In Case You Ever Need It, It is Here (poem)

"Take this as yours
Rip this from the book
of make a copy
fold it in half
and half again
and put it in your wallet
or between the mattress and the box spring
or taped under your desk
so it is there
if.

Know this: what happened
to your body
to your head
to your heart
is not your fault.
It is not something you caused
or deserved.

It is like blaming yourself
for someone hitting your hand
with a hammer.
(If that person is you,
put the hammer down.
Let it be an accident.
Let it be the end.)

The body, heart, brain knows
how to heal. It knows how to knit
back together. How to suture
and secure. Let it do what it does.
Your body is yours.Your body
will always be yours.

You are not what happened.
Your whole life
is not just this. You do not speak
a language made of this, this is
not your name. 

Your name is your own.

Let your name be
The name of someone who
can do the unthinkable:
Stands up and keeps moving.
You are standing. You are taking
a shower and eating breakfast.
You are going to classes
or going to work. You are doing
impossibly hard things. Keep going
and keep going and there
is summer. Laugh even if it is
with rage. Open your mouth
and your fists. Tell the truth.
Tell a friend. Listen to someone
else's heart. it is beating
a miracle. You are
Both here.

When scars are new,
They shine. Be all the glitter
You need."

--Daphne Gottlieb--

process

"On the Weirdness of
The Creative Impulse:

Earth, Fire, Water
If you would create
from original self...

See that rock over there?
Be impatient with the rock...
and nothing happens.

Say, 'Nice rock,
nice rock,'
and nothing happens.

Stare at rock
without end.
Nothing happens.

Pick up rock--
take it over there.
Stare at it.
Pick rock back up
and move it back
where it began.
Nothing
comes of it.

But/and...
Be gently
angry with the rock,
bust it to pieces
and add peaceful
water
to make clay--

Then fashion
the clay
into a vessel
that will hold
the peace of water
from what was
once
wroth by anger.

This is one
of the most
important lessons
of creating...
Impatience
and all the rest
too often
go nowhere.

A gentled
anger often has
true potential
if broken down,
and transformed
in
and to
peace.

I know you know
from soul outward
what this means.

The soul
ever knows
how earth,
fire,
and water
need
one another."

Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes

[nightmares] until then

Until
by Indu Iyer

"Women live in the silences between men
in between the daggers of words
the shards of hate
the pummels of fists.
We live in the spaces
carved out between
abuse
in between the cat calls
the gropings
the unwanted penetration.
Between discomfort and
pure horror
we fight to stay alive.
as we tiptoe to not wake
him in the morning
as we hold secret bank accounts,
as we call fellow women for help
only once he has gone to work.
We fight as we wear
running shoes instead of sandals
carry keys in our hand
when we walk at night
give fake numbers
to men in bars
not wanting to unpin a grenade.
This fighting
is not valiant and rewarding.
it is degrading business
it turns women into mice
scurrying from corner to corner
with our feet peddling
as fast as they can
trying to locate a crumb
or a nibble of cheese
amid a world of cats.
Let me be clear – Women are not mice.
Women will not be made into pestilence
by those men who choose to hate us.
We will not live in little holes
between the floor boards
we will not be prisoners
in our own homes, our streets, our cities.
We will not live in the spaces between
our abusers and attackers.
We will fight.
We will cauterize our wounds
with our rage
We will rise like
walls of an inferno
ferocious
relentless
undeniable
each day
every day
Until every woman who says “I was raped” is believed.
Until prostitution is no longer an option.
Until pornography is a relic of the past.
Until women do not fear
our own fathers or brothers
our friends, teachers, lovers
because they might believe
they own our bodies
our minds
our words
our lives.
Until every living person knows
without question
that women do not exist merely
to please men
to serve men
to fuck men,
But that women are survivors
that women are warriors
that women are above all
human.
Until love without tyranny
is not a dream
but the only love
ever known to woman
at all."

(From the Montreal Massacre Memorial on the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women)

grounded flight

"I had to unlearn their prison speak,
refuse to make wishes on the star
on the sheriff's chest.

I started wishing on the stars instead.
I said to the sun, 'Tell me about the big bang.'
The sun said, 'It hurts to become.'

I carry that hurt on the tip of my tongue
and whisper 'bless your heart' every chance I get
so my family tree can be sure I have not left.

You do not have to leave to arrive.
I am learning this slowly.
So sometimes when I looking the mirror
my eyes look like the holes in the shoes
of the shoe shine man.

Sometimes my hands are busy on the wrong things.
Some days I call my arms 'wings'
while my head is in the clouds.

It will take me a few more years to learn flying
is not pushing away from the ground."

-Andrea Gibson,
excerpt from her poem I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power's Out.

well, this found me tonight...quite accurately

From an Atlas of the Difficult World

"I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are."

-Adrienne Rich 

Voices on love, particularity, integrity, gravity, and staying with.

"Sometimes the most radical act is to stay home."

"To bear witness [to know] is not a passive act." 
"It all comes down to relationships" [and having] "a heightened curiosity of other."
"If we don't know who we live among, then when they vanish, there's no one to mourn that loss."
"The challenge is to stay. The challenge is to be present with that pain.
and "making commitments to do the real work, the hard work" [of being in relationship.]

--Terry Tempest Williams



"To love means to stay with.
[...]
to love means to stay with when every cell says 'Run!'"
--Clarissa Pinkola Estes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




Staying home.
Coming home.
Knowing who we live with.
Knowing them so we can love them, honor them, protect them in their own integrity.
Then we can be in ours.

Standing ground.
Standing tall, in place.
Rising rooted like trees.
Rooted to the earth.
Rooted to each other.
[Tethered in the heart.]
The challenge is to stay.
The challenge is particularity.
To know and be known
truly and fully, and to stand in our own truth with integrity.
To be accountable to ourselves, and each other.
To hold to what is difficult.
To hold to the difficult in relationship
and see it through, to understanding,
acceptance, and love.
To hold to the difficult.
To not abandon each other.
To never abandon each other. 

To never abandon the crying scared child in each other's deepest hearts.
To love each other back to life,
back to truth,
back to wholeness,
and the knowingness that we belong
here,
together. 

"to gather the things within my reach and to protect them." -Will Falk (from his essay To Be a Warrior Poet)

To protect them. The things we are in relationship to. The particularities of our lives.
 
To not enact the violence of indifference and uncaring, that is perpetuated by cultural mindsets of separation, individualism, and interchangeability, hardness, distance, and cold reason.

To feel each other's pain.



Peggy O'Mara:
"Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your baby. Go to your baby a million times."

Alison Rose Levy:
"Hearing the cries of the world means hearing the cries of a baby whether that baby is one month old or 100 years old and whether that baby is a human, a kitty, or an elephant cub.
This is offered to the people who know what to do, and the people who know but have forgotten. It is offered especially to those who were left crying because someone stood outside the door... either through hesitation, fear, numbness, hardness, or any other agenda or 'reason.'
May those who remember reach out for the millionth time.
May those who know but forget, remember.
For those who hesitate, doubt or fear, listen to the cry and allow it to move you to courageous action, more courageous than what any warrior pose can teach you.
And for those with numbness, hardness, and other agendas and reasons, only by allowing the cry to reach your heart and melt your plans, your agendas, and your reasons into a puddle that runs out the door, down the gutter and into the river, only then will you yourself heal, only then will you become capable of serving as an agent of healing, and only then will the empty space within the many words spoken be filled with the tears of truth.
And for those who cry out for any wrong or grief, any loss, betrayal or hurt, may you find consolation, may you find your natural community of protectors, may you draw to you those capable of deep caring-- and may your consolation become the consolation of the earth. Because as your soul swims softly outward on its outflowing tears and your heart speaks its truth and finds gentle listeners, so you become the bearer of the truth that lives in the heart of all and the one who always listens and answers.
Do you hear the call?"Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
"A tear, heard by anyone of heart, is understood as a cry to come closer."

Alison Rose Levy:
"It's not merely about the newborn either. We all carry that cry and when the duress becomes too great, it emerges. There are those who listen when the sound is no more than a whisper. And there are those who are deaf when a loved one or child is screaming-- or they blame that child. And that is the inhumanity that is upon the land and within many of us in these times."

Alison Rose Levy:
"From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act." You know people say, 'Don't get too involved in this, it's not your problem.' Like we all live in little boxes and what goes on beyond that wall doesn't exist. With enough acreage you can live like an ostrich and feel free while enjoying the view. This is exactly the fragmentation of community that is turning the earth into a hell zone."

Sarah Alexander:
"We are strongly being pulled now to face our shadows squarely, honestly, without shame, in order to understand what is still holding us back and to let it go. It is hard enough to be honest with ourselves; much less with others. But every. single. time. we. take. a. breath. and. speak. truth. we become freer to act in integrity, and thus liberate humanity a little more from bondage."


Integrity. From Integritas, meaning Intact. Whole. Undivided. Sound.

Alison Rose Levy:
"For me, there is just no way of integrity in standing by while harm is happening and being tolerated. And to act far away and not be righteous up close doesn't count for much. Nor does being a warrior for yourself but not on behalf of those you love."

Sandra Steingraber:
"We are not beautiful by how we look but by how we love, not attractive by what we wear but by what we give and not smart in how we talk but in how we act."


Aloofness might just be the worst thing for this world.
It is like floating above, imaginally,
pretending to not be subject to the gravity
of the situation;
pretending that you are not connected to all everything.


It is in relationship that we feel the heavy weight of our connection. It is meant to be heavy. It is meant to be hard. That is how we know what is real. We can't turn away from that.
Gravity is here to hold us to what we belong to.
We can pretend to cast it off with carelessness, coolness, lightness. We can pretend that there is distance, that these particularities don't matter, aren't real. We can pretend that we can fly off easy into other spaces, novel, new, simple. We can try.
But here, now, we are subject to gravity, in all that we do.
We will be held to it. This is true accountability.
This is not something meaninglessly draped over us, weighting us down unnecessarily, keeping us from moving fast enough toward our dreams, or something we can cast off. Our dreams are bound in it, by it. Our dreams of freedom are bound in and by our relationships to each other. We cannot be free without them. We are bound to them, and our freedom is in how we embrace this.
That is gravity's law.
That is the weight, the heaviness, the difficulty of relationship.
And this is to be honored with our attention, with open, feeling hearts. Hearts that are willing to be heavy, willing to be bound, willing to be hurt. 
Hurting. Bleeding.
That is love.
Not easy. Not floating. Not painless. Not free. But bound in one another's lives and love and pain.
Bound in promise.
Promise being the root of "response"
as in responsibility.
as in response-ability.
as in being present.
as in active relating.

as in spontaneous co-arising.
as in true relationship.

Ben Garrison: 
"A choice to live sacred And because love would lead us to believe that we all belong to the earth and to each other.with hope and desire. bound to a future." [together.]


If we act as though everything is passing, and can pass without impact or float by without pain; if we act as thought we can float, unscathed, in a world of sharp edges trying to meet and fit in a better way; if we do not love particularly; if our love isn't heavy and doesn't hurt to hold some times...
then we are just kidding ourselves. What is any of that worth?

No. Gravity, heaviness, being bound together, that is what makes us creatures worthy and capable of love.
That we can hurt and love.
That we can love and hurt.
That we can love in spite of hurt
not in lieu of it.
Yes.
That we can love in spite of hurt, not in lieu of it.
And that we are bound to do so.
And that we then bind to each other.
And that we then, inevitably, hurt.
And that we then, still, again, hold to love, and hold to each other, despite.
And that we then understand and remember our responsibility to honor that love with our actions.



That is embracing gravity.
That is integrity.

That is love.



"The weight of the world
is love.

--Alan Ginsberg

Gravity's Law

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing-
each stone, blossom, child -
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things teach us:
to fall,
patiently trusting our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

some lightness -- Old Man Mouse

 a delightfully funny poem by a hero of mine, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes


OLD MAN MOUSE

"In our first little two-room house,
a mouse attacked a candy wrapper
fallen to the floor
from the pocket of a jacket
hanging on a nail on the wall.

My husband and I suddenly awakened
with all the alarm of two pederdactyls
in too narrow a bed
confronted by a tyrannosauri of some sort
under
the bed.

Husband could just reach his cowboy boots,
but first shook them upside down
to make sure
no mouses in there.

He grabbed the broom
and chased mouse around the room,
both he and mouse exceedingly naked,
except for the one in cowboy boots
with penis and testicles swinging—
this was not the mouse.

As husband chased rodent,
the mouse suddenly stopped,
just stopped,
fell over and died,
right before our eyes.

Husband said slowly,
It must have been
a sick
mouse.

But I have a different theory.
Have you ever seen a man’s genitalia
from below?
I say mouse looked up,
saw dreaded hose monster jumping
around with its two great greedy eyeballs
bulging
and swinging,
and mouse had a bad heart.
Mouse just up
and died
of fright.

Or struck
down
by awe."

closer

"That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?"

- Mary Oliver

Integrity

"Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere--
even from a broken web."

--Adrienne Rich, from her poem "Integrity"

Where I'm At [all over the place]

I just wrote to Evergreen admissions asking about re-enrolling to get my BS. And have been looking at science classes, especially marine biology, and researching how to do whale research professionally.
I found the job that Terry Tempest Williams had in Finding Beauty in a Broken World, researching prairie dogs. Same job, same supervisor, same place. "The only requirement is that you have a passion for field research in behavioral ecology." What?!
I want to go to Peru, do natural building and permaculture, work with whales, work with wolves (and run with wolves), learn all about trees and plants and animals and fungi and how we all interconnect, and work together.
I want to be on the front lines of activism, sit in trees, dismantle infrastructure, stop the pipelines, the tar sands, the nuclear industry, mining etc. I want to sit in a cozy house and write a book. Poetry. I want to raise people's awareness about the products they use, the food they eat. I want to learn skills and trades.
I want to rock climb, hula hoop, and sing loudly.
I want to help my sister and uncle get well. I want to have community and support, elders and children and peers around me to teach me (and learn from me). I want to lead rites of passage. I want to do personal soul work and help others with theirs.

Speaking True

I just started reading Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, which was Cam's most-perfect Christmas gift (also including an all-expenses paid trip to Wolf Haven Sanctuary with anyone!) It's the perfect follow-up to Women and Nature by Susan Griffin. During and after reading that I couldn't write for weeks, I could hardly carry on polite interaction with most people, and I certainly couldn't think about picking up another book. It shattered my world, in a lot of ways, though the crumbling of my worldview has been happening for about 11 years now (and has accelerated significantly in the past 3 years, and even more quickly in the past year). And actually, the process of reading Women and Nature was not only a dismantling of beliefs, it was an awakening, and, most accurately, it was a birthing. Reading it killed many parts me, and let new ones begin to breathe. It deconstructed reality, let me fall into blackness, and then opened my eyes to something more whole and beautiful than I've known. 

I felt new afterwards. 

New and alone.

(Slowly I am finding my tribe, my sisters, the people who understand, but I am still so disconnected from them in my daily life).

I don't think the book would have had this impact on me except that this process was already underway, and I happened to be at the point in it where Griffin's writing was exactly what I was ready to hear. Had I read it a year ago when I got it (when I serendipitously walked into The Free Book Incident on opening night while I was waiting for Cam's train to come in from California, and happened to be lucky enough to stumble across it amidst the stacks, and decide it might be worth it's weight to give a chance), I wouldn't have understood it. Just like I wouldn't be ready to read Women Who Run With the Wolves having not read Women and Nature. But, this process hasn't been linear, really, like it seems as I am describing it. It has been like a constellation of experience, reading, interaction, reflection, dreams, realizations, etc that has been going on my whole life. And... well, I could go into the connections and process and what it's all looked like and how it all came (is coming) together for me (now if only the same would happen for my "professional" life), but mostly I just wanted to post this poem, and say that I am feeling more of a sense of roundedness and wholeness in my beliefs. A lot has come full circle, and still I am feeling unable to really put it to words. But anyway, here are some words, not mine, that I am finding a lot of power from:

Speaking True

by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

When someone says, "We're saying the same thing."  Say, "We are not saying the same thing."
When someone says, "Don't question, just have faith." Say, "I am questioning, vato, and I have supreme faith in what I think."
When someone says, "Don't defy my authority."  Say, "There is a higher authority that I follow."
When someone says, "Your ideas are seductive."  Say, "No, my ideas are not seductive, they are substantial."
When someone says, "Your ideas are dangerous."  Say, "Yes, my ideas are dangerous, and why are you so afraid, hombre o mujer?"
When it is said, "It's just not done."  Say, "It will be done."
When it is said, "It is immature."  Say, "All life begins small and must be allowed to grow."
When it is said, "It's not thought out."  Say, "It is well thought out."
When they say, "You're over-reacting."  Say, "You're under-reacting, vato."
When they say, "You're being emotional."  Say, "Of course I have well placed emotions, and by the way, what happened to yours?"
When they say, "You're not making any sense."  Say, "I don't make sense, I am the sense."
When they say, "I can't understand you when you're crying."  Say, "Make no mistake, I can weep and be fierce at the same time."
When they say, "I can't understand you when you're being so angry."  Say, "You couldn't hear me when I was being nice, or sweet or silent, either."
When someone says, "You're missing the point."  Say, "I'm not missing the point, but you seem to be missing my point. What are you so afraid of?"
When someone says, "You are breaking the rules."  Say, "Yes, I am breaking the rules."
When someone says, "That's not practical."  Say, "It's practically a done deal, thank you very much."
When it is said, "No one will do it, believe you, or follow it."  Say, "I will do it, I will believe in it, and in time, the world may well follow it."
When it is said, "No one wants to listen to that."  Say, "I know you have a hard time listening to that."
When it is said, "It's a closed system, you can’t change it."  Say, "I'm going to knock twice and if there is no answer, then I am going to blow the doors off that system and it will change."
When it is said, "They'll ignore you."  Say, "They won't ignore me and the hundreds of thousands who stand with me."
When they say, "It's already been done."  Say, "It's not been done well enough."
When they say, "It's not yet time."  Say, "It's way past time."
When they say, "It's not the right day, right month, right year."  Tell them, "The right year was last year, and the right month was last month, and the right day was yesterday, and you're running behind schedule, vato, and what in the name of God and all that is holy are you going to do about it?"
When they say, "Who do you think you are?"  Tell them ...tell them who you are, and don't hold back.
When they say, "I put up with it, you'll have to put up with it too."  Say, "No, no, no, no."
When they say, "I've suffered a long time and you'll have to suffer too."  Say, "No, no, no, no!"
When they say, "You're an incorrigible, defiant, hard to get along with, unreasonable woman..." Say, "Yes, yes, yes, yes! And I have worse news for you yet.  We are teaching our daughters, and our mothers, and our sisters... We are teaching our sons, and our fathers, and our brothers...to be just like us."

on love

When love beckons you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you, yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you,...
believe in him.
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your
tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them
in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may
become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may
know the secrets of your heart, and in that
knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace
and love's pleasure

Then it is better for you that you cover your
nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but
not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of
your tears.
~Khalil Gibran