DauphineDreams: Writings About the Travels of Life

In 2005, I created this blog as a real time journal of my post-Katrina experience and have continued it to this day. The mini-essays, observations and little bits of "flash nonfiction" published here now span several continents and almost a decade of my life. I hope you enjoy them! Note: The entries are copyrighted and cannot be republished either in print or electronically without the written permission of the author.

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Location: Taos, New Mexico, United States

Wednesday, September 24, 2014


How I Invite the Divine Masculine In
(In response to a question and a meadow meditation)
Vista Verde Retreat Fall Equinox Women’s Gathering
Carson, NM






With the clouds
In my heart
With forgiveness
Through S’s loving eyes
In receiving abundance
When I swim
When I listen to a country song
When I stand up straight
When I embrace
When I yell
Yippee!

When I am a warrior.

When I look to the mountains
And see my brothers
Etched in stone cliffs
Standing sentinel
And I with them
Charge!
Into battle
Red ruby fierceness
In the hawk’s eye
In the coyote’s yelp
In the announcement of morning
In a call of a people
In surrendering to a tear
In a smile
In a laugh
In a moment.

I receive the divine masculine
When I know through and through
“Balls to bone”
That I am worthy
I am the sparkle
I am the coyote
I am the giver
I am the receiver
I am the eye
I am the cloud
I am the universe
I am it all.

Nikki Lyn Pugh 9/22/14

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Mutant Spider Crabby Things

Well, I have a new lease (is it lease or leash? I never know) on life here. As of this Monday I officially have a writing space that I am actually renting for real money. I have regular hours for this space that I have kept for three whole days so far and all this is...well, totally exciting and very scary at the same time.

But alas an office does not prevent the critical, editing, monitoring judging self (you know that one, for a lot of us it sounds like our moms. For others it has a strong resemblance to Grandma Clampit of the Beverly Hillbillies) to chime right in. And if that doesn't work, then that voice will be as clever and manipulative as a creepy-crawly. A spider in fact, one of those crawl across the floor and into your pant leg before you even know what hit you kinds...or, in the case of myself the other day, a mutant spider-crab that had busted loose from government-sponsored genetic engineering labs on the other side of the country:

The facebook post said they were genetically-modified super-mutant spider-crab things and so I completely believed it for about 2 minutes, which was enough time in my early morning fuzziness to blast off a facebook post with a share of the mutant spider pics and the appropriate comment "WTF!." About one minute later I had a curt post back from someone I didn't recognize stating "These are not spiders and that is not Moussouri."  By that point, the coffee had kicked in and I sat there with a blank look on my face and thinking to myself WTF? What just happened? Why did I post that? Why did that freak me out so much? And why...even as my conscious brain wrapped itself around the strong possibility that the whole thing was indeed a hoax..was it so hard to concentrate during the last ten minutes of my writing session yesterday morning because of the thought of crabby-legged big-pinchered scaley spidery things busting into the room and clickety clacking across the floor with a bulls eye aim for my big toe. My God, I suddenly thought, my toe is not safe any longer here on the cool brick of this writing space that I have rented each month with part of my grocery money. My little sacred space is being invaded by genetically altered crustatoid arachnids. They are coming from the ceiling with their kelp-like webbing and busting down the door and tourists walking by are being eaten alive by them like the background shots of some B-grade zombie movie. And I cant stop the throbbing in my toe where the spider-crab thing bit it and suddenly I have to open the door and stare down the bland street in the fogginess of last night's storm and I realize...

I just spent ten minutes OCDing about something totally irrational. I laughed. Out loud because this is the extent that my procrastinating self will go to avoid the "torture" (according to that self) of writing.

Ah, Clampit voice, you can't hide from me. And you can disguise yourself as a toe-biting spider-crab thing either to scare me away from the keyboard and the pen. I have a writing space now and I'm on to you... you dusty, pitiful, red-marker sorry excuse for an inner critic. Cuz guess what? Those spider-crabby things were just all in my mind.