Gabe Eyrich
Circle17/2/2021 The last time I felt excited about a job interview was in 2003 when, after living as a volunteer in a tent at The Ojai Foundation for some months, I initiated an entry point onto the staff there. Questions in the interview included, but were not limited to, “How do you deal with your anger?” and “How do you get your need for alone time met?” I felt excited about the practice of hiring people based on who they were intrinsically (not necessarily by pedigree or credential) and on how well they seemed to know themselves.
The Ojai Foundation was a place, in 2003, where I felt at home and recognized. I felt stimulated intellectually by the minds there and also spiritually by the mysteries that lived alongside those minds. Nature was the container for it all. Lush, green, and everywhere. I suppose it was a school, of sorts. A boundless one. I spent a great deal of time in stone circles on that land. I learned from many teachers about what the circle could be, could mean, could teach, could hold. I learned the way of council, speaking and listening from the heart. I learned what it meant to live that way -- the way of the heart, the way of nothing wasted. I also learned what it looked like to teach it, yet not live it fully. Everything has a shadow, after all. I still keep watch for that one in particular. Here, in our small, communal courtyard in the desert, I continue to live the way of council. I continue to spend a great deal of time in stone circles, even on snowy mornings like this.
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Ava9/11/2020 ,Waiting. I can’t work like this. I desire to be free.
Two hundred desert miles from me the dance is beginning, in her. Or him, sweet no matter which. Her profile says, “Looking for friendship and love.” She is a man born female, becoming a woman, with blue sheets on her bed, the only color to interrupt the dull light of her husband’s beige taste. Until I arrive. I light the room on fire with my presence, my free spirit, unencumbered. Blue feelings ooze from her immaculate, sterile home. Is she permitted to dance here? Is love allowed? Her husband wants a man, a sweet gay flower, a man more sweet than a ripe persimmon. Light flickers on the tip of Ava’s tongue, a love I whine for, like one of Rumi’s love dogs. She is free to be male or female, sweet or fierce, to dance or to spar. Oh, but Ava, please don’t make my heart blue. Cupid’s arrow reached me lifetimes ago. The blue cosmos told stories of your mouths, both sweet. It showed me the dance of Baryshnikov, a light you carry in your boyishly scarred torso free of the weight of breasts. I love reciting verse for you. I begin again with Rumi, “I would love to kiss you.” Shyly you lower your eyes. The blue light of the city glows where you stand, asking, “Are you free to spend the night with me?” Sweet miracle! Gasp! Breathe! Temper yourself, dear. Rose light enters our company. We dance together, hands like falling water finding their dance within a dance within a dance. Love, I don’t know, is it? This is blue light looking into the eyes of light blue, and not running away. Sweet, wet, white shower of a woman, you set me free. Ava, you dawn in me like morning light and dance in me like angels. Free love? Is it possible? Can a being so bold, so blue as you be, on me, sweet? Sestina Spring 2016 ENM = Ethical Non-Monogamy becoming nobody19/10/2020 ![]() Excerpt: If everything in the land body has a purpose, like the wolf or the juniper, then what is ours — our human purpose — collectively, as a species? Leopold dichotomizes between the land body and the human body, yet he also speaks of ecology and the relationships of all things in the context of a system. For instance, of what use is it that humans go into nature to excavate our own psyches? We do it. We are unique in our ability to do it. How does that contribute to the ecological whole? Leopold also says that, “Man kills what he loves,” and that, “An ecologist lives alone in a world of wounds.” Gentle12/9/2020 Excerpt:
My body has been broken, also my heart. It is helpful to know that this is the way of it. This is how the apricot tree blooms: by breaking open the seed. This is how she remembers her own inherent self-worth; this is how she remembers to take the risk of blooming again. This doesn’t mean that life becomes easier; it means that life is lived with greater courage. Story originally published in snapdragon: a journal of art and healing, spring 2020, issue 6.1: vibrant | vision. https://www.snapdragonjournal.com/ Personal Statement6/3/2020 Mary Poppins29/12/2019 Excerpt:
The intention of the writing has been to explore shame, femaleness, reproduction, sex, the body. A specific goal within the intention has been to explore, to excavate, to say out loud the choice to make the female self, the female body a priority, to decide when and under what circumstances to allow another life to inhabit it. Patriarchal ideology has decided for the female body that it is a “host” for life and not, in itself, a life. And, further, that it, the female body, can be a source for pleasure, but that its pleasure is derivative. Gabe EyrichI use creative non-fiction, autobiographical fiction, and poetry to communicate, connect, and understand. Archives
February 2021
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