Reintroducing Walhydra’s Porch: In which Walhydra reconnects with mortal life

Blog banner for Walhydra's Porch

Who is Walhydra?

Walhydra became a storytelling alter-ego for me in the mid-1990s on the Crone Thread, an email listserv of mostly Pagan, mostly women elders, folk who understand, revere, and emulate the crone aspect of the Goddess.

The Crone is that feminine aspect of the Divine which, in the form of a human being past childbearing age, strives on behalf of the race to learn about and teach the terrors and blessings of mortality.  She does

Continue Reading

Further through the porthole

Still recovering from prostate surgery, I began this morning with another distressing incident of extreme urinary urgency. Very frustrating. But then….

I remembered that today is the 22nd anniversary of the deaths at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93. And then I remembered Friday’s earthquake in Morocco and February’s earthquake in Türkiye-Sūriyā (Syria). And then all 2023’s fatal floods, wildfires, and armed conflicts around the world….

No one person can fix all of this suffering; no

Continue Reading

Angry grief

It’s so ridiculous,
+++comes over me suddenly
+++like a storm.

I want to fight with someone,
+++shout at them
+++to give him back.

Intimacy
+++on the order of
+++another husband lost.

Shadow cat, 5/30/2015

Continue Reading

Life without backgrounds or frames: “Time’s Arrow,” by Hiroshi Sugimoto

"Time’s Arrow" (1987), by Hiroshi Sugimoto (seascape: 1980; reliquary fragment: Kamakura Period, 13th century) Gelatin silver print, gilt bronze.

I first saw “Time’s Arrow,” the 1987 photo collage by Hiroshi Sugimoto, as an illustration in the Spring 2018 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly.

The image grabbed me, and I saved it as an image for contemplation.  It has taken me a while to grasp what the image suggests for me.

After a series of difficult personal losses and challenges over the past two months, I set the image as the lock screen for my laptop.  It is the

Continue Reading

Both

We never know.
That morning

I kept my hand
+++on our ailing cat’s belly
+++as he purred.

In communion with him
+++even while
+++grief tore through me.

Some say not to borrow grief
+++before time
+++but to
+++stay in the moment.

Yet

Continue Reading

Site Footer

Verified by MonsterInsights