Story Paths

Today is my birthday, a day of celebrating. I'm grateful for storytellers, for my family and friends, for land, for creativity, for learning both easeful and hard, for deep thought and silliness, for songand much more. Here is an audio landscape, with found-sounds and spoken-word telephone calls. My hope is this evokes curiosity in the daily doings in your own life...the small things that are no small wonder.


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Into Dark Solstice - A Poem
We have walked down this way before.
Along trails hooved by deer’s morphing ancestors,
where light-loving leaves give way to moist stone.

We crossed these lands an orbit ago,
the constellations just a little different,
herding us into this shadow valley
where day’s inbreath grows short, and nights outbreath long,
where old calendars exhale completely,
dissolving into dream around us.

A valley of deepest shadow and reverence for light,
when the bright one with whom we brew time is furthest from us,
our fingertips barely brushing across the expanse.

But now, let us pause in this descent,
though we may already yearn to be passing through the valley
and climbing the far slope
and our fingertips to be clasping the bright one’s,
then our palms
and on into union.

Now, let us make a hearth here on this slope,
circle round and share glimpses into the nests of our travel pouches
into dust-cloaked treasures
given, gleamed, borrowed, birthed.

From across oceans, home grown,
from across constellations, sprouted in soil.

As dust riding these treasures gives way to their tastes,
may the biome of our heart-minds find creatures there
to wriggle and enrich us,
tickle our consciousness.

A pause, a breath,
then a passing round of the embers who heard all this.

For each a gentle red pulse.
For each a lantern.

May we then tread down into the valley
to join other circles,
feel other embers and dusty treasures,
and then to be in silence
and let the embers
go out.


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Here we are.
You. Me. I in my body, you in yours, they in theirs.
I with my personality, upbringing, influences, opinions. You with yours, they with theirs.
Yet here are ways we are more than ourselves. We overlap not only with each other, but with other species, and those in other times, and more.
Wandering time and place, ancestry and other lives, from love’s dissolving of boundaries to the intelligence of species, here are explorations of of ways we are vast.
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I was cast out from my home. Or maybe I ran away.
To dry lands. I’m hungry. I need to become something more, to shed a part of me that seemed intrinsic.
And the waters are rising.
A slow, meditative and moody song.Lyrics: I ran from all l've known
to a dry land where now
seeking, seeking, seeking home

Fortnights passed aplenty, & was living hungry
learning from the serpents who hunted with the moon.
One vast & star-pierced midnight, a man emerged from darkness
Said ‘These lands you love shall leave us soon.’

He told me, ‘Floods they will course all across these creatures
These creatures know it rightly, see them climbing from the sands
He said ‘I dwell in stony ridges, high above the waters.
Come dwell with me as we wait for land.’

One dawn we were together, above the flooded badlands
He said, ‘Watch the sun trail crossing the waters down below.’
Long I sat there seeking, slowly growing patient
’Til I had nowhere else to go.

Stone to gold & gold to sky
Bones broke & scattered, once more & again
Stars who circle still long after they die
Guides guide still once they are slain

Floods seeped downward & flowed on to the ocean
Stone arounds on the ground was all I could see
The old man passed… & plenty joined me with his passing
All he lived now lives in me.

Now walk across these badlands, still learning from the serpents
finding forlorn singers, cast out from their homes
by instigating elders, wise as troubled waters
I come to them in their time alone.

I sing to them from heaven, deep within the waters
I sing to them as air deep within the stone
with a voice of slither serpents, wise as desert daughters,
where I wander is where I'm home.
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It’s time to die, old man. Past time.
You’ve fucked things up. I don’t even want to see you.
Damn, and you’re afraid. What dignity will you be able to die with?
Alright, old man, here’s a song to help.Subscribe & Support
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe