The Dream of the Volcano is to Release the Rainbow in the Dark Cloud

The Corpus Callosum Chronicles is an email newsletter bridging the gap between imagination and logic through myth, poetry, and memoir. To receive my weekly letters, please subscribe below.

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Dear Readers,

I’m keeping it simple this week, following my instinct to be quiet after a whirlwind passage through rainbows, dragons, Titans, and the moon. I have to say I love the feeling of living on the edge. Although I don’t think of myself as an adrenaline junkie, I would never bungie jump or sky dive, or a chaos creator (I like a neat and tidy environment to create otherwise I get frustrated and confused), in fact I am far more of a chaos creator than I thought. I absolutely love being caught up in a maelstrom of inspiration, am lit up as the spirals quicken, and the feeling of jubilation that pours through me when the insights stream in and reveal why and what they want me to create with them, is the most satisfying thrill I know.

In my past two posts, I’ve shared some revelations gleaned from a three-week ceremony I was in at the time of their writing with Ke’oni Hanalei of Pōhala Hawaiian Botanicals.

Here are links for those who may have missed them:

Dispatch from the Barren Moon

Recovering from Patriarchy

I am thrilled that during the third week of the ceremony, the next evolution of my body of work announced itself! I have wanted to create an online community, or individual mentorship, for quite some time, but the details of what that would look like were not making themselves known. Fortunately, I took the time for my dream to properly gestate, something I have failed at in the past. While I’m not embarrassed by past offerings, the fact that I did not want to continue offering them says something about their legacy, right?

This project is still in gestation, but the baby is kicking—a lot! Not ready to come out, but listening, responding to my song as we begin to dream together. I am not going to share many details yet, out of respect for gestation, and because I don’t yet know them all. I also want to make sure I am sharing with care by creating an infrastructure worthy of the vision (new website coming!), and am respecting the protocols of the lineages who are offering themselves as contributions to this new vessel.

Those lineages include folk tales from my own European ancestral lineage—I will be checking in with each one of them to see if they want to be part of this project—and ike (wisdom) I have learned from Ke’oni Hanalei’s body of work, which is founded in Mū (Lemurian) culture, and goes back 27,000 years to his ancestor, Mahat. Vast cycles of time far beyond the span of yours and my life are coming into play here. I am going to go slow to ensure my body of work is a stream of pure light that won’t be corrupted by urgency and respects those who have come before me. The bolt of lightning may have hit, but I am letting it ground.

The reason that I’m sharing that I have received this vision, is because I’m just in awe of how powerful the ceremony was, and it feels like sharing it is the completion of the last two posts, which were generated from the ceremony with Ke’oni. For those of you who’ve read “Dispatch from the Barren Moon” and “Recovering from Patriarchy,” you’ll be able to see the process of genesis at work, how clarity comes from chaos, and how if you don’t cling to the edge or fall back into the whirlpool and drown, you will be delivered to the wider orbit you’re seeking. For those wanting to participate in the ceremony through a replay, it’s available at the link below:

The Comprehension of Symbols: The Spirt and Mechanics of a Feminine Shift

I will share the name of my vision with you: The Coracle.

Coracles are small, round sealskin boats. They were used in the old days to navigate waterways in the British Isles and Ireland. I like to think those voyagers, my ancestors, when they took to the water, were filed with seal wisdom—the dreams found only in deep currents, a love for sun-warmed rocks, a curiosity that caused them to look above the surface, as well as below.

Celtic lore tells us of selkies, women and men who could take off their sealskins and live as humans. In the end, they always go back to the sea. Even though modern civilization has taken us far away from remembering our piko, our very source, the truth that we are wild will always call us back. We are shapeshifters at our core, our bodies are water contained by skin. We are skin boats.

Thank you for being part of the creation of this vessel. Everyone who reads The Corpus Callosum Chronicles becomes a contributor to my body of work. I appreciate you! If you are not already a subscriber, please consider subscribing through the link below. Paid subscriptions help me sustain myself financially, so if you can afford $7 a month, or $70 for the yearly rate, I’d be so grateful if you upgraded from free. Having said that, I really do appreciate all of you. You have no idea how excited I get when I check my stats and see who has opened my emails!

My final words this evening came to me from the rainbow, the daughter of sun and rain who reveals herself in colors we can see, and hints at those we can’t see yet. Will we ever see them? Or should some things remain sacred and secret always?

For the poetry technicians amongst you, this is a slightly adapted sestina, an old French form.

The Dream of the Volcano is to Release the Rainbow in the Dark Cloud

I knew it was long past time to wake up.
The birds were just barely singing. I’d missed
the daily aria, the uprise of song
from the heart of the dark mountain.
How do birds know when the sun will rise
in the mountain’s shadow? The sun reaches the sea

hours after it rises, pouring downslope to the sea
like lava daring late sleepers to wake up
and walk on it. Be the bird rising
before the sun, the one who hasn’t missed
her chance to join the song
offered back to the heart of the mountain.

What holds us to earth lives beneath the mountain.
I want to remember that song,
not to know my life by what I’ve missed.
I will do what it takes to wake up.
Walk over coals to the sea,
offer my blistered feet to the rising.

Rivers will be my guide in the rising.
They will lead me to the mountain,
and even if I die before I wake up,
I will be remembered by the sea
because I followed what my heart missed
to the source of the song.

And my blood sang, and the song
carried all the memories of the sea
back into the heart of the mountain,
deep enough to anchor our rising.
Offshore, the bell-buoy tolls, wake up.
You have been missed

by the dreaming volcano, and the mist
dispersing the rainbow, rising—
sunlight broken by the sea,
released in song
that stokes the fire in the mountain—
It is time, wake up.

We know the sea by how it falls and rises.
What we miss keeps us from hearing the mountain.
Remember the song—the colors are fading. Wake up.

Kō aloha lā ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light