“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.” John Muir.

To return is to go back to a former position, to turn and change direction, go back the way you came. So, a homecoming, Penelope at the end of the Odyssey. But you can speak of returning to a place as soon as the second time you go there, and every time after that. Every time you change direction, go back the way you went that first time, you consolidate that sense of the new place as a place of origin.

Resort is a place you go out to (sortie) again and again. And so I keep resorting to the spring at the top of Mount Lemmon--back there, again there. I keep returning, transforming a resort into a source and base.

So, once again you found me looking at words, using word alchemy to transform “running in circles” into “course concentration,” wondering at the fact that so often, no matter where we start, we end up back there again. What’s in it for you?

Give me a few words about cycles, and then I’ll tell you.

It's easy for me to be highly creative in a situation that already has its external form. This form could be a clinic with its full paraphernalia, or an article that needs translating, or a person who comes to me for help with nutrition or wanting advice with herbs.  All of these require presence, intuition, improvisation, focus.

But when I'm tasked with creating the external form from scratch--be that my website, or a poem, or a book, or my "business model," or any of what I consider the most worthwhile sorts of creation... Well, the only reason I don't get really upset at myself if it gets to be afternoon and I've scribbled a few notes and done a few essential chores but that's all is because I recognize I'm not the only person who experiences this. That's when I start to try to understand what it is that I'm really trying to do here.

Have you ever felt your fingers typing away on a keyboard, watching the words and occasional typos show up on the screen, and thought how no words would appear if there were no keyboard under the fingers? That "typing" would be mere tapping without the keys, but that you could make exactly those movements of your hands, with the same intent to send words and sentences to the screen, mapping the qwerty-map onto your knees or a tabletop?

Every term implies its opposite. Which is why the theory of positive affirmations, the assertion that the subconscious never hears "no" and so you must use positive language, is oversimplified. Rich  contains the imagining of poor; lose contains the imagining of gain (and vice versa); always contains the imagining of fleeting.

Yes, yin-yang.

Yes, Heraclitus.

And so it isn't surprising that having just been writing about surrender, when Black Friday rolled around all I could think about was white flags.

The next herb I will write about here is Monarda-- Mexican oregano--movement embodied and personified in plant medicine. Monarda my sweet-hot, my ally in this time of change and mo(ve)ment I undergo in alongside spirit with many others. But that won't be today.

Today, I'm publishing this blog's ONE HUNDREDTH post! But why so long since post 99?

Until not too long ago, this blog comprised weekly "spells" formed of three posts showcasing a concept from my three angles of obsession and fascination. Of course, this wasn't saving the world or necessarily accomplishing anything important--or was it? At least it was some sort of momentum and shape.

Sometimes what looks like a finger-twirling dance is actually a planetary fecundation. I've witnessed conversations where the conversants were actually engaged in a jedi light-saber battle, which you'd only notice if you knew how to look. What looks like a plummet into oblivion might in fact be one erect wing of a beautiful bird, the low point its back, sending your eye running up the other wing. Sometimes the tail does wag the dog, or rather, sometimes if you smile and engage the smile muscles, the parts of your neurochemistry associated with things smileable start to kindle.

This post is my tail attempting to wag my dog.