Stones: A Prose Poem

The lake is misty stormy today, the colour of chilled green glass, each wave dashing itself on the rocks, bosom first. Under my feet thousands of stones slept to the sound of the pounding surf. I am amazed that I’ve lived this long without realizing that there are no two stones alike. And as much as I wanted to stand and gawk at the watery drama breaking in front me – such noise! so much power! – I could not tear my eyes from the hills and valleys of stones around me, the colours, the shapes, striated, speckled, smooth ones, rough ones, sparkly ones, muted ones, they must be offerings made by the water to the earth, millennia upon millennia, until they finally turned into sand.

Suddenly I come upon a half circle that someone had made from stone, a low wall 2-stone high hidden behind a clump of bush but facing the water, and several stones within the half circle that looked as if they were chosen with special care, each one distinctly different to the rest. I realized then that this is an altar, and time fell away for the moment that I stood there, for I know that we have been making stone altars for as long as we have been on this planet, that whenever we see stones, we are compelled, even the smallest of children, as if by the redness of our blood to erect an altar, a cairn, a monument, a temple, a sacred circle, and in these heaps of stones piled by human hands and human hearts, we answer the call of the mighty surf that said, “I am here, where you come from”; to which we reply, through this geometry of stones, “We are yours, we belong to you.” And we are comforted, small and evanescent as we are, that we are never alone, never far from home.

This, is the covenant that we memorialize, each time we make a stone offering.

As I crested another small hill of the stony beach I see another testament of our connection to the gods, this one circles within circles of stones in the sand, as open as the last one was clandestine, and I smiled to this deep remembrance we have in stones. I remember now too, the dream I had this morning of descending huge stone steps, and it breaks me wide open to know, that the steps I am taking are ancient ones.

Carson McCullers, My Shadow

In the last couple of days I’ve become quite intrigued by Carson McCullers all of a sudden, never having read anything by her. I don’t even remember what brought her to my mind this time around, though hers is a frequently dropped name, no less so since Oprah put “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” on her book club list. So it could very well be that I am picking up on it from the collective unconscious, but it can only be so if something in me is resonating to it, to her. It just so happens that we decided to check out the twice-renovated Riverdale branch of the library yesterday afternoon, and there it was, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, in the paperback fiction section. I took my cue then and borrowed it, but I didn’t really look at it until this morning.

I am sitting with it beside me on the sofa now, and finding it difficult to look anywhere else. A young woman in a black and white photo is featured on the cover, her eyes direct on the camera. She is plain, with a simple cut to her straight hair, her face still child-like. But it is her eyes, the beseeching sadness and tragedy in them that makes you take a step closer, even in spite of yourself, and dare yourself to look deeper into the abyss you know to be beneath those two small pools on the surface. I think, this is what quiet longing looks like. I can now put a face to the aching longing I’ve felt before. I read on the back cover that this is her, Carson McCullers. I wonder if she had any idea how much she had inside of her at that time (the photo was taken when she was 29), and if the same compelling force was behind the early bloom of her first novel, published to acclaim when she was only 23. Had she known she would die young then?

But it isn’t the sadness or the loneliness or the longing that shook me to the core; it is the depth that I cannot see nor touch, that is so inviting, beckoning like a siren at sea, to submit myself to the bottomless despair of her soul. Had I known this kind of despair in some other lifetime, that its call becomes incessant at times in this life? I have the feeling most of it still lurks in my shadow this day, and it is the right time now to go in.

3 Days in the Fall

Yellow Days

On this golden day of autumn
life is explosive with colours
and smiles are mellow.
All along my 3km walk there was
a furtive kind of bustle, in the ducks
circling in the coves, the few bees
lingering to see who last the longest,
the fisherfolk casting lines of hope
in the harbour, even the winds
seemed to aim for the underside
of leaves, hastening
to send them to their fate.

Or, perhaps
it is just the colour of my nature
that I saw out of, the rushing,
flashing chrome yellow of my compulsion
to take everything in, and never
miss a thing. Is there

a difference between zest for life
and greed for life?

On the outside, chrome yellow
and mellow yellow
look the same.
___________

Charles

You told me you could sew
that your dad was a tailor
he taught you how to
tack, and baste, and never be
without a set of skills for
a rainy day, with mouths
to feed, family hanging
off your belt.

I thought we had a master tailor
amongst us then
and felt hopeful for all
the loose buttons and fallen hems
years in my closet.

But you only laughed

sailed on out the door like a comet
trailing twinkling dust
the child who only wanted
to be a child.
___________

Reading “Soft Hay Will Catch You: Poems by Young People”, compiled by Sandford Lyne, and poem after poem, I am blown away. It isn’t just the beauty, it’s not the innocence. As adults we expect those things of children. In fact it’s the opposite. It’s the maturity of an astoundingly wisdom that came through these voices, at once ancient, ageless, and as familiar to me as my own childhood, no matter the subject.

What I feel is pathos, for a time when it was still safe and possible to have feelings such as these of a child, before door after door closed behind me, and the only light was always up ahead. Reading these words from the hearts and souls of children has stopped me in my tracks, made me turn around and look down the long dark corridor from which I’ve come. It’s possible and perhaps safe too, to go back into those times abandoned, now that I’m no longer afraid of the dark.


Sunday, October 17, 2010

Just read a blurb on “Gifted”, a coming-of-age novel by Nikita Lalwani, about a young India girl of an immigrant family who is a gifted mathematician, and her family poured everything into her academic development, sacrificing also her emotional life. I thought, this is my story, in a less dramatic telling (I was one of a small group of ‘gifted’ students in highschool, and my family didn’t put everything into my ‘making’, but definitely that was the direction of the tidal wave pushing behind me). So perhaps this is just a theme of an immigrant story, one amongst many. But it was a pebble moment for me – as if a pebble had been thrown into the little pool that is my consciousness – and I am feeling the rippling resonance still…

What’s resonating is the regret. Regret that the girl must’ve felt when she grew up and realized what had been lost. Maybe she was quicker than I and recognized the symptoms before she grew up, I’ve not read the book, but whenever it was and however long it took, that moment would eventually have come, on the wake of that wave, so much bigger than the young girl, carrying the force of countless generations of desperate hopes and dying dreams… Could she, could I, have withstood the power of that collective will? Perhaps if I had had more of a spiritual foundation… anyway, it took me a few more years to derail from that family fate, ironically it was my failure at giftedness that saved me, but the rippling effect from the tempest that erupted lasted for decades and I was so lost from being tossed about, I feel a bit dizzy even remembering all of that now… perhaps it was no less dramatic than the novel after all, and I am truly a daughter of Neptune…
____________

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Finally slept, after reading a little fantansy novel (Juniper) and watching “Ponyo”, an animated children’s film by Miyazaki, I was able to sleep as normal. Perhaps my mind really was over-stimulated, from reading a couple of good books that got me pretty thrilled, “Making the Gods Work for You” and “Healing Mind, Healing Body”. It was one too many at a time… Even though I’ve asked to be empty, I’m still hooked on finding and filling up on new brain candy, however much it resonated with the deeper part of me. Instead of deepened into the learning once I’ve found it, I gobbled it up and kept gobbling, as is my life-long habit. The excitement only brings more hunger: If I can find this here, there must be more to be found – and off I go, the insatiable little Seven.

I am addicted to pleasure, which is at the bottom of all addictions. But unlike most addictions to alcohol or drugs or sex or love or gambling, my choice of pleasure (and poison) is, and has to be changeable. In fact, it is change itself. I am addicted to the pleasure of the new and novel and exciting, particularly of the mental kind but not exclusively so. I know now that it is a major theme in my life and one that I am to spend my life deepening into and transforming for a higher purpose. It’s just that it was confusing there for a while because it seemed paradoxical that I needed to change my need for change, and I also had to get over my narcissistic pleasure of thinking that I am somewhat superior because I already love change (while the unwashed masses are afraid and can’t change), and that I am un-addictable. It’s not easy to see your own shadown until you’ve stopped moving for a while… Our greatest light also creates our greatest shadow…

This is, of course, yet another turn on the healing spiral of my journey, the subject being one I’ve visited and revisited before, and will visit again, though each time with new insight and wisdom. (See? Not all things new are bad for me, just as long as I do not mindlessly stuff my mind with it!)

Neptunian Healing

As I was drifting off last night I noticed a tiny tension that seemed to cover my whole upper body. Upon probing I realized that it was something ‘left-over’ from the dreamwork I had done earlier. (see entry for yesterday below) It was a feeling of smallness, that I had been made to feel small. Immediately I thought, don’t act like a victim, no one made you small, you chose to feel small! But then I also heard, in that plaintive voice of my Inner Judge, the small child who was a victim, who did not have a choice, whose need is my focus as well as my healing now, for I have the freedom of choice now as an adult, and I know how to ask for the help I need.

So I threw this feeling of smallness, part of my self-consciousness, my inferiority and vulnerability, into the same pot to be looked after by the Great Feminine, the Goddess that is Neptune, when she brings me her boundless love. This time I will be ready to receive it.
___________

DREAM that I was carrying Nemo in my arms, his usual huge heftiness, and looking for my car at the same time. I had forgotten where I parked my car, and now going up and down stairs looking for it. The stairs, railings and even the floors seemed all to be made of painted white metal, like in a ship or an industrial place, lit with artificial light. Suddenly, I realized that I was already on a train, and I woke up.

DREAMWORK:

Could this be the dream Neptune had sent me in answer to my request for the unconditional love of Mother??

Nemo is the animal instinct and drive of my feminine, which I appeared to have in hand. But this is the second dream I’ve had in a row about my car, and parking. My car is my personal drive and motivation, what gets me to where I want to go and where I think I need to go, which is not always where I really ought to go. Anyway, I’ve parked it, which means I’ve stopped my relentless driving at least, unlike what I was doing in yesterday’s dream: pushing to get it where I wanted to go, and nothing better stand in my way!!

But I’ve lost my way to it, my sense of direction failing me (as it often does in waking life when I’m driving in unfamiliar surroundings – is this the disorientation that Caroline Casey described as a symptom of not embracing Neptune in one’s life – of being ‘lost at sea’??) It’s as if I leave my car – my drive/motivation, I lose connection to it. As if I only know how to use my car to get what I want, in an aggressive, go-getter way for the sole purpose of fulfilling my ambition, but never to just cruise the countryside and watch the scenery, or casually going to get grocery or pay a visit to the museum. My bond with my car is through speed and rage, blood we’ve shed in battles we’ve been in together. It sounds bizarre to me that this is really how I feel and relate to my car deep down, but it also rings darkly true.

So my car is part of my masculine drive, but one not in balance at present, because I’ve learned only how to go forward, step on the gas, and charge ahead like a raging bull. And God knows the irony of how repulsive I find the image of the raging bull, with its stench of testosterone and machismo, men and bull alike. Yet it is very much a part of me, of my conditioning on how to survive in the world out there, where everyone strives to be the Man of the Hour, or the Month, or the Year, in the artificial, white-washed, industrial-strength battleground we call the workplace.

Interesting how a masculine drive out of whack needs the motherly touch of the feminine to temper it. Let the yin flow gently into the yang…

But even as I became preoccupied by the search for my car, my masculine drive, it struck me all of a sudden that I was inside a train, an even greater drive, the one that drives the collective, so that even if I find my car, I can only go where the train is going anyway, unless I get off the train… And get off the train I must, if I am to go where I am meant to go, according to divine will.

So I invite the Great Feminine and the feminine in me to continue to hold and heal and nurture my child masculine, teach him how to walk the Middle Way where no brute force is necessary, where he is never left lost and alone to face adversity.

Still, I am left in a quandary about how to get off the train, and it seems to me that I’ll need both my feminine and masculine together to accomplish this. But how do I get my car off, even if I do find it? The realization came to me then, that I don’t need my car where I’m going. But isn’t it part of my masculine? No, it’s just a symbol of it that I’ve become attached to, not much more than a status symbol. Okay, so I don’t need my car anymore (deep breaths, I am actually quite attached to my car still), I let go of my attachment to it and all that it means to me. (Is this why I lost my car keys??)

I need to reach deeper within myself for my true masculine drive, and nurture it into maturity.
____________

Sunday, October 17, 2010

DREAM that I am driving my car and could not go any further because I’ve come to a turn into the alley where I needed to go to get home. A blue stationwagon-like car was blocking the entry. There was a note on the car with the name and number from the owner, so I called the number but there was no answer. I am getting more and more incensed by the minute. Other people may have come by and left, I’m not sure now. I tried calling again and this time a woman picked up. She answered as if it is a business, because it is the garage shop just to the right of where I was, and said her name was Jennifer (my undercover name). For some reason I had put the phone (a circular device the size of a pingpong ball) into a glass jar just big enough to fit it, and I could not listen and speak without having to move the piece from my ear to my mouth in turn. I told her that her car was blocking my way and she must come and move it NOW. I was livid. She started to explain that someone had told her it was okay, but I knew this already from her note so I cut her off and yelled some more. In the back of my mind I am thinking that there was lots of space behind her car, so why did she have to block the entrance in front? I was so angry I woke up…

DREAMWORK:

I had asked Neptune to send me a dream last night before sleep, after reading Caroline Casey’s description of Neptune. She mentioned also that anomie is a loss of self, some of the symptoms being disorientation and lack of focus and/or sense of purpose. I asked Neptune then, to tell me what I need to know about this, so perhaps this dream is in answer to that… certainly it has to do with my reflections on the story in the novel above, even though it seemed merely co-incidental that I read the blurb within an hour of waking up this morning…

The light in the dream was not exactly bright, so this is stuff a bit below my consciousness… I was feeling very purposeful driving my car, knowing without doubt where I was going, just minutes away from getting to my parking space, then home free, even though the back alley I had to go down did look like a totally dark tunnel in the dream, and the walls looked like interior walls which may have been blue like the car that was blocking me… so, interior or personal issue on the emotional level that is at least somewhat unconscious in me, co-starring my ever-faithful shadow, thinly disguised as Jennifer the elusive one…

Now that I am pushed to it, I’ll admit that I did think that I was on the last stretch, of which part of my journey I can’t say, perhaps the part of rebuilding my selfhood so that I can go back out there into the world again. Well, if it really is the last stretch it certainly looks the darkest, even if I think I know where I’m going and how to get there. But my shadow is forcing me to stop before I enter into the darkness, even though she knew I would be angry at the obstruction and delay (as I would be too, in waking life).

Her shop (domain) was the auto garage, her business the repair and revival of sick and dysfunctional vehicles (drive and motivation). She blocked and stopped me from charging on with an emotional obstacle (her antiquated but nicely kept blue station wagon, half car, half truck, for ease and purpose of loading and unloading luggage and such). So, I still have some old emotional issues to examine, ones that I may not even think of as issues, or ones that I may need to transform from one state to another…

The woman, my shadow, was timid and nervous, even though she did what she had to do, as her ‘right’, she shrank from fully asserting herself. Yet she wanted me to know that it was her who blocked me, leaving me all the information so I could reach her. This was the paradoxical nature of Jennifer, the part of me that is self-conscious in public, yet yearning to be noticed and cherished as I am. A shy flower, but a flower that nevertheless wants to be adored. My dream from Tuesday brought me to the issue of my self-consciousness, the part that cripples me in public, perhaps this dream is the sequel that will help me understand and resolve this issue…

The screaming, raging self who can’t stand to be obstructed in any way by anyone or anything (I still have road rage, milder, but still there) is the part of me that introjected the part of my mother I couldn’t handle, in other words, I swallowed my angry, hysterical mother whole so that I became like her when something got in my hurrying way, as I got in hers when I was a child. And as a small child in front of this giant screeching terror, I was easily reduced to an animal frozen in the headlights, wanting desperately to escape being the target of wrath, yet wishing in my heart for the love and approval that I knew this same mother could give me.

I remember not so much the actual punishment I got from my mother, but more the grilling ‘interrogations’ that preceded. It didn’t take long for me to learn to anticipate what’s to come with the hour (more like minutes, often seconds) of judgment. I was the prisoner, caught red-handed for an offense, now brought before judge-and-jury-in-one, tried and convicted and executed with god-speed by god herself. So I learned that the crucial moment was when I was asked to pin the crime on myself, that I must think fast on my feet and come up with a convincing reason or lie to deflect the blame, otherwise pain and death (at least a part of me) is sure to follow. These were the moments when I was literally put on the spot, lit with spotlight or frozen in headlight, flooded with fright, and against all odds still looking for a way out. Being in the spotlight, at any rate, became a place of much anticipatory anxiety for me, whether it was leading up to a public presentation or an unpleasant confrontation. It almost doesn’t matter so much where it led up to, it was the anticipation that’s my undoing. This is what lies beneath my self-consciousness. What lies beneath that is that longing for unconditional forgiveness and acceptance.

And the anger and flying rage? That just disguises how fearful and uncertain I feel about not having complete control of the situation, as my young mother must have felt, powerless yet needing to keep up the appearance of power, of being right. The outburst of anger also prevents me from hearing what I most need to hear: wisdom and guidance. This was why in the dream I could not listen and scream into the phone at the same time; the ‘insulating’ glass jar was an invisible disconnect of my own doing, because I didn’t really want to face the fear behind the anger.

I had asked to heal my selfhood, but before I can get to my selfhood I have to cut through the layers of my rage and terror, to touch the tender wound of self-consciousness, and see the needy little child that I am, secretly and desperately longing for the love of her mother. And until I’ve fully experienced that love, I cannot give of that love, of a mother.

Transits of a Metamorph

After stumbling upon the summary of the transit reading I had with astrogrrl earlier this summer, and reading it with eyes 3 months older and perhaps a smidgen clearer, the thing that really hit me was the theme that ran through the entire 12 month transit forecast. Here’s a sampling I took:

…clarify your vocational goals…
…greater spiritual awareness concerning your career and public persona, or self-expression in the world…
…begin to seek out some career that is your real calling…
…your professional career or your presence on the public stage, even your very self-concept may alter, causing you to undergo a potentially painful period of re-examination and transformation…
…You have a serious inner purpose at this time, that drives you toward changing your career in a way that more fully expresses your true mission in life…
…You are going through a potentially painful process of examining and realigning your self-concept, possibly as a result of old wounds coming up for you during this period of time…
there will be a transformation in your goals and your interaction with socially conditioned values…
…Your patterns of friendship and group association may radically alter during this period…
…Your whole life may be in a state of flux…
…Things are changing for you at this time, and your feelings of restlessness under this transit may be urging you to let go of some previously cherished structure of your life. A disruptive and potentially disturbing energy comes into your conscious awareness…
…leading to previously unsurpassed levels of understanding of just who you are. After the dust has settled, a new maturity may await you, one that enables you to more fully take charge of your own life…
…You also have a powerful urge to create at this time, and you need to get in touch with how to use this energy and what it is that you want to accomplish. You may experience frustration in trying to go your own route, independent of what consensus reality surrounding you may dictate…
…Old wounds in the area of selfassertion and how you make your way in the world may come up at this time, causing you much suffering as you try to find your true path. It is only by going deep within yourself and trusting the intelligence of your own inner awareness that you can begin to heal these issues inside you, come through this period of chaos and enter a new birth of understanding and trust in your own process…

I would estimate about 98% of it (there are 107 transits described in the reading) speaks to change, chaos, purpose, vocation, career and other subjects of the inner realm that have been my sole preoccupation, and all of it about the making and breaking of the self, over and over again. Pain, confusion, wounds came up countless times, which would normally scare me witless (because I can sense the truth in them). But as some of the transits have come to pass, with much of the painful bits as foretold by the stars, and I am still here, in good health and sounder in many ways than I was when I began this leg of my intensive innerwork 4 months ago. So I think I can take a moment and give myself a little pat on the back, as I would if it were someone else I am looking at, and say, Congratulations for making it this far! Your courage and perseverance have been an inspiration to me! Carry on with the good work!

Seeing it through an imaginary third party’s eyes, I have the insight that this is also a revelation to me. I had always thought of myself as a coward, the subversive kind that puts up a nicely puffed up front when on the spot, but there is nothing holding me up inside except that temporary puff of hot air (see my dream and dreamwork from yesterday: http://lastnightidreamed-whitelightone.blogspot.com/2010/10/astrology-individuation-middle-way.html). But I can see now that I have been exactly like the Cowardly Lion, believing he was without courage, when all along he was the one who exemplified the brave heart of a warrior, he just couldn’t see it through the chimera of his disbelief. His was the archetype of the skeptic, his purpose on the heroic quest is to bring chaos into change. And so it is mine.

Dao De Ching on Sin: #62

Reading the Tao Te Ching, and trying to come from a place empty of preconceptions about the book. Thankfully I know next to nothing about daoism, other than perhaps what’s inherited through blood, but that may be stretching it.
____________

Did they not say,
“Seek and thou shalt receive,
Sin and thou shalt be forgiven”?
~ #62, Dao De Ching

Ah! I silently exclaimed when I read this verse, amazed to see the familiar line from the Bible* (why it's called perennial philosophy, right?), then immediately thunderstruck by the line following: “Sin and thou shalt be forgiven?” Indeed??!!? Two armies rose up out of nowhere it seemed, in the dusty and barren landscape of my mind, which was flat-lining in placid complacency only a moment ago. The army on the left is red, the one on the right blue. The red army stood up into being from a murmur to a roar in a couple of heart beats, promptly spitting with outrage. Sin and thou shalt be forgiven? Blasted blasphemy! Sin and thou shalt be dealt with and dispatched to Hell forthwith! Indeed, if sins are forgiven, would the sinners not sin again, even more brazenly? Would we not be swallowed up by moral decay and anarchy? Stomping their feet in unison, the red army held aloft their weapons in righteous indignation. Who can blame them? I thought, I’m getting pretty riled up too by their cries for war, the heat of fire and brimstone licking at my backside.

But upon the invocation of anarchy, the blue army reared as one mighty wave of the ocean, swooping down with their shields in front of them, then rolling back up to centre again. They stood still then, and one after the other their shields interlocked to become a wall all around. An eerie silence hung then, until it was pierced by a shout, actually more like an urgent chant: Sin and thou shalt be forgiven!

Responding to this as a declaration of war, the red army surged forward like molten lava, led by their god of war riding in on horses and chariot of flames. Meanwhile I saw more blue as shields continued to come up, this time from those inside the outer blue wall, and raised high overhead to block out the sky. The collective rolling of the wave began as before, perpetual as the ocean. Sword blows and flaming arrows were now raining down in earnest, and everywhere cries went up that either curdled the blood or fired your lust. But dare I look? And dare I believe my eyes? The blue ocean of shields appeared to bear up under the barrage of red artillery, their strength seemed to be replenished as the waves rolled, back to front, and with every arching of this great body they rose to meet their enemy’s well-aimed attempts to breach their frontline. A low drone was beginning to be heard above the clashing and clanging of battle: Sin and thou shalt be forgiven! Sin and thou shalt be forgiven!

Soon, the red army began to run out of steam, or perhaps they were becoming quite as hypnotized by the rolling and the droning as I was, and surrendering to the great womb-like embrace of the ocean seemed now of greater comfort than winning the battle. The bodies of the spent warriors were carried afloat the waves until they were washed ashore. When, upon waking they saw in front of them a village of people in blue, they were seized with fear, then panic, as a group of villagers advanced towards them. Some of the soldiers cast about for anything they could use as a weapon, the rest huddled or lay on the sand, too shattered and weary.

The children approached first, chattering and giggling like newly flown nestlings, their plumage the flowers and palm fronds they cradled in their arms. A line of women followed, each carrying a basket or a jug or blanket. By the time the men reached them the soldiers were a frozen tableau of shocked faces, speechless and rooted to the spot until some of the villagers began to lift the ones prone on the ground unto litters they had brought. All at once the blue wave descended upon them again, this time bearing food, drink, warmth and comfort, to the familiar refrain of Sin and thou shalt be forgiven… Sin and thou shalt be forgiven…
~~~

It took a couple of twists and turns for my mind to get over the counter-conditioning of the statement: Sin and thou shalt be forgiven – because for sure that’s not what we have been taught! If you go so far as to sin in most human societies, chances are you will be punished according to the law of the land, or of the hand which catches you. The last thing you can expect is to be forgiven, even though as all Christians know, forgiveness is what Jesus came to the human realm to teach and deliver. We have, for the most part, ignored that message. At any rate, we have not been able to reverse the damage done by our belief in the Old Testament God of terrible wrath and vengeance, fully capable of wiping off entire populations with the same hand that sent manna from heaven. In my imagination, the Isrealites must have been the first and most traumatized people in ancient times, having to live under the rules of an all-powerful tyrant, knowing that if they ever strayed they can expect anything from genocide by natural catastrophe to murder by the masses. Thousands of years of law and order under patriarchy did not exactly prepare us for the feminine wisdom of forgiveness.

But what if, what if we were all weaned on the milk of human kindness and forgiveness? What if, instead of being smacked or yelled at when we did something mommy told us not to do, we were pulled aside and talked to gently but firmly with simple wisdom and love, so we learn about the consequences of our action, without learning how to blame and frame, without the threat of losing mommy’s love and affection? What if we were all brought up that way, knowing that we make mistakes, by intention or otherwise, and that is just human and acceptable, so we can learn from them and grow? There will be no heavy luggage of guilt and shame to carry, no need to hide them, no acting out of harm from these regressed states of childhood, no perversion of these repressed impulses into psychopathic or sociopathic expressions. There will be no war because we were not conditioned by acts of resentment, revenge and abuse of power, and all the energy we conserve from making wars can be channeled into education for body, mind, spirit and soul, because no doubt there will still be the dark side of our nature needing balance and expression. But if we were born and raised in the wisdom traditions, working with our shadow will simply be another way to becoming more whole, not the monster that we need to stuff back under the bed.

We will know how to forgive, because we were forgiven.
____________

*The translation I have is by Victor M. Mair, who may or may not have been a Christian, but perhaps he thought it best to translate this verse, if not the whole work, through use of biblical language, because most of its audience in the English-speaking world is Christian??

Reading "Balzac and the Little Seamstress"

I’ve been trying to read the bestseller “Balzac and the Little Seamstress” by Dai Saije, a writer who grew up in communist China and moved to France where he wrote the book. The plot was there with sufficient twists and turns to carry the story forward, and the writing did not lack descriptive power, but for some reason I could not stay with it. At first I thought perhaps it was because I needed a break from the genre of memoir-style writing or even stories about Asian life, but then I remembered reading recently a short story by Geoff Ryman called “Have or Not Have” which later became the opening chapter of the novel “Air”, a sci-fi story also involving an Asian seamstress. I loved the short story and ordered it from the library. So what is it that distinguishes one from the other for me, that I should be hooked by one but not the other?

The first thing that comes to me is the differences between the voices. Although both were narrated in the first person, and both by male writers, Balzac’s was a distinctly masculine, sombre and straight-forward voice to me, and Air feminine, light, and curvaceous. But I also love Hemingway’s voice which is masculine sombre, etc., and sometimes what seemed to me almost one of reporting, though he is always reflective even while reporting, and that is what Balzac did not do, at least not to me.

Reflective writing would, if I could have it ordered and delivered to my door, show me glimpses of the character(s) that may be brief yet incisive, something I could only have known had I been a fly on the wall of the innermost chambers of the character(s)’ physical or psychic space. Instead, I am allowed to follow along in the deepest of their shadows, watching events unfold from the recesses of their unconscious desires and motivations, feeling everything they feel from the inside, sometimes even before they do. But I, the reader, as emotionally and even spiritually entangled as I am now in the plot, can no more defy nor escape what fate awaits than the character(s) caught up in it. My heart and my spirit are lost to the story, and the fire of my own being is stoked through (re)living this piece of the bigger story of creation. For all human stories are creation stories, even Balzac and the Little Seamstress, though I would only give it 2 flames out of 5.

Silent Retreat Day 2: Poems

Cold Beach

Juggling a bag of library books and another of grocery
I held a debate between a park bench and the sidewalk
the sky was washed out after two days of rain
my shoulders chafe under the burden

of my insatiety
but my eyes ached for the sharp relief
yellow chrysanthemums cut
themselves out of the green bed
they’ve been assigned

and so my feet – the part of me
furthest from my head – without
casting a single vote
or a backward glance headed down
the wet winding path to the
clear cold beach that I’ve longed for
– all day!
my heart pulling hard
like a leash.
______________

I wrote this poem after coming home from a run to the library and grocery store, on a wet October afternoon, seasonally so, but until I saw a sliver of blue edge of sky on water I did not know how much I wanted to see it… hitch your wagon to your heart!!
______________

Son of Babel (from word group: East, west, milkyway, longing)

So much has been said about East and West
so much has come and gone under that great divide
fallen into the crack like so many

crumbs from the tables of the synthetic gods

polyethelyne promises and satellite soap operas
hybridized hopes and cutting-edge cures
maximized margins and bloody bottom lines

rising billious out of the chasm the enormous
head of a giant crowned
with technology gone bitter
withered body bejeweled
with numbers like fallen stars
vestigial limbs trembling under
the weight of successful mergers
and failed take-overs
this towering son of Babel
lurching East from West
plunging North to South
somehow manages to gather all of us
pilgrims on the path of personal gain
through our newly minted language of profit and power

that which has scattered and rendered us apart
is reuniting us so that
we stand on the same page
of our history as it is turning

vice is virtue
good becomes bad
there is no East nor
West under the Milkyway…

all of our longing is for home
the circle is coming to full

and divine will is served.

Silent Retreat Day 1: A Soul Retrieval

Flow Writing:

I am somehow above a strip of cloud looking down, before me is a vast body of water, end to end under the canopy of the sky. The wind makes little silvery scales on the surface of the water, all of it carried from below by giant rolls of waves like the soft backs of hills, peak, valley, peak, valley, unlike the hills, the ocean never stops moving. It moves not because it is water, but because it is connected to earth. It moves because the earth moves. Everything that is connected to the earth moves, turns over, changes, renews itself. Even the hills that do not seem to move.

And so I expect change, and it is the only thing I expect, whether I am hanging out on a cloud taking in a bigger view, or down here in my corner dissecting life into a million pieces. Hope may come and it may go, but change is always here.
___________

Today I begin my 2-day silent retreat with myself, to be guided only by my body and Source.

I was led to check my emails and to look at an email from Jeannette. I thought it was telling me to book a session with her, but when I asked what the session is about, it was for a soul retrieval. Then it turns out that I ought to do a soul retrieval for myself, to retrieve the lost part of my selfhood. Today. Thank you, body, for this guidance.

Soul Retrieval for my Lost Selfhood:

I called for my spirit animal and a little bear came. Her name is Honey Honey Bear and she is very playful. I take her paw and we walk across the field until it becomes a hill. We begin to run down the hill but pretty soon we are tumbling like little kids. We are little kids. When we come to a stop at the bottom I look up and see a huge stone circle in front of us. There is a mist or smoke rising inside the circle and obscuring most of it. Honey Honey Bear says it is smoke rising from out of the earth and it is hot. I can now smell the smoke but could see no fire. HH Bear says it is a fire that burns all by itself, has been forever, and this is where the smoke comes out. Comes out? I say. Yes, there’s a hole in the centre of the circle. HH Bear says. Uh oh, don’t tell me we have to go down that hole, I say. Yep. Says HH. I’m scared, I say. Me too, says HH, but our trust is greater than our fear. I check with myself, and it is true.

Tentatively, we step inside the circle, and indeed the ground feels warm, the smoke thicker now around us. We start to walk toward the middle and HH is hopping a little, saying Ouch ouch, it’s getting hot. So I told her I’ll carry her and she hops into my arms. Despite waving at the smoke in front of us, HH does, it is getting only thicker. Soon there is the opening in the ground we have been expecting, not much bigger than a person’s girth. Here goes, we look at each other, and jump into the hole. The smoke is even thicker as we fall, and our screams quickly stopped as shut our mouths against inhaling more smoke. But soon it thinned out and the air became clearer. We did not have time for relief though, as a huge raging fire appears below us, bigger and bigger as we fell. Screams begin to escape from our throats again, and just as we start to feel the searing heat and big WUMPPHHH! came from the fire, and a huge puff of heated air pushed us aloft and off to the right of the big fire.

HH and I fell into a heap against earth, blessed earth! I can see immediately as we recover ourselves that there is a dark area just ahead of us and we know that there is a way to go yet. HH goes ahead of me into what I assume to be tunnel, completely pitch black. I hold out a hand in case there’s something lower than my head I might walk into. But soon the tunnel narrows and I have to get down on all fours and crawl. I made griping noises and HH said, it’ll keep you humble, we are going to see a diety after all. What kind of diety? I wanted to know. A goddess. HH replied. I pondered about that. After a few steps I called out to HH. Yes? she replies. Just wanted to know where you are, I said. I’m just in front of you. Don’t worry, I can see you. HH said. I didn’t know bears can see in the dark. Nevertheless, I talked to HH now and then just for my own assurance.

Suddenly our voices rang out with a slight echo, as if there’s a cavern ahead. We stopped in our tracks and after a moment HH said, come a few more steps. I took 3 steps forward and saw why. There was a hint of bluish light hovering above the edge of the ground, because we are at a cliff. Another step and I saw a scene that took my breath away. Below the cliff was a very large circular area occupied almost entirely by a ring, a spiraling ring, of blue liquid flame, and in the centre of the spiral was the goddess, like HH said. She is dressed entirely in the same blue flame and her features were human-like but not quite anything I’ve ever seen on a human before. She is the Goddess Spring Fire, HH whispered to me.

We crawled to the edge of the spiral of fire, it was warm but nowhere near as hot as the big fire before. I called out to the goddess and asked if we may speak to her. She raised a hand, palm up. I took that as a yes. I am looking for the lost part of my selfhood, Goddess, will you help me? I said to her.

With a small smile on her lips and her gaze steady upon us, the Goddess Spring Fire put her arms together skyward and rose in a stream like a meteor into the air, and from her fingertips a stream of blue shot up and down onto me. In a flash I am totally cover in the blue liquid fire where I crouched. It felt warm but not hurting. I could feel it cling more and more to my skin. I opened my eyes and saw HH sitting a few paces away, agape, watching me. It’s growing me a new skin, I said to HH, amazed yet content.

Then the Goddess came up behind me and ran her fingertips down along my spine, without touching me, and the blue covering zipped open and down like a carapace around me. I looked at myself and saw that I am beautiful, just like the Goddess, except I am still entirely human, in fact I looked like a young Chinese girl from a few thousands years ago. And I understood then that this is who I am, this is the part I’ve lost and now recovered. I turned to the Goddess and said, this is for more than just me then? Yes, she replied, it is for all the women in your lineage who have lost their selfhood because they were women, and everyone of you has carried that ancestral wound until now. Go now, and be whole. With that, she lifted up her arm and swirled around, darkness took over once again, and suddenly we are deposited back onto the field where we began.

I looked and dressed like myself again, and I gave HH a tight squeeze and let her go, with the deepest gratitude and love in my heart to her. Thank you, Honey Honey Bear. Thank you, Goddess Spring Fire. I thank you from my deep and more whole self!

~~~

So I have a new skin! The ‘new’ skin is my lost selfhood, and without it I have been too vulnerable, too self-conscious, feeling too exposed in the world to feel at ease and in my element. My mother, her mother and sister, my grandmothers, my aunts, my sister and cousins and their daughters, they all must have felt this missing part of themselves, that has prevented them from being fully what they know they are. We all have a chance to become that now, women with the blue fire of masculinity burning in them, enabling us to step out into the world and do what we are here to do.
____________

Went out to return some camera gear for Michael, and on an impulse (after checking with my body) drove up to a library that I’ve just ‘discovered’ last night. It is the S. Walter Stewart Branch, on Memorial Drive just behind the East York Civic Centre. The day is solidly overcast and drizzling, but the farmers’ market was on in front of the civic centre. Nice folks but nothing interested me.

The library was a sweet little gem though, newly restored and renovated, it is a round building from 1959, the interior spacious with a feel of flow to all the sectioned areas radiating from the centre which is the main librarians’ station. There’s a table with coffee urns and plates of cookie, ‘the café’ according to the sign on the wall. I found a whole shelving unit of books on photography which I will tell Michael about, CDs are laid out in hip-level sectioned boxes like in music stores, and plenty of computers everywhere although I glimpsed a few ‘out of order’ signs.

In another circular area just off the centre of the circle I found movies and audio tapes. I quickly found a mittful of foreign movies that looked promising. I thought I better remove my insatiable little self from the premises before I do more damage, and it was then that I discovered the clever device of the self-checkout counter! Not only can you do it youself by following simple instructions on a nearby screen, you can check out 4 or 5 or 6 items at a time. Coolest! But I hope it’s not taking jobs away from librarians though. Every cloud has a silver lining, but every silver lining can have a rip in it… Nevertheless, God/dess bless libraries, my life wouldn’t be as joyous and full without them!

The Frog

Michael just took out the Medicine Cards and as he was shuffling the deck I said, “Frog!”, because I just had that dream about frog and amphibians yesterday. (http://lastnightidreamed-whitelightone.blogspot.com/) Lo and behold, does he not pulled the Frog card out of the deck of 54 cards! So Frog is for both of us then... dropping Frog into my body... Frog doesn’t have anything to tell me, but my body does...

The memory of the tiny pond outside the Algonquin Art Centre drifted into my mind, a beautiful summer morning still too early for most visitors to be out playing tourist... There was a little wooden arrow-shaped sign with the word “Frog” just at the spot where you would turn and see the pond, and I said to Michael, “Do you think there is any frog?”, because it seemed unlikely a tiny body of water the size of a barrel, in the middle of a landscaped ‘yard’ would attract, much less support, living creatures with sufficient mobility to go somewhere else. We went up to the little pool then, lushly planted with tall grasses, reeds, ground-covers, and flowers in their season. Rocks and flagstones held the space together like a showcase for the jewelled centrepiece, and I couldn’t stop myself from leaning in close to the water, because there was a little frog perched on the edge of it, perfectly still. I got half way through saying “I think it’s fake...” when it hopped up and away into its mini habitat and swam off. We laughed then, in surprise and delight.

I am smiling now, as I feel again the bright, clear joy of that weekend, in the famous north country of Algonquin Park. Everything and everyone was so simple, straight-forward and serene – Michael, me, the innkeepers, fellow hikers, the doe that strolled across the highway, the walking stick someone left by the entrance to a trail, our new diet and cleanse, and most vivid in my memory, the golden cast to the air that seemed to gild everything with a warm liquid glow, even sound; and I felt, of all things for a city girl born and raised, safe, in the sheltering canopy of the trees old and new; and so magnanimously loved, by Nature, whom I’ve scarcely known, until that moment.

Thank you, Frog, for the gift of ‘rest and recreation’, as we ride this wave to the next crest of transformation that I cannot see but can only sense, is imminent. I will take you along, in the pocket of my memory, for the luck that I am told you bring, and the adaptability we will need in rebirth and renewal.
___________

When I am quiet
the whole world flows in like honey
from the outside towards the centre
sound and air
breath and molecule
skin and touch
glazed by the contented glow

my head is annointed in liquid lucent gold
my shoulders drop under its mantle of warmth
my respiration slows
as if I have gills that are gently
bellowing under water the colour
of amber
backlit

everything is slow
serene
simple
satisfied
when I am quiet.