"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.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
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.
"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"The weight of the world
is love.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
The Pattern
This is the pattern:
Mothers
too-good
too-strict
just trying to protect us from
men
with broken glasses taped together by long
tales and compliments that steal
our sight.
This tale--
two girls
two men
two rooms
this is where the sheet rips
and the pattern is severed in
two paths,
the same truth.
(Why couldn't I save her?)
Ten years later
the gravity hits me hard
in the bathroom
brushing my teeth at my mirror-self
and feeling compassion
for the one staring back,
strong, unblinking, gaze
and wondering why I stopped
looking people in the eyes
and holding my head high
like I do
in the mirror.
And then I remembered
the exact moment
in the room
with the man
where that stopped
and all of this started.
Oh the legacy of a moment,
of a few words,
perhaps an offering,
but that robbed me of many things,
and not even close
to everything she lost
in the other room.
~~~
Our mothers are waiting.
When they find out their hands wring
(broken heart-strings)
they scream
that they will kill him.
My mom drives to his house
day after day
for a week
and sits in her car
waiting...
waiting...
too-good.
~~~
This is the pattern:
Men, taking what they want
and disappearing.
And women
waiting...
Waiting...
and in the meantime,
weaving back together
the tattered patterns of our lives
into some semblance of wholeness.
Mending the tears,
tending to tears
flowing out like an endless river
of sorrow
while the violence rages on
and we wait.
~~~
(What are these silhouettes
that shape so much
of the landscape we live on
with their mining
and their walking away?)
Mothers
too-good
too-strict
just trying to protect us from
men
with broken glasses taped together by long
tales and compliments that steal
our sight.
This tale--
two girls
two men
two rooms
this is where the sheet rips
and the pattern is severed in
two paths,
the same truth.
(Why couldn't I save her?)
Ten years later
the gravity hits me hard
in the bathroom
brushing my teeth at my mirror-self
and feeling compassion
for the one staring back,
strong, unblinking, gaze
and wondering why I stopped
looking people in the eyes
and holding my head high
like I do
in the mirror.
And then I remembered
the exact moment
in the room
with the man
where that stopped
and all of this started.
Oh the legacy of a moment,
of a few words,
perhaps an offering,
but that robbed me of many things,
and not even close
to everything she lost
in the other room.
~~~
Our mothers are waiting.
When they find out their hands wring
(broken heart-strings)
they scream
that they will kill him.
My mom drives to his house
day after day
for a week
and sits in her car
waiting...
waiting...
too-good.
~~~
This is the pattern:
Men, taking what they want
and disappearing.
And women
waiting...
Waiting...
and in the meantime,
weaving back together
the tattered patterns of our lives
into some semblance of wholeness.
Mending the tears,
tending to tears
flowing out like an endless river
of sorrow
while the violence rages on
and we wait.
~~~
(What are these silhouettes
that shape so much
of the landscape we live on
with their mining
and their walking away?)
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
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
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
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Gravity
[Reflections on home and relationship, in interpretation of Alfonso Cuarón’s movie Gravity.]
That we are floating
That we are held down
That we are alone
That we are one
That we are lost
That we are in the right place.
That we have a home.
That we have love.
Soil.
Soul.
Mud.
That we are all
That we are none.
Gravity.
Can't stop crying
can't stop reaching
can't stop trying to grab hold
of everything that's floating away
from me.
Tethered in the heart.
We must hold on to love.
Gravity.
That we all belong to the earth.
Gravity.
That this is home.
That we are bound.
Gravity.
Binding.
Gravity. Weighting without crushing.
Gravity. Holding us to what is ours.
Holding us to what we belong to.
Gravity.
Love.
Same thing.
Love.
Same thing.
We can float in easy silence
or we can stand
feet pressed in
in the buzzing world
alive
together.
Gravity.
Howling into the abyss.
Gravity.
Howling our hearts into the silence.
Gravity.
Howling Howling.
Wailing. Howling. Screaming. Loving. Howling. Moaning. Loving. Barking. Barking. Howling.
Howling.
Wholing.
Wholing.
Homing.
Coming home
to the heavy gravity
of particularity,
relationship.
Gravity. Coming home.
Gravity.
Surrendering to the weight
of what we belong to.
written 3/10/14
all images from gravitymovie.warnerbros.com
Monday, April 14, 2014
disaster
Today is the 102nd anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic's collision with the
iceberg at 11:40 p.m. The ship sank at 2:20 a.m. on the 15th. This is a poem by Sandy Yannone, my dear teacher and the beloved Writing Center director at Evergreen. She and I share a curious, or maybe not-so-curious, devotion to the Titanic disaster. This poem speaks to much more than that though. It's maybe one of my favorite poems ever.
Maiden Voyage
"I remember this now: a Sunday,
as they mostly always were, late fall, I was
bending over into the back seat of the car
to rearrange the automotive landscape.
Her fingers reached over, gently pressing
my spine like silver flute keys.
I heard the solo even as I felt it, fingered
for a long time, and by long I mean
still. I wish I had straightened up, turned,
and kissed her, a new song,
a tender response to everything
I’ve felt since and after and before
and after her playing my flute. Or
was her hand just warming up,
practicing, before it would leave, needing
a stable place to tap out its questions,
send telegraphs into the sky like Harold Bride
and Jack Phillips sent for days before –
tapping out jovial messages from the first
class passengers on board Titanic
in their delirious denial – so busy
the new Marconi operators could barely keep up
with the news flooding in of impending ice
like the fall before a brutal winter. Except
it was spring, as it is now, just weeks away
from the anniversary of her sinking. I wish
I had made a move that afternoon, used
the binoculars to see the iceberg in time
to turn the ship, to turn around and look
back to kiss her one first time, fold up
like a nautical chart. But I stayed half
bent in the car, asleep at the helm,
while her hand circumnavigated my back. I kept
the memory of that and wrote this poem
instead. And Jack will go down with the ship,
And Harold Bride will survive, and I’m not sure
which one I am and which one is she
or which relics of what we are to each other
will be recovered years later
from the depths of this sea, placed under
glass in an exhibit never called wreckage,
although that’s what all this is, and maybe
all a maiden voyage is ever meant to be."
Maiden Voyage
"I remember this now: a Sunday,
as they mostly always were, late fall, I was
bending over into the back seat of the car
to rearrange the automotive landscape.
Her fingers reached over, gently pressing
my spine like silver flute keys.
I heard the solo even as I felt it, fingered
for a long time, and by long I mean
still. I wish I had straightened up, turned,
and kissed her, a new song,
a tender response to everything
I’ve felt since and after and before
and after her playing my flute. Or
was her hand just warming up,
practicing, before it would leave, needing
a stable place to tap out its questions,
send telegraphs into the sky like Harold Bride
and Jack Phillips sent for days before –
tapping out jovial messages from the first
class passengers on board Titanic
in their delirious denial – so busy
the new Marconi operators could barely keep up
with the news flooding in of impending ice
like the fall before a brutal winter. Except
it was spring, as it is now, just weeks away
from the anniversary of her sinking. I wish
I had made a move that afternoon, used
the binoculars to see the iceberg in time
to turn the ship, to turn around and look
back to kiss her one first time, fold up
like a nautical chart. But I stayed half
bent in the car, asleep at the helm,
while her hand circumnavigated my back. I kept
the memory of that and wrote this poem
instead. And Jack will go down with the ship,
And Harold Bride will survive, and I’m not sure
which one I am and which one is she
or which relics of what we are to each other
will be recovered years later
from the depths of this sea, placed under
glass in an exhibit never called wreckage,
although that’s what all this is, and maybe
all a maiden voyage is ever meant to be."
Thursday, April 10, 2014
the conversation
I've been
shying away from writing because I have been standing at the edge of an
ocean, dug in, while waves of truth and love wash over me, over and over
and over, and I haven't had the time or words or perspective to
synthesize all of it, or any. But I am seeing now that it just may not be the time for
synthesis, but for living in the washing over and over, and expressing
purely whatever it is that washes through me.
Being vulnerable is probably the most important thing I've ever done.
These are the themes.
Being vulnerable is probably the most important thing I've ever done.
"As it happens, the wall between us is very thin.
Why couldn't a cry from one of us break it down?It would crumble easily, it would barely make a sound."
Rilke
~~~
Conversation is about finding understanding.
Breaking these walls
or discovering
that they were never there.
[Listen]
[Talk to me]
Everything is a conversation.
Everything is a puzzle.
How do these two,three, four things
people, pieces fit together?
A puzzle.
How does my hand fit the rock?
Perfectly. Just there.
Particularity.
My hand.
That rock.
Fit.
And so I climb
there,
that wall
and suddenly
the wall is not a wall
it is my life.
We are one.
~~~
Particularity.
Love particularly,
though
love
is not
particularly
particular
about who, what, how it loves.
Or it is.
I'll say it again though:
Love particularly.
Love the particularity of
his face
her voice
that sunset
my own words
that day.
That day.
That moment
of heart-shattering breath.
But then
love all-everything,
everyone.
Because
how could you not?
Because
one
is all,
right?
[At last, I have to admit it. Because I stood at the edge of that ocean screaming in the night and I was screaming too, and the stars were there, and I was there, and there I was: one, all.]
But don't forget what you are bound to.
Don't forget the decay of time
and who you will rot with
and where you will rot.
And don't forget
that tree
that you've placed your hands on and sung to
songs of promise
a hundred times.
And don't forget
the particular slope of that land
that hand
that rock
the curve of that neck
of that lip
of that tooth
in his mouth.
Remember it like your tongue remembers the exact shape of the space inside your molars,
the exact edge of your incisors
overlapping
[over and over]
against each other.
~~~
The problem:
If you feel each particular thing
with this particular love
then you start to love
every
single
inch
of the world.
And then
I'm afraid the particularity will start dissolve
into the stale suburbs
and crowded streets
of generality.
Because
who doesn't want to be the person
someone's swift-swimming eyes settle upon
and rest
in the perfect peace of finally finding
what they'd been seeking
?
Who wants to be just one face in the crowd
in a sea of love?
But love is a sea
washing over and over
me.
I fall
and I fall
and I fall
in love
with everything.
~~~
So how do I know
who and what I belong to
except by
continuing the conversation
hard as it may be
and it will be
and it is.
But this is probably the most important thing that I can do.
But this is probably the most important thing that I can do.
Monday, April 7, 2014
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."
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."
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
a small part
full virgo moon
low starry-night tide
lifting-wings winds
blowing rain in
feet swim
shedding
walls cell-thin
between me
and all
everything
low starry-night tide
lifting-wings winds
blowing rain in
feet swim
shedding
walls cell-thin
between me
and all
everything
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
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
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
Saturday, February 22, 2014
[not] polarities
liberation or love?
holding hard lines
or being flexible
patient
understanding?
hardened heart or hope?
holding hard lines
or being flexible
patient
understanding?
hardened heart or hope?
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"
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"
yeaaaaaaaaa
“Feminism requires precisely what patriarchy destroys in women: unimpeachable bravery in confronting male power”
- Andrea Dworkin
- Andrea Dworkin
Friday, January 10, 2014
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.
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.
Whales and Wholeness
I always regard that day as one of the best days of my life. What a privilege to live among such powerful creatures in this world.
This is why I feel what I feel (anger and indignation at humanity's continual abuse of the living earth); why I believe what I believe (that harmful human processes must be stopped at any human cost in order for the living earth to continue living); and why I do what I do (activism and awareness raising, calling for radical personal and systematic change to our lifestyles, worldviews, and power structures).
I see myself, and humanity, as a member of a life community. We must stop acting as though our voice is the only one that matters, that our choices, our drive, our technology supersede the rights of other creatures, other beings (water, air, plants, trees, microbes included) to exist and flourish in in-tact ecosystems, unpolluted, unfractured, WHOLE.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPXdHEhnhSY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DwPXdHEhnhSY&app=desktop
Friday, January 3, 2014
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 EstesWhen 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."
Friday, November 29, 2013
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
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
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Monsanto Morgue
Last night:
"THE MONSANTO MORGUE
8:58 PM
This is what it must feel like to be in a conference room in the Death Star. No one has anything to do. No one is around. But those checking names at the door have to wait and wait like something might happen. Power functions with no one. Power does not need people." (from The Stranger)
This is absurd. Kinda funny, but mostly absurd... and creepy. What? All that money and Monsanto couldn't even hire people to come to their party? Couldn't even try to make it look like their (potential) victory was legitimately based on what people want, and not based on the loads of money being poured in from out-of-state by the large corporations who use GMOs?
But really... where are all the People who actually voted "no"? And if the People voting "no" don't care enough about the issue to celebrate their victory then do they really care enough to deny other People the right to make informed choices about what we put in our bodies and where we put our money?!?
Ugh, say it again:
power does not need people
"THE MONSANTO MORGUE
8:58 PMThis is what it must feel like to be in a conference room in the Death Star. No one has anything to do. No one is around. But those checking names at the door have to wait and wait like something might happen. Power functions with no one. Power does not need people." (from The Stranger)
This is absurd. Kinda funny, but mostly absurd... and creepy. What? All that money and Monsanto couldn't even hire people to come to their party? Couldn't even try to make it look like their (potential) victory was legitimately based on what people want, and not based on the loads of money being poured in from out-of-state by the large corporations who use GMOs?
But really... where are all the People who actually voted "no"? And if the People voting "no" don't care enough about the issue to celebrate their victory then do they really care enough to deny other People the right to make informed choices about what we put in our bodies and where we put our money?!?
Ugh, say it again:
power does not need people
Monday, October 7, 2013
Cooperation
"Dinner for two: Each evening after a hard-day's hunting this pair of unlikely friends met for supper"
What I see:
Cooperation
which I believe is engrained in the evolution of life as much as competition, and is just as necessary to survive. And I think we will see more of this--animals banding together whether for survival (in an increasingly depleted environment) or perhaps companionship (in an increasingly lonely landscape). It makes sense to see this behavior popping up, in both wild animals and animals in captivity, as humans have mostly removed ourselves from a cooperative stance with the rest of life, and maintain short-sighted activities of destroying habitats/ecosystems/communities, and generally treat other lives only as resources or nuisances instead of neighbors to share with, learn from, and revere. The animals know better--they know we need each other. If we don't change our stance, then soon enough we will be the ones left completely on the outside of a web of interconnectivity and cooperation, with few ties to it and therefore little resilience against the shocks that will inevitably come in this changing world.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
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...
Thursday, August 22, 2013
bone poem
How long must I hold these words
before they become a poem--
before they creep out effortless to say
what in the idle settled bones of earth
is already known?
before they become a poem--
before they creep out effortless to say
what in the idle settled bones of earth
is already known?
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
[magnetic]
he said
but let the morning's eyes bloom
so full as they could
and almost still
beneath tree night moon
dropped every shell, like tears
after a wild stream
howling
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
"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
Saturday, August 17, 2013
images
"Don't you cherish me to sleep
Never keep your eyelids clipped
Hold me for the pops and clicks
I was only for the father's crib
Hair, old, long along
Your neck onto your shoulder blades
Always keep that message taped
Cross your breasts you won't erase
I was only for your very space
Hip, under nothing
Propped up by your other one, face 'way from the sun
Just have to keep a dialogue
Teach our bodies: haunt the cause
I was only trying to spell a loss
Joy, it's all founded
Pincher with the skin inside
You pinned me with your black sphere eyes
You know that all the rope's untied
I was only for to die beside
So itʼs storming on the lake
Little waves our bodies break
There's a fire going out,
But there's really nothing to the south
Swollen orange and light let through
Your one piece swimmer stuck to you
Sold, I'm Ever
Open ears and open eyes
Wake up to your starboard bride
Who goes in and then stays inside
Oh the demons come, they can subside"
(Bon Iver)
Never keep your eyelids clipped
Hold me for the pops and clicks
I was only for the father's crib
Hair, old, long along
Your neck onto your shoulder blades
Always keep that message taped
Cross your breasts you won't erase
I was only for your very space
Hip, under nothing
Propped up by your other one, face 'way from the sun
Just have to keep a dialogue
Teach our bodies: haunt the cause
I was only trying to spell a loss
Joy, it's all founded
Pincher with the skin inside
You pinned me with your black sphere eyes
You know that all the rope's untied
I was only for to die beside
So itʼs storming on the lake
Little waves our bodies break
There's a fire going out,
But there's really nothing to the south
Swollen orange and light let through
Your one piece swimmer stuck to you
Sold, I'm Ever
Open ears and open eyes
Wake up to your starboard bride
Who goes in and then stays inside
Oh the demons come, they can subside"
(Bon Iver)
Friday, August 16, 2013
Thursday, August 15, 2013
surface [above, beneath]
once again
this aching desire to feel
alive to feel
the whole shattering force
of the wave of the world
crashing into me
surrounding me and soaking
me through like a new tall stone on the shores
on the towering cliffs above, engulfed
surrounded
windswept sea-swept
lifted from this low.
lifted and submerged in the grasp
in the sweet arms
in the sweet suffocating breath
in the salt. oh the sea.
[why didn't I dive
in? and will I not
again?]
my lungs burn from drowning
in a scream
I swallow
salt and choke
I know will come back churning
burning to be released.
Will be released--
from my eyes or mouth or from my
incoherent erratic
violence.
[I am so tired of being silenced]
Oh aching lungs
lips
hips
heart and the tips of my fingers desperate
to find the words
the motion
the truth behind this urge.
once again.
[spinning
spinning
pink shape
circle slips off my reaching
reaching outstretched hand
and flies into the sea.]
this aching desire to feel
alive to feel
the whole shattering force
of the wave of the world
crashing into me
surrounding me and soaking
me through like a new tall stone on the shores
on the towering cliffs above, engulfed
surrounded
windswept sea-swept
lifted from this low.
lifted and submerged in the grasp
in the sweet arms
in the sweet suffocating breath
in the salt. oh the sea.
[why didn't I dive
in? and will I not
again?]
my lungs burn from drowning
in a scream
I swallow
salt and choke
I know will come back churning
burning to be released.
Will be released--
from my eyes or mouth or from my
incoherent erratic
violence.
[I am so tired of being silenced]
Oh aching lungs
lips
hips
heart and the tips of my fingers desperate
to find the words
the motion
the truth behind this urge.
once again.
[spinning
spinning
pink shape
circle slips off my reaching
reaching outstretched hand
and flies into the sea.]
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.
-Terry Tempest Williams.
Monday, August 12, 2013
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
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
Sunday, August 11, 2013
between what I am doing and what I could ("should") be doing
I am sick of being asked what I am doing right now. Living at home. Working spottily. Taking a course. Teaching myself how to hula hoop. Growing a garden. Enjoying life. Writing, reading. Thinking about how I can make the most difference. Acting in small (seeming) ways that I believe can make a difference. And all of those are fine things to be doing, and mostly acceptable to people, but only on a temporary time period. I am expected to be trying to be doing something else--namely getting a "real job" and moving out. And maybe I do want that, but maybe I don't.
I don't want to do those things just because it is what I am supposed to do in this culture, that's for damn sure, because this culture has no reason behind what it does except that it will help the "economy." And then there are all the reasons we are conditioned to believe, like the pride of supporting yourself individually, being "independent," being "successful." But all that is just more and more becoming white noise to me. I have my own ideas of what those words mean or not, and while I may not get in depth about that right now, I believe they are more substantial, meaningful, and real.
I want to do the things I do because they bring me alive, or because they help someone, or because they are beautiful, meaningful, important things to do.
What am I doing right now?
I am trying to be alive in the most full and authentic way possible. I am trying to stay true to my values and visions. I am trying to create positive change in the world. I am trying to learn in love, be open, be true. I am focusing on my body, mind, and spirit. I am creating daily practices of movement, prayer, and learning, thinking, and action.
I am living at home. I am spending time with my cats who are lonely and domesticated and stuck in this house unable to fulfill their wild nature. I am spending time with my dad while my mom is away helping her brother who is dying from a disease created by a toxic culture and environment. I am spending time with this place, which I love, which is being stripped and desecrated. I am spending time with myself, alone, trying to release and reveal the love and life that is bursting from my heart, in a way that is meaningful and effective and true and beautiful. I am trying to live into my anger and allow it to fuel my work (and my words). In my work I am trying to stop these desecrations and diseases that pervade this country, this culture, and the human world by grieving them, feeling them fully, raising awareness about them, and acting against them, or toward something better.
I am trying to heal from a sick society. I am trying to find ways to live in greater harmony with myself and human others, and animal others, and other beings, and the earth. I am trying to resist the feeling that I need to do something that I don't want to do in order to make money instead of doing what I actually want to do which is make change. I am trying to contend with my privilege of even even having the choice to not get a full-time job or of even being able to contemplate this, and of even being able to contemplate half of what I contemplate.
I am trying to contend with all the contradictions, injustices, and criminalities of western culture, American politics, and mainstream media/society bullshit in general.
I am trying to create a new story for our time based on older stories of land-based living, and newer stories of global community, to create real community, true economy, and a grounded balanced spirituality. I am trying to reignite curiosity, passion, bursting flowering expression of self and soul and earth.
I am trying. I am feeling connected, and not separate. I am feeling more alive than not, and that is certainly something.
I don't want to stay in my current circumstance for much longer, but I whatever I step into next, I want it to be on these terms.
I don't want to do those things just because it is what I am supposed to do in this culture, that's for damn sure, because this culture has no reason behind what it does except that it will help the "economy." And then there are all the reasons we are conditioned to believe, like the pride of supporting yourself individually, being "independent," being "successful." But all that is just more and more becoming white noise to me. I have my own ideas of what those words mean or not, and while I may not get in depth about that right now, I believe they are more substantial, meaningful, and real.
I want to do the things I do because they bring me alive, or because they help someone, or because they are beautiful, meaningful, important things to do.
What am I doing right now?
I am trying to be alive in the most full and authentic way possible. I am trying to stay true to my values and visions. I am trying to create positive change in the world. I am trying to learn in love, be open, be true. I am focusing on my body, mind, and spirit. I am creating daily practices of movement, prayer, and learning, thinking, and action.
I am living at home. I am spending time with my cats who are lonely and domesticated and stuck in this house unable to fulfill their wild nature. I am spending time with my dad while my mom is away helping her brother who is dying from a disease created by a toxic culture and environment. I am spending time with this place, which I love, which is being stripped and desecrated. I am spending time with myself, alone, trying to release and reveal the love and life that is bursting from my heart, in a way that is meaningful and effective and true and beautiful. I am trying to live into my anger and allow it to fuel my work (and my words). In my work I am trying to stop these desecrations and diseases that pervade this country, this culture, and the human world by grieving them, feeling them fully, raising awareness about them, and acting against them, or toward something better.
I am trying to heal from a sick society. I am trying to find ways to live in greater harmony with myself and human others, and animal others, and other beings, and the earth. I am trying to resist the feeling that I need to do something that I don't want to do in order to make money instead of doing what I actually want to do which is make change. I am trying to contend with my privilege of even even having the choice to not get a full-time job or of even being able to contemplate this, and of even being able to contemplate half of what I contemplate.
I am trying to contend with all the contradictions, injustices, and criminalities of western culture, American politics, and mainstream media/society bullshit in general.
I am trying to create a new story for our time based on older stories of land-based living, and newer stories of global community, to create real community, true economy, and a grounded balanced spirituality. I am trying to reignite curiosity, passion, bursting flowering expression of self and soul and earth.
I am trying. I am feeling connected, and not separate. I am feeling more alive than not, and that is certainly something.
I don't want to stay in my current circumstance for much longer, but I whatever I step into next, I want it to be on these terms.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Mount Si wildfire.
Fire on the mountain. Smoky river valley. Wildfire reminds me to accept.
(Some things.)
I would rather lose trees this way than by the mindless expansion of sprawl. Why didn't everyone get all up in arms when they clear-cut the ridge for homes? Suburbanization is a wildfire, but worse. At least the fire knows to leave fertility in its wake.
Trust me, my heart breaks for the mountain too, but my heart has been breaking every day for years for all the things being burned that aren't in our backyards, or right in front of our eyes; the things that are hidden but are the direct fuel for the monstrosity of industrial civilization--people, animals, trees, places enslaved, mined, and burned for the convenience of our daily lives.
I am guilty if anyone is.
I too have been basking in ease of summer.
And well, this season, this year, feels like the first really summer of my life (of my mind) since childhood--finally feeling joyful and alive. Finally happy.
I deserve it.
But so do the people working in the sweatshops to make my fashion, the minerals manipulated into the tools of my passions.
I am finding peace
and the world burns.
How does this work?
Wildfire reminds me to accept.
(All things).
(Some things.)
I would rather lose trees this way than by the mindless expansion of sprawl. Why didn't everyone get all up in arms when they clear-cut the ridge for homes? Suburbanization is a wildfire, but worse. At least the fire knows to leave fertility in its wake.
Trust me, my heart breaks for the mountain too, but my heart has been breaking every day for years for all the things being burned that aren't in our backyards, or right in front of our eyes; the things that are hidden but are the direct fuel for the monstrosity of industrial civilization--people, animals, trees, places enslaved, mined, and burned for the convenience of our daily lives.
I am guilty if anyone is.
I too have been basking in ease of summer.
And well, this season, this year, feels like the first really summer of my life (of my mind) since childhood--finally feeling joyful and alive. Finally happy.
I deserve it.
But so do the people working in the sweatshops to make my fashion, the minerals manipulated into the tools of my passions.
I am finding peace
and the world burns.
How does this work?
Wildfire reminds me to accept.
(All things).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)