“A.K. Reader” contains archival essays that I decide are still of value. I also archive astrology essays, but under a separate page.

The Essay Form

The word “essay” comes from the French essayer: “to try or attempt” (to understand). Even when seemingly surefooted and clear, my writings are but posits in infinity.

Personal Origins

I have been writing a great deal of the time since 1985. That was when my unusually rapid nervous system finally synchronized with innovations in technology so that thoughts could fly through my fingers onto the screen — and the page. Before then, my thoughts would vanish before I could finish writing or typing. So, while I’m at heart a Luddite, I’m also immensely grateful for computer technology.

What got me started was a phone call from a man whose Apple IIe I had seen in San Francisco while visiting there as a consulting astrologer. He was getting a new computer. Would I like to purchase his old one? The very idea terrified me. I am not a computer geek, even now, and certainly wasn’t then.

When it arrived, I broke down crying. How would I ever learn how to do work on a “computer”? No one I knew had one. I didn’t even know how to set it up.

I resolved to spend one hour per day, no more, so that I wouldn’t get overwhelmed. During that hour I would dedicate myself to learning this new technology.

Within one month I was setting up clients’ astrological charts with a computer program (so much better than doing all of them, including all the math, by hand!).

And within that same month I was writing my first long piece, an autobiography of my first 30 years (the first Saturn cycle). A Soul’s Journey is an attempt to show how the soul, through gentle and not so gentle nudges over time, gradually bends the personality to its will. It was a watershed time, writing that manuscript, which I framed up using Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and during which I focused, year after year in turn, on unearthing memories and the widening circles of meaning that strung them together. Someday I will publish it, as a printed book. Perhaps I’ll put up parts of it, as pdfs, here. I have yet to see another autobiography with that kind of focus.

Then I started to write astrological essays. And have written hundreds of them, the earliest ones published in a wonderful little magazine, Welcome to Planet Earth, now defunct. Others I published in a “Celestial Navigations” newsletter that I sent out to clients and other interested people once per month. I used to have a website with that name. All of my astrological essays were archived there. Something happened to it that I still don’t understand. . . .

In the early and mid-’90s, a few of my astrological essays were published abroad in a small magazine in England; one was translated into Spanish for a magazine in Spain. Another of these pieces ended up in an anthology dedicated to pioneer astrologer Dane Rudyhar.

Note: I feature the astrology essays on another page.

From 1993 through 2012 I was a columnist in SageWoman Magazine.

Many other essays were published in one of the three alternative magazines that I’ve founded and served as editor: OpenSpace magazine, a community magazine for my home town back in Twin Falls, Idaho (1976-1978), Heartland, a peace activist magazine for the tri-state area of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana (1981-83) and Crone Chronicles: A Journal of Conscious Aging (1989-2001). This last started as a tiny newsletter that grew into a national niche publication that was featured on Good Morning America and received several Small Press award nominations from Utne Reader. (At the request of the publisher, Anne Niven, I also served as founding editor and for awhile, columnist in its successor Crone Magazine from 2007 through 2012).

That leaves the rest of the essays, and that means most of them! Some I’ve collected into bound volumes, for my eyes only — so far.

I published one collection through my own press, Tendre Press, and called it: This Vast Being: A Voyage through Grief and Exaltation (2007). Awarded a “Best Book” winner by U.S.A. Book News in the category of “spirituality,”  this volume was composed of journal entries during the first year of my grieving process after the death of my polyglot, polymath, shaman, trickster husband Jeffrey Joel. TVB was my way of memorializing this potent 12-year segment of my long life.

My main problem as a writer is that I don’t like to stop writing! So the sloggy job of actually turning around to nurture something that I’ve already written into some kind of physical form for the public has been difficult. Given my quicksilver, eccentric nature, I’m not inclined to seek an outside publisher, and both times that others contacted me seeking to publish my work ended up failures.

One was the then-publisher of Parabola magazine, who asked me to write the biography of a just-deceased woman whom I had interviewed in Crone Chronicles. When I turned in the completed manuscript a year later, he excitedly called to tell me it was “a tour de force.” Two weeks later, he called again to say that his board wanted me to recast it without an astrological framework. I declined.

The other “failure” occurred when a literary agent contacted me, having seen some of my astrological essays in “Welcome to Planet Earth” — but when I sent him the manuscript we agreed on I waited, for years, while he made one excuse after another as to why he hadn’t actually sent it off — to even one publisher!

I do much better as an independent agent. Which is why I established Tendre Press to publish This Vast Being, and will do so again.

Meanwhile, writing this blog has been a joy. Computer and internet technology and my own seventy-four years of full-on living have finally converged in a way that is both easy and immensely satisfying. My job has always been to open space by observing, integrating and sharing links between Above and Below, and exopermaculture has been perfect as both instrument and avenue for me to do it. I speak, here and now, about what’s going on, both inside and outside, at all levels. The writing is the sharing, without delay.

As Gertrude Stein once said, “I write for myself and one other stranger.” Are you one?

So I put some of my old pieces on this blog, from time to time. The first one I posted on December 13, 2012:

HUMAN FEAR OF THE BEAR: A Fable for These Times (sometime in the ’80s)

Otherwise, the essays are not in order! Here’s another one, a true story.

A CONSPIRACY OF ANIMALS (again, in the ’80s)

Much to my surprise, a steady procession of wild animals during my daily walk disturbed my bad mood to the point where I had to just give in and love the day.

MEETING SEKHMET (1993)

Also a true story, from a 1993 journey to Egypt. First published in Crone Chronicles, Galina Krasskova collected it into her 2012 anthology, When the Lion Roars: A Devotional to the Egyptian Goddess Sekhmet.

ENTROPY AND THE CRONE (1991): The Physics and Metaphysics of Evolving Systems (1991)

This was a free-wheeling three-way discussion that still leaves me both baffled and fascinated. Never did publish it. Too bad!

SO THE SOUL MAY SHINE THROUGH (1997) 

Published in Crone Chronicles, #17, 1997, this long, philosophical and deeply personal essay chronicles my process of moving through three intensely difficult choices and their aftermath.

TO BE ONE WITH THE RIVER (1990) 

Published in Crone Chronicles, Spring 1990, this essay explores the dynamics within a tiny human tribe of former strangers floating for three weeks shoulder to shoulder in rubber rafts down the glorious and forbidding Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

A DISCOURSE ON LOVE (2007).

If I never write another essay, this one stands alone as the history of my evolutionary journey through life. Unpublished. Not very many people can read it. “This essay is driven by an effort to understand and describe the door that can open when we move through the bitterness that attends our discovery of the heart’s terrible longing.”

HOW I STOPPED SMOKING (for what it’s worth) (2011).

This essay describes probably the most important juncture in my life up until that point, and still stands as the moment of which I am most proud! A shortened version of it was published in Branches Magazine. Excerpt: “At the heart of my tale is the heartening news that there do seem to be moments when light suddenly, inexplicably, cracks through the thick walls of our old, stuck habit patterns. These moments of grace feel miraculous, undeserved; and yet, when we look back, we recognize that we have been, consciously or not, preparing ourselves all along.”

WAKING UP DURING INSOMNIA (2010)

Published in Sagewoman Magazine. Excerpt: “As a long-time “awareness practitioner,” within the past year I’ve developed the capacity to actually notice, i.e., consciously witness, my mental and/or physical state during or immediately following the moment when I snap awake at night.”

WHAT MATTERS: A Meditation on the Aging Process (1996)

THE CRONE CHRONICLES EXPERIMENT 1989-2001

Shown here as a pdf in its Crone Magazine format, this describes my herstory with especially Crone Chronicles, and to a lesser extent Crone Magazine. How to excavate an archetype that has been buried and/or ridiculed for 2000 years? That was the challenge we faced. This essay also tells why and how I left all things Crone behind me. Not that the archetype of Crone is no longer of value to me . . . But, I’ve moved on!

ORIGINAL SIN AS ORIGINAL BLESSING (2004)

Excerpt: “Only a few months past the first anniversary of my husband Jeff Joel’s death, I abruptly fell into a year-long karmic relationship with a man whose dominating personality mirrored my own. Unlike my relationship with Jeff, the connection with Vince was sexually magnetic; however, I was forced to learn that Vince’s values and ethics were not compatible with mine. This essay was written about half-way through that period of mutual confusion and suffering.”

How We Women “Process” Our Experience (1995)

Beginning with a decidedly personal story, I pay attention to the left/right brain manner in which women create widening rings of meaning from the messy flow of experience.

“During my walks, I also ask for a sign from the universe. (1999)

A dolphin speaks to me in her own language. One of the magical stories about my encounters with wild animals.

Building the Snow Castle (1994)

A chance childhood project seeds a lifetime of experiments.

When Is Discipline only Denial (1989)[Could also be in the astrology section: Saturn]

I learn to discern the difference when I reach a blockage in my new practice of yoga.

The REAL Power of the Press (1996)

What would happen if, instead of the “olds” we focused on the REAL (good) news?

Again, exactly as I step upon the wall — a tale of synchronicity (1999)

Dolphin appeared, and greeted me, three times, on three successive days.

The healing of the female and the male must begin within me (1997)

A personal story, of (my) ambition, pride, and need for control, transforms into mutual catharsis.

Opening to the Space Within (1999)

“The harmony of the spheres lies within me, as I sit, tail rooted into rock, linking the Heavens and our Earth.”

Is the Lady A Tyger (1991)

On the energetic Roots of the Phenomenon of War

CENTERING: Beyond the Path of Polarity (1990)

“I create my own reality. In order to change that reality, I must first change my mind, by enlarging my vision. I want to begin to see the epistemological mechanism of projection and its hostile repercussions in behavior from a more mathematical or visual point of view.”

THIS FROZEN MALE RAGE WITHIN US ALL (1989)

Detailed personal story about how, in my 40s, I was attempting to “take back my projections.”

REWORKING MEMORY, INVOKING CRONE (1993)

“Bit by bit, I let go of interpretation, let go of thoughts about things and let the “things” memory has been based on, speak. Speak of themselves and how they have been ignored, or skewed in the interests of constructing fences which limit and define . . . In reworking memory, the very basis of my life alters. As if memory were a kaleidescope, where each slight shift in perspective shatters the old pattern, restructures it. What had been highlighted before, recedes; what had been ignored, now looms large. The result is an entirely new gestalt, a reconfiguration of the past, a fuller foundation for the future.”

“Well? Are you coming?” (1998)

This essay I published under another name on February 18, 2018,, with an introduction. Concerns my “Teutonic” ancestry, and dreams of the Divine, Immortal Child.

Kathryn (1993)

Multidimensional events surrounded the death of my spiritual grandmother and mentor.

On the Road with THIS VAST BEING (2007)

Ten weeks, nearly 10,000 miles, 28 workshops on Grief, Loss, and how we personally process them. Plus several very dangerous experiences! [See the pdf as an E-Book]

A Metaphysical Approach to Addiction (1987)

A talk given to the Psychological Association of Wyoming, wherein I discuss the creation of meaning through conscious experience of various lengths of cycles. Unconscious experience of the same can turn into “addiction.”

Introduction, MY SECRET LIFE: Ten Tools for Transformation (1997)

My way of conducting an “examined life.” Requires time, energy, commitment, and focus, but no money! [See under “E-Books” for the entire book]

To Summon the Goddess (1991)

Agonized reflections on what we now call “the first Gulf War.”

HEARING VOICES (2007)

In which I tell, in detail, and in context, the herstory of my own welcomed clairaudience.

How Our Way of Organizing Experience Governs Our Attitudes towards One Another (2005)

Detailing how the bifurcated methodology of the “scientific approach” to reality ensures division: from our own bodies, from each other, and from Earth. What we need to do to change that.

A Meditation on My Mother (2007)

How my relationship with “Lady Renee” kept evolving, even beyond her death.

A Meditation on My Husband’s Mother (2001)

Sad notes on an unfulfilled life.

What Is Prayer? (2004)

In which I detail an evolutionary process within myself regarding my relationship with “the divine.”

Magic and Politics (1998

What is the difference between them? And why does it matter? I investigate this question via the rubric of the polarity: scarcity vs abundance.

The Enchantment of Our Suffering (2005)

Conscious processing of painful experiences leads to new discoveries.

I stand at the intersection between visible and invisible worlds (2009)

How the mysterious loss and reappearance of two check books reframed my entire understanding of life on earth.

For me, Simplicity is the backdrop to Freedom, which itself, continues to evolve (2005)

I identify three developmental stages, so far . . .

“We were Adam and Eve, partners in a new myth” — until we weren’t.” (2002)

The title speaks for itself! An early soul-jolting and expanding experience teaches me the ways of both love and impermanence.

World Peace Begins Within Me (2001)

Written in response to the theme “Peace and Power”, Sagewoman magazine, I realized this fact when I woke up to recognize myself as a “violent peace activist.”

Has “Celebrating Diversity” (1996) devolved into “Identity Politics”? (2018)

Wrestling with an issue that I consider a growing cultural affliction, its beautiful linguistic roots having been co-opted on multiple levels, to the point where now, in 2018, we hardly recognize the beauty of the heartfelt acceptance that originally generated this now hackneyed, cynical phrase.

ANGELS & GUARDIANS I have known (1997)

This essay speaks for itself. Various forms of angels and guardians that I’m sure others’ have experienced as well, though very few of us pause to realize it, and/or to notice the expansion of world-view that taking them as “real” entails!

Savoring the Synchronicities (1993)

A Crone Chronicles editorial wherein I detail how my dreams prefigure the cover and other art turned in for that “Death and Rebirth” edition of the magazine. 

Harmonic Emergence (1987)

My personal experience of the world’s first global meditation, “Harmonic Convergence,” on one memorable August weekend, 1987, during which I received a sudden message from a voice deep within: “YOU MUST CLEAR P YOUR PERSONAL KARMA BY THE END OF THE YEAR.”

I wish people would ask, “Why were you unable to mother your own children?” (1996)

This story is long, and started when I was nine months old, a recognition that I came to when I was 40 years old, and long estranged from my children. From that time on, the healing began.

“This Piece Began . . .” (1972)

A very early attempt to describe the profound mutation that I underwent in my mid- to late twenties.

The Amaryllis Bud (2004)

An essay written during my grieving process that became the second-to-last chapter of the book, This Vast Being: A Voyage through Grief and Exaltation.

OpenSpace Is A Verb (2017)

On the origins of a magazine I started back in 1978.

Fundamentalism and The Soul (2004)

 

Conversations with a Dying Crone (2007)

 

The Universe Is Pregnant with Seeds (2000)

 

Our Magic Wand (1995)

 

Healing (from universal corruption) begins within me (2018)

 

The Grandmothers’ Dance (1986)

Entropy and the Crone (1991)

 

A Whale of A Story (1988)

 

The REAL Power of the Press (1991)

 

Coyote Women, Softly Snoring (1995)

 

INVOKING THE MUSE . . . And finding Synchronicity (1999)

 

Is There A Developmental Stage Beyond Crone? YES! (2011)

 

Our Millennial Moment (Spring 2000) — and NOW, 20 years later (2020)

I am struck by how what began as a vision of human unity is, 20 years later, manifesting as FEAR (of the coronavirus).

Touchdown to the Stars (Winter 2000-01)

My own herstory illustrates one way of moving down from the mind into the body, and therein accessing the universe.