Venus Synchronicities.........

I'm still here in California. And strangely, I seem to be in the middle of a Syncronicity Cluster based on the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite/Venus.  I think, when this kind of thing keeps going on, one must pay attention.  

"Venus" by Lorraine Capparell 

I received a notice from artist Lorraine Capparell  about her beautiful sculpture Venus.  Oddly, I used another of her sculptures to illustrate the previous entry. 

I received a day later an order for an Aphrodite mask.  And a notice about a Circle Work workshop with Jalaja Bonheim, who wrote Aphrodite's Daughters, a wonderful book I revisited a few weeks ago when visiting my friend Joanne, who had it on her kitchen table because she is doing research with the book. (I also posted about her a month or so back)

 Then I received a notice about an Aphrodite Workshop occurring this coming weekend, sponsored by two women I know from Reclaiming - one is an acquaintance, Laurie Lovecraft (an appropriate name for a priestess of the Goddess of Love).  I'm tempted to brave the truly horrendous L.A. traffic to attend - Laurie and Tami's description of working with the heart to open the path to creativity, and to create beauty.......is  just the healing affirmation I may need.

And how terribly wounded Aphrodite is in our world.  As I write this, I reflect on how, a few days ago, I was lying on the bed in a motel room, flipping through the TV channels.  There were no less than 5 programs within that hour about young women, girlfriends,  wives  and an exotic dancer murdered by men.  A stranger from another culture would think that raping and killing young women was the national sport. 

In fact, now that I think about it, the need to destroy Aphrodite in every way is at the very heart of patriarchal culture.  Because a culture that values love, beauty, and Eros............is a culture that would not be able to make war, or guns, because it would be a culture with great reverence for life.

Here is a poem I wrote for Aphrodite in 1999:

APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN

Please allow me to take off my shoes,

this faux marble pose 

this modern, pragmatic mask.

Permit me my ruin.

Let us not consider this therapy

  or revolution

do not ask me to give you space

let us not discuss those who came before

and those who might follow.

Let us not talk of past lives.

I have fallen on hard times.

If you come to my temple

  just

let me make for you an ocean.

Half seen in the darkness

your body, a mystery

true, tangible, radiant,

lined with the rings of your life.

You are beautiful,

beautiful to be a man.

Darling, even in this era, I will not believe

that love is disposable,

that sex is safe

that lovers are trains, rolling past each other

to some certain station 

  I remember,

  I almost remember my river source

My skin forms the word anew,

  yes,

  enter me

  as if you were coming home