellow Ribbons
Floating gold-leaf words, astrologists and new-age back porch philosophers say these are the birthing pains of society entering The Age of Aquarius.
Let the Sun Shine!
When do we get to the part with dancing and laughing in flower fields under clear blue skies? Not a toxic airplane trail in sight. Or is that now? Is it — now?
Maybe for me. Walking along oceanside cliffs, empty of tourists, covered in pastel green bushes with leaves like hands in praise. Intoxicating sweet and fruity perfume emanating from purple popped corn on the stem. Up and over the hillside, I’d never seen so many together and grazed my palms across theirs. I tiptoed to a clearing between their round, decorated bodies and laid back to look at the sky, perfectly blue, without a pollution-trail in sight.
Three thousand miles away, my sister, cloistered in New York City. You could say we look like twins, though her life, in some ways, is the opposite of mine. With two children at the cusp of adulthood, their grief has been once removed. A friend’s loved one. Thousands of families left behind. Unable to hold hands as they died. FaceTime for the fortunate. Keeping distance as they mourn. Concrete and planted parks for comfort.
I entered adulthood almost twenty years before this virus. At the dawning of my independence, my mother swung open my bedroom door. Gasping. I dragged myself to the living room and watched — live — as the second plane hit. And then the replay. The replay and the replay of impacts that took 2,753. It was far away. It was barely real, but my mom said it would change the world. I went back to bed. That afternoon, I got a haircut.
Under a red terror alert and below redwoods, with an ocean view, my parents moved me into the dorms. It was just before the Fall Equinox and, during orientation, they said they had grief support. But I wasn’t affected.
The next summer, years of discord in high school dissolved during road trips to Santa Cruz with my sister. Bored of familiarity, we moved to New York City into a Lower East Side apartment with a few of her friends. We went to flashy bars for table service those warm nights as the promoter’s guests. I used her passport to get past bouncers.
For convenience, I enrolled in a college just blocks from downtown chainlink fences with green fabric holding the awful scar. On the one year anniversary, the busy streets were empty aside from a howling wind and the trash it carried. I will never forget the howling. From the second story of my school, I watched barges carrying debris along the Hudson River. And my new friend told me he saw, from the school steps, a woman in a blue dress at the edge, every detail of her face, the violent wind blowing her hair. The air that could not save her as she jumped from the burning building. He was with her as she fell. Another friend, in her Brooklyn schoolyard, had thought for a moment it was snowing that morning, but holding out her hand, realized it was ash, floating and landing in her hair.
Back then, people across the country hung American flags and tied yellow ribbons around trees. They hung signs saying United we Stand. United we Stand. They chanted and chanted until it awoke the war machine.
Divided We Fall.
Today, six weeks after the first death, over 19,000 taken by the virus in New York City alone. Amidst drive-by funerals and trenches for the unclaimed, terrorists parading as patriots fly flags of our enemies and carry assault rifles into capital buildings. They call for their right to infect and be infected, carrying signs saying, “I need a haircut.”
Dark, yet hopeful, this piece explores a personal experience during this crisis as I navigate the new reality and try to understand the modern human condition. A departure from my usual focus on Nature’s beauty, this piece recognizes and investigates the shadow as a path to integration and healing. Click the play button to read along with me:
A Holy Instinct
In my studio apartment, I’m a hoarder purchasing yet another screen to chatter alongside the others in dissonant syncopation. They drown the sound of birds singing and dancing outside with news, privileged complaining, propaganda, memes, conspiracies, and — sometimes — photos of Nature or pets or kids. I scroll and scroll and scroll and place them on top of the microwave that runs without stopping its buzzing waves, on top of the other boxes full of half-read articles. Another hairdryer, another blender, another set of lights wrapped in plastic. Photos of mass-graves and refrigerator truck morgues and the unprotected people living in Mumbai slums and. Stack it with the others. Wires and cables dangle, arranging themselves into unkempt braids covering the hardwood floor, connecting and connecting, rows of nobs and buttons and circuit boards and. Push them against the walls, pile them on the furniture. Block the windows, block the trees, block the sun. Stack and stack from floor to ceiling until there are only slim pathways through boxes and bags and bins.
Just one more thing — just a petty thing — I crammed it into my studio apartment. And without warning, I turn the nobs on the stove, and let it seep. Racing through drawers, flinging rubber bands, nails, twist ties, plastic baggies, my fingers find the slim cardboard box and open it with joy at the sight of sticks with red heads. In one spark, fury burns the space too small for all it holds.
I would have burned myself with it, but somehow I escape. A holy instinct.
I gasp for breath, inhaling the putrid stench of my own burned hair.
Three weeks since I last turned on my car, and it greets me by saying it can’t go on without a fix. Armed with a disinfectant wipe and bank card, afraid of other hands, I encase my index finger to enter my pin. I swear I’m not a germ-freak. Or, at least, I wasn’t a month ago. But now I have people to protect. Even though I can barely breathe. I drape the wipe around the handle, lifting the nozzle into my car to fill it with dark, processed blood sucked from the Earth. As much as I love my Mother, I’m forced to tap Her veins.
My car speeds north onto the concrete slabs divided by a wildlife-catcher. When they get there, in a panic, they try to run back. And maybe they make it, but we see their bodies destroyed — disfigured, ripped apart by humans wielding rubber and steel. Their flesh and blood won’t continue as life in another. It sits on top of the concrete to decay, unless it’s picked up like trash because it’s large enough to be a hazard.
Off the freeway, I drive past rows of vines still naked. The ground beneath them covered in grass.
As the road curves between oaks, under their wild branches, I unroll my window just an inch. Fresh air brushes the top of my head the way my mom used to stroke my hair. Turning west, my airways unclog. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with green stretching, cascading peaks. Jet black heifers lazily dot the hills. Oak forests in the north, gorges carved below undulations. To the south, a golden crescent — miles long — met with white foam waves and the deep blue mystery. The east in my rearview mirror. And to the west, the winding road.
This previously unreleased vignette is based on an experience I had that made me feel reborn. Like all of the stories in Varanasi Sage, this one is true to my experience. At that time of my life, I was on the precipice of a new way of being. I would be forever changed, and this morning set the tone for my new beginning. The encounters with wildlife felt especially symbolic.
I hope you enjoy this audio track! Soon, I will release the entire audiobook version of Varanasi Sage. Stay tuned!
You’ll find the writing below, if you would like to read along.
A Call to Vision
Dark shadows obscured open farmland, hills and valleys. An occasional owl hoot accentuated the silence between.
The crescent moon observed from a star-filled sky as a deer path took me uphill. I enjoyed the cold air, knowing the afternoon would drive me into the shade with a fan turned high. At the top, between dry shrubs, I brushed aside small rocks and sat.
I drank my tea with sips of intention, breathing the peace of a million minds sleeping, while night faded from black to blue, taking the stars, waking the birds. A line of color cut eastern hills in rolling silhouette.
Birds convened in the heavens, voices joined with each breath, proclaiming the ordinary miracle that sets our clocks. Old and familiar, yet always new.
A showcase, a pastel wash on oaks and hills, hues casting themselves as bright streaks on feather clouds, colors spread by a gilded brush, each layer more brilliant than the last. Breathing deeply, my seat on the ground, I took in the oaks, chaparral, and dried grasses. All of us together in the presence of its Majesty rising. I pinned my heart to the changing sky, illuminating my being.
A rustling uphill—a small rabbit! My smile and his sprint, light and fast, until, face to face, we looked into each other’s eyes. His nose and whiskers twitched a brief moment before he dashed. A soft, tender happiness carried water to my eyes, washing my heart, cleansing my cheeks. An awareness of golden rays behind hills, opening me to light as a soul opens her eyes, birthed into new life, connected with the One. A pleasure to exist on a hilltop in shifting light, a glory to cure afflictions.
I meandered back to the path, recognizing each step. In the lowest branch of a wide-reaching oak — a barn owl. I slowed to admire her round face, her speckled auburn overcoat, her white underdress. She leisurely stretched her wings and flew to a rancher’s post nearby, piercing my humanity before turning to the landscape, as if in her higher wisdom, she, too, admired the valley at dawn.
Towards her mystery I crept, present to our encounter. She turned her face to mine, and after a moment, sailed on silent wings to the next post. Magnetized. I followed. She peered into my soul, drew me along the ridge, and stopped at short distances. She signaled our walk’s end by flying high into a tree.
After several months of false starts while I figured out how to record the Varanasi Sage audiobook, I finally have it down! Here’s a track of “Awakening Depths,” an excerpt from the collection. You may want to listen with eyes closed, but I’ve included the text if you’d like to read along. Let me know what you think of this recording in the comments! Stay tuned for more audio tracks, and the audiobook release!
Awakening Depths
Faithful observers, large and wise; monoliths standing emphatically. Jutting from the earth, rising balconies and towers, watching, witnessing. Boulders looming, rocks piled, guardians of the cave. Trees flourish in crevices with cool mineral moisture. The trail, meek, between giants. My body even smaller.
A large metal gate at the entrance. “Flashlights Required.” I pull out my headlamp. I crouch and squeeze between rock bodies, layered and etched with the Sculptor’s tools; rigid, yet crumbling. Gentle giants summoned by the earth’s heart, set into place. Darkening. Light cuts through holes, cracks between boulders, lighting the way over bridges and up stairs. Bold and industrial gifts from the New Deal.
Further inside, my lamp finds little white arrows painted, marking the trail. I follow and follow, deeper and deeper.
The cool, dark quietude penetrates my being. The awe of sacred knowing. Completely held within the earth’s body—her smooth touch embraces me like a wounded bird in caring hands. With only my breath and the rock, I sit and turn off my headlamp. Surrounded, supported, my body soft and humble, yet unafraid to share space with titans arranged into impossible shapes, moved like pebbles. Spirits born from the Nature’s depths.
To sit amongst them, entities unfathomable, a guest in their great hall. Without sight and sound, I dissolve into the rock, the air, the empty space. And she comes to me, the truest part of me, the same as her living heart. The outside world lost to her embrace. My heart turns over to hers and the feeling of oneness, endlessly present in time.
