I've been very drawn to roses this week.

First, I was reminded of that dream which I love but don't completely understand. It was an 'old' dream - one that I'd recorded, waking from sleep in the early morning, and lost in the turning of pages and the rush of living. But a few days ago, it had caught my attention - so strongly that I'd felt compelled to write a post about it even though I don't funny understand it.

Rose petals. Roses.

Then, two days ago at Whole Foods, I found myself standing before a little demo table where a new skin care line was being sampled. No one was there to offer me a sample so I picked up a bottle of the organically-sourced, rose-scented cleanser, squeezed out a generous dollop on the palm of my hand and began luxuriously spreading it over my cheeks and forehead. (I never do things like this.) With one whiff, I was transported, surrounded by roses.

I had to have it - and I purchased a little kit of sample jars - the cleanser, a serum oil, a toner and silky cream - and carried them back, along with my kale and free-range eggs, to my mother's apartment where I'm holed up for a writing retreat.

I hadn't planned this retreat. Like the scent of roses at Whole Foods, it came upon me suddenly - stopping me in the middle of my life, interrupting an everyday conversation with my husband about money and kids and weekend plans with a sudden, out-of-nowhere blurt:  "I could write my whole book now if I wrote it backward." The words just popped out of me. Pre-thought. Pre-formed. And then, "Once I write it backward, I'll... have it. And I can rewrite it again from the beginning."

I was more surprised than my husband by this. (Actually, he wasn't surprised at all - this sort of random verbalization of floating thought isn't unusual for me. What WAS unusual was the way that it stuck, the way that it felt - inviting and pregnant and... real. it felt like guidance.I started packing immediately

.I've been here since Saturday afternoon and, after pulling apart four years of journals and revisions and putting all of this carefully into piles, I am just now, on Thursday morning, finally dropping into the deep process part of the writing:

The taking apart and putting back together of puzzle pieces. The swimming around in an ocean of concepts and possibility. The part where my work dissolves to particles - grains of sand which shift from one pile (one story) to another. The part where, as it dissolves, I dissolve, too.

Last night, I was scheduled to teach a class. My students deep dive WITH me - as I swim around, trying to make sense for them of the way that I see and understand the world. We do this so that they, budding alchemists all, can swim around in their own lives and draw up their own deep wisdom.

Just before last night's LAB call, I came upon a scrap where I'd scribbled another dream fragment:  Eat the rose, all of it; at least the petals and if you eat the heart center, things will move faster.What does THAT mean? I wondered, pondering the words from all the angles: roses as a symbol, of Mary, of the divine feminine, of love at its most pure. And of course, as a symbol, for me, of guidance.

I thought of the last time - the first time - the powerful scent of roses had wafted into my awareness from out of the blue. A moment when, while sitting in meditation class, my heart cracked open and tears streaming down my cheeks, I was enveloped in a cloud of rose fragrance and wave after wave of love.

I set the little scrap beside me as I jumped into last night's LAB call and, as my attention kept returning to it, I found myself weaving it into our meditation.

This morning, as I was deciding whether to pack up my laundry and head home for the weekend (and return here next week) what should I find in a box of my mother's belongings but culinary rose buds - a middle eastern delicacy which she must have purchased years ago - before her heart surgery sidelined her from enjoying this sort of thing.

I opened the plastic pouch and poured a handful of dried rosebuds into a pan, added water and boiled up a red infusion.

I am sitting here with it - with all of this. Here in my mother's kitchen, surrounded by the scent of roses. having a conversation with my heart (and perhaps, hers) and this presence which seems to have returned, to help me finish my book about love.