Women/Wilderness

Ursula K. Le Guin AND Susan Griffin  (!?!) on the oppression of women and wilderness.
from Le Guin's essay "Woman/Wilderness" in her book "Dancing at the Edge of the World":


Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is Other—outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women and the wilderness, to be used as I see fit.

To this, Civilized Woman (in the voice of Susan Griffin) replies as follows:
"We say there is no way to see his dying as separate from her living, or what he had done to her, or what part of her he had used. We say if you change the course of this river you change the shape of the whole place.
"And we say that what she did then could not be separated from what she held sacred in herself, what she had felt when he did that to her, what we hold sacred to ourselves, what we feel we could not go on without, and we say if this river leaves this place, nothing will grow and the mountain will crumble away, and we say what he did to her could not be separated from the way that he looked at her, and what he felt was right to do to her, and what they do to us, we say, shapes how they see us.
"That once the trees are cut down, the water will wash the mountain away and the river be heavy with mud, and there will be a flood. And we say that what he did to her he did to all of us. And that one fact cannot be separated from another.
"And had he seen more clearly, we say, he might have predicted his own death. How if the trees grew on that hillside there would be no flood. And you cannot divert this river.
"We say look how the water flows from this place and returns as rainfall, everything returns, we say, and one thing follows another, there are limits, we say, on what can be done and everything moves.
"We are all a part of this motion, we say, and the way of the river is sacred, and this grove of trees is sacred, and we ourselves, we tell you, are sacred."
(reminds me so much of this poem of mine: http://alexceberg.blogspot.com/2014/07/dear-mountain-love-river-part-2.html)

truth

"If a man knew what a woman never forgets, he would love her differently."

-Terry Tempest Williams-

Rooted wandering

"Sometimes I feel like a hobbit watching orks decimate the Shire. I FEEL the land as it is being destroyed. I feel the idiot darkness in those who put the profit motive above the future of life. We love the hobbits so much because they embody our subconscious yearning for home, for tribal community, for humble, beautiful living and for a deep, unwavering relationship with place - with land we can tend and love and know. We love Bilbo so much because he is the hobbit who can know home, yet still be a wanderer. Oh fellow wanderers - it's time to return home and make a stand for our forests, our watersheds, our mountain tops, our salmon, our seed. If you are constantly distracted by the journey, you won't feel the orks coming. You won't notice what's being lost. Those oil companies want you to be addicted to the fuel it takes to perpetuate your flight - so attached to your physical freedom that you will fight for cheap oil rather than get real about how your own unteathered lifestyle is destroying your untended back yard. I'm not saying don't travel... i'm just saying, get real."

~~Samantha Sweetwater~~

what flying requires.

"In work of love, the body
forgets its weight. And once 
again with love and singing 
in mind, I come to what 
must come to me, carried 
as a dancer by a song.
This grace is gravity."
~Wendell Berry

the ones who held.

"POSSIBILITY.

Gravity.

We dealt with hunger. We dealt with cold. We were the ones who held things together. Knit one, purl two. We were the ones who, after working all day, made the meals. And the beginning. We made sure everybody ate. And the end. We were the ones who, if the cupboard was bear, faced the open mouths of our children. And the way we thought grew from what we did. And the end and the beginning. We were the ones who nursed the dying through death. The wheel. The ones who birthed, who had blood on our hands, the ones who suckled. We fed the calves and milked the cows. We worked in the fields. We wrung the neck of the chicken, and tended the fire that cooked the stew. The double ax. These labors shaped our thinking. We were the ones who watched the wearing down and the daily mending and did what had to be done with the lost. We were the ones who knew what it all meant. Each breath. The cost. The years. We knew the limits. Gravity. And what had to be done. We knew the length of caring. The weight. We felt children come to life in our bodies; even if we had no children we knew what the necessities were. The pull. Our hands made decisions we knew had to be made The motion.  when there was no more caring, when there was no more food. The end and the beginning. Our bodies knew loss. The circle. Our bodies knew limitation. We were weary. The gravitational pull. Our limbs made the decision to move. Day after day we kept things going. Knit one, purl two. We were the ones who held things together. Purl two, knit one. And we were the ones who unraveled the patterns. Who refused to move. The centrifugal force. We were the ones who resisted. We were the ones who decided this can go on no longer, and placed our bodies in the way. The curve of light. What we thought came out of what we did. The lens. And we learned by doing. The focus. Necessity forced us to act together. The reflection. And we were the ones who learned from closeness. We smoothed the way from one to another. We saw the pulling away and the cleaving. We balanced the weight of needs in our hands. Knit one. And we waited for the right time. The bread rising. So if one of us was brave purl two all of us were filled with courage. The circle of motion. We did what they called impossible. The verb. We existed in ways they called unreal. The word. But our ideas came from what we did. And that is how we imagined The pull what we could do. And doing made us imagine more. And so our thoughts were grave the double ax and yet we laughed together. Knit one, purl two. We were the ones The beginning who held the dying and the grieving and the end and the birthing and the born. The weight And this is why we hold each other. The weight of this earth. And this is how our thinking has formed."

--Susan Griffin, from Women and Nature

water and rock

"Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong."
-Lao Tzu

trying to believe in a reason

"It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything."

Quaker Proverb

"Blessed are the vulnerable, for they shall break open the heart of the universe."

Cocoon.

"In their dispute, both nature and culture are correct. You do belong to both. But your personal development requires that you not choose a side, that you simultaneously hold the opposing claims and withstand the tension between them. This conscious holding of opposites will, itself, constitute a significant stimulus to your maturation within the cocoon. It might even be one of the primary factors."

Bill Plotkin
Nature and the Human Soul
The Wanderer In the Cocoon.

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

breaking the silence

"I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.

I began to ask each time: 'What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?' Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, 'disappeared' or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, 'If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.' And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking."

~ Audre Lorde

Rilke's wisdom for today

"we must hold to what is difficult"

and 

"try to love the questions themselves"

here's a question:

Where is the line between witness and participant? Is there a line? Boundaries, for me right now, are so blurred. I'm feeling either crazy or enlightened, and I don't know if I believe in enlightenment in the "ascension to a higher plane" sense. 

Well, I wanted cathartic and here I am. 

the whole wave of the world is crashing into me and I am saturated in unfallen tears for bearing witness to the immensity of beauty and pain, and beauty in pain, and pain in beauty of life. Of living. Of hardship in its reality. 

phew.

And then all I can think is

"damnit Alex, you are just way too serious all the time."

can I change?

can I hold a bridge with my life between levity and weighted reality?

can I walk between them freely, and without guilt?

can I do so in an age with so much chaos and suffering and pain?

is that my duty?

or shall I think of it as something less grave than a duty?

an honor? a joy?

 a joy to know the extremes of life and look across the chasm between with reverence? 

even that seems serious... 

phew...

to bear witness

"In so many ways, I wish I had not seen what I saw. Oil out to sea from horizon to horizon; people sick; marshes burned; hope collapsing. It will be years before we know the truth of this BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. I am now accountable. How to change my life and become more deliberate in all my actions, large and small? May my eyes stay open to the beauty of this world and act. This is my daily mantra."

"A friend said to me the other day, 'You are married to sorrow.' And I said, 'No, I just choose not to look away.' There is joy in facing the truth of our lives whether it is through beauty or terror. Perhaps it is about presence, choosing to be present with where we find ourselves at any given moment. I simply try to bear witness to what I see through the language of story."

"To bear witness is not a passive act. It can lead us to acts of consciousness and consequence."


--all from Terry Tempest Williams, in and around The Gulf Between Us

resurface

“There are only two reasons for ever doing anything; one is love, and the other is fear.” 

the landscape where i dwell

"How shall I live? I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell..."

-Terry Tempest Williams.

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

Finding Beauty in a Broken World [Each Day]

(from journal)

The past few days I am practically brought to tears by nearly every living creature I encounter--a miniature dragon insect on Cam's ceiling; a buzzing fly who I release into the outdoors; my cat in my arms like a baby (and there is sadness there, as he is confined from wildness); the beautiful blond child at the PDC workdays; the tiny bird with hummingbird wings at the window feeder the Stellar's jay at the top of the tree at the corner of Cam's window, swaying in the strong winds and rains of the long, hard afternoon (a grounding, a guardian); a baby squirrel at the window, eating the seeds fallen on the ground; the bees in the movie tonight who I now feel such reverence for; the crows circling, diving, riding the winds; the frogs chirping in the pond out back this night, as I walk around the house. The thought of the creatures pulls at my heart--just the thought of my shared existence with them at this time in life, in time--just the thought of my communion with them as inhabitants of this world. Do they hold me in any such reverence? Do they hold me?

Flashes:
wanting...longing to be a small, soft animal that someone holds and loves so sweetly; that is not so impacted by gravity; that does not feel so much weight from the world.
a picture of a child sleeping against a wild mountain ox of some sort, resting together in the harmony of an alpine world; relaxing into their shared existence and the privilege of each other's company.

This softness and pure love and co-compassion contrasted with something like industrialized animal farming is enough to break my heart many times over each day. The violence and force inflicted upon beings with heart and soul practically destroys me. I feel the pain of it inside me. I feel it. I feel the clear-cutting of life on my heart. Barren patches where joy, vitality, and complexity have been stripped.

I want them back.

Each loss is another gash and I am spilling blood and love all over every day.

I am not hopeless, nor defeated. I am not destroyed.
I am alive. Preparing. Ready.
I am built for this time, for this world.
I can find the beauty and piece it back together into something new.

I feel the collapse in my chest. I feel the pain. I feel the harshness and the suppression. I live it. It is part of my world. I will stand in it and in another. I will marry them until beauty overcomes. Beauty is always present. I don't know if I believe that. The possibility for beauty... finding beauty... no... yes...
healing.
Well, it exists in the pain. Isn't that my duty as an artist (well, a writer)? To find that beauty? Find the beauty in the broken world. In these creatures whom persist in the world even as it crumbles, or whom hold together the world my species is attempting to erode? I have such reverence and love. It fills me to the brim and I burst. The pain and love become one, and they fill me, and I burst with the anguish of loving something more than can ever be expressed.

"Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find." --Terry Tempest Williams

Yes, but I don't even need to create it. It is there, in the eyes, wings, and wonder of all creatures, all beings. I only must bear reverence and love for them and all the burdens that follow with such love. And yes, I will try to create beauty from the filth of hatred, and try to understand how hatred can breed such awfulness when it is so clearly driven by desire, and love. I will try to direct my own desire, my own love into creation and not deterioration.

Yes:
I love a broken world
a whole broken world
a whole world broken
a world whole in its brokenness
but perhaps I can only see that because as a person with a poetic heart, that is what I want to see. But I think I can also feel it. As I explore this pain, I at least feel a fullness which is a golden thread of hope that connects me to a deep [and distant?] faith. And in that...

"Finding beauty in a broken world becomes more than the art of assemblage. It is the work of daring contemplation that inspires action." --TTW

two worlds

“Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.”