The Rune of Ending

I see now that posting poems  from APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN and Other Mythic Voices  has become a means for me to explore my memoirs as well as my poetry.  I find it good to see where these poems came from......they are all touchstones along the way.

This one was an Obituary for the end of my second marriage.  I wrote it shortly after the divorce was finalized, and just before I left my home and the community we shared  on the East Coast and headed West with my cat and worldly goods in my van,  for destinations  unknown.  I felt very much that I had to begin a new life at that time, and I had to give honor to the life that was over with the divorce.  Which included grief, anger, and remorse for my own unconscious  and sometimes abusive behavior.  Sometimes the end of a relationship is as much a gift for growth as the beginning.  

Eventually I ended up in California, back in Berkeley, where I had started from more than  20 years before and a whole new adventure began.   But that is another story, fraught with synchronicities and creativity.  But first I had to grieve and praise.

I have never done marriage well, and I bear my ex no ill will, indeed, I think of him with affection.   I doubt he shares my opinion, which is ok.  At the end of the day, are relationships really "failures" when they end?  They last however long they last.  Or don't last.   What we take away, be it friendship or enmity, memories kept or discarded,  is experience and growth.  At the time I wrote this poem he had just met a woman who, I believe, he is still with, and I am glad that he found a partnership I could not give him. 

 

The Rune of Ending

 What can be said, now

when all words are spent

and the word has finally been spoken: 

we go now to our separate houses

relieved.  At least a course has been named.

 

Our lives are severed, our story is told.

We will each surely tell that story, and strive and laugh

and talk late into the night, and kiss lips salty

with tears and love;

but not with each other, not again.

 

Here the tearing ends, here ends remorse and reprisal,

here end dreams and plans.

 

We will not travel to Scotland,

Walk together among ancient monoliths

in the white mists of our imagination.

We will not walk, again, on a warm beach in Mexico,

toasting each other with margaritas.

That was once.  It has to be enough.

 

I will not call you mine, husband.

You will not call me yours.

And our cat is now your cat, our teapot is now my teapot.

I touch a potted plant,

remembering its place on our breakfast table.

We divide the spoils, humane, courteous, fair.

 

A canyon has opened between us, we are each old enough

to know its name, to view its depths without passion.

There is no bridge to cross this time.

 

Beloved, I must now forgive myself as well as you,

cast my stone into this abyss

and bless the woman who has not yet come

to stand by your side,

wave with grace from across this canyon's lip,

then turn,

and walk my own path.

(1997)

from APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN and Other Mythic Voices 

"Mything Links": Mythic Resources

 
Since I'm neck high in mythology most of the time when I venture into the studio, I felt like re-introducing one of my favorite sites,  Kathleen Jenks "MYTHING LINKS"
site.  In fact, I feel like sharing here more sites dedicated to "mything" self and culture,  all links to journals,  videos, and individuals that have been important to me.  For those, like myself, who walk the "mythic ways", enjoy!

* Mythic Passages
* Mything Links

* Clarissa Pinkola Estes

* Kathy Jones and Mother Land
* Mythic Mojo: Catherine Svehla
* The Imaginal Institute-
* Joseph Campbell Foundation
* Mythopoetics
* The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts
* The Journal of Mythic Arts

*Emergence Magazine
*The New Stories Foundation
* Parabola Magazine
* Black Earth Institute 
* Mythic Musing Blog

* Immanence:  A Journal of Applied Myth, Story and Folklore

* In Celebration of Marilou Awiakta

"Our challenge is to bring the Goddess back to life, to envision, create, and inhabit the re-membered living  body of the Earth."

Starhawk

And just as the false assumption that we are not connected to the Earth has led to the ecological crisis, so the equally false assumption that we are not connected to each other has led to our social crisis.

--Al Gore, EARTH IN BALANCE

Mango Season

 

There was a powerful Monsoon storm this afternoon, it rolled in perfectly on time (between 4 and 6 as always), the Great Thunder Gods announcing themselves as they came.  Suddenly the skies opened and rain came roaring down, bring it's blessings and cool air and winds, and once again the streets filled with rushing water, the sidewalk became a river, and it all ended within an hour as the Monsoon moved on.  I was reminded of the same phenomenon in an entirely different place,  more than 20 years ago when I was in Bali.  

I went to Bali to study sacred  mask arts and traditional masked theatre, and worked for a while with Ida Bagus Anom, a Brahman traditional mask artist, although Anom was anything except traditional! Bali truly embraced me!  Within a matter of 2 months there I had had a show and performance at Buka Creati Gallery in Ubud, became friends with an Australian healer and an Australian artist whose work was all about the Goddess, I'd travelled through the country, had many conversations with both Balinese and Ex-pats, and was completely in love with Bali's art, culture, and spirituality.  I remember being at the airport, getting ready to board the plane, and thinking "Why am I leaving?  I am so much more at home here than I am in Tucson?"  I assumed I would be back, but I never did go back, and I will always have some regrets about getting on that plane.  In time, I became responsible for the care of my brother, and then my mother - it was while visiting her at an assisted living facility where she eventually needed to live that I wrote this poem.  It's  not about monsoons, but about Mangos, which are literally the fruit of Monsoons, the gifts of the Gods.

Mango Season

 

Parking on the second level,

I struggle sometimes with fate and duty.

 

Turning the key, my tropical imagination

carries me far away

to wander among volcanic archipelagos,

I remember the Island of the Gods

in mango season.

 

Here, summer heat rises

from waterless pavements.

I walk to the "Memory Care" unit

a long beige hallway, too familiar now.

 

Bewildered eyes regard me from wheelchairs.

The old man in the white striped shirt says,

 

"Take me home. I don't belong here".

 

If I could, if I only could,

I would take us all home.

 

Instead, I bring fruit

imagining for them

mango season

in all its splendor.

 

(2011)

from APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN and Other Mythic Voices 

La Llorona

La Llorona

 

Sometimes you walk out

under an old, cold moon to call.

You call, but there is no answer,

no heartbeat, no rhythm to follow or find.

 

Dry.  All you hear is traffic, dust,

Smoke obscuring the distance. 

Your time is eaten by long lists of little things.

The sounds of human discord ring like a broken bell

where once the lucid air sang among the stones,

this you know with bone knowledge,

bone history, you know this with your feet.

 

Where once the lucid air sang among the subtle stones,

metates, petroglyphs.  Where once a river flowed.

Even here, a river, before the cattle,

cars, too much thankless taking.

 

As if the waters would always flow.

As if the breast would never run dry.

As if, as if there were no children lost

And yet unborn, their open mouths,

Crying just beneath your feet.

 

Dry.  I look into my life, the river is dry.

I have also been eaten. There is no magic to replenish

these years made of too many little things. 

Sometimes, you hold your hands to the mountain

You ask, "whose hands are these?"

 

Am I not also this land?

One small and moving piece of it?

You call, but there is no answer.

 

Where have they gone?  Coyote moon celebrant,

even Snake and Scorpion, who leave all stones best unturned?

Plastic katchinas made in China invent them.

Spirals written among the holy rocks are silent,

where old men push little balls across green grass

among the desert's drought.

 

Here, where once a river ran,

A river that ghosts among the stars.

(2002)

In looking at my 2018 illustrated poetry collection  APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN and Other Mythic Voices  I've had the urge to share some of them here (well, some of them I've already shared over the years but they are finally finished  now!) Since very few people will ever read it, and I'm not doing any copyright infringements, I think I will share some of them here.  This poem "ghosts" a river that sometimes I glimpse, a river lost in the dry arroyos of consumer culture.  Perhaps, not my most optimistic of poems.............

 

 

Sig Lonegren on Sacred Sites and Consciousness

"My understanding was that the driving factor in the construction of purpose-built sacred spaces in prehistoric times was the loss of the ability of more and more of humanity to connect on a conscious level with the world of spirit.  I felt, and still do, that the archaeoastronomy, sacred geometry and Earth Energies all enhanced the ability of this connection as we became more and more left-brain/rational."

Over the years I've included in this Blog articles by Sig Lonegren,  who I consider an important teacher for me.  Recently I found a 2012 UTube Interview with him, and felt like sharing it here.  For those interested in Earth Mysteries, follow the links to Sig Lonegren, his writings and interviews or videos..........and you will travel down a fascinating path that challenges paradigms.

Sig is a dowser and a geomancer, and he has spent many years exploring  sacred places, in England, Europe, and in the U.S.  As a dowser myself, I've experienced shifts in energy - which means also shifts in  consciousness and perception -many times when visiting areas that are geomantically potent, be it the henge of Avebury,  or the labyrinth at Unity Church in Tucson. Sig demonstrated that Sites are able to change consciousness (raise energy) because they are intrinsically geomantically potent, and/or  they also become potent because of human interaction with the innate intelligence of place, what the Greeks called "genus loci".  Geomantic reciprocity - as human beings bring intentionality, reverence and focus to a particular place, building sacred architecture, or engaging in ritual.  Sacred places have both an innate and a developed capacity to transform consciousness. 

Why would the ancient people who built Stonehenge spend generations hauling monstrous (and apparently specific) stones hundreds of miles to pose them in  circles, laid  in various alignments with the skies, seasons, and land? According to Sig, who references psychologist Julian Jayne's controversial 1970's book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, possibly because, as human culture and language became increasingly complex,  we began to lose mediumistic consciousness,  a daily, conversant Gnosis.  With the gradual ascendancy of left-brained reasoning he suggests the ancients developed a concern with how to continue contact with the gods, the ancestors, the numina of the land. 

 Stonehenge was a temple on a sacred landscape - according to Sig, it may also represent a "last ditch effort" to keep in touch with the spirit world as communal experience.   As the rift between personal gnosis and spiritual contact deepened,  gradually  Gnosis was replaced by complex religious institutions that removed individuals from the earlier tribal mind, and rendered spiritual authority to priests who were often viewed as  the sole representatives of  the  Gods or God.  

 As Sig has commented:

"I have been arguing for decades that these (sacred) spaces were special places that enhance the possibility of connection to the other side - to the One.  Please judge what follows in that context. You may well find that it challenges some of your paradigms you hold about the past.  It combines two separate lines of investigation that support the perception that these spaces really “did what’s on the box.”  The gods came to earth.  And us humans in great numbers communicated directly with them.  

Since the mid-seventies when I began work on my Masters’ degree on Sacred Space, one of the major themes I have chewed on has been the shift from the dominance of that more intuitive right brain in prehistory to the analytical left brain brought to us by (IMHO) the increase of influence of the Patriarchy.  The book that really turned me on initially was The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, first published in 1976. 

I don’t agree with some of what he has to say, for example, his choice of a particular word to describe how our prehistoric ancestors received their right brain information - "hallucinations."  I don't think that's what they were.  But on the whole, I found his thesis most useful in forming my perception of this global shift in consciousness.   It began with the Neolithic Revolution - the increasing use of agriculture rather than hunter gathering.  It facilitated a shift in consciousness.  My understanding was that the driving factor in the construction of purpose-built sacred spaces in prehistoric times was the loss of the ability of more and more of humanity to connect on a conscious level with the world of spirit.  I felt, and still do, that the archaeoastronomy, sacred geometry and Earth Energies all enhanced the ability of this connection as we became more and more left-brain/rational.  I wrote about this at great length in my first book, Spiritual Dowsing, initially published in 1986."

Sig Lonegren (2012)

www.geomancy.org

https://youtu.be/9sMGxeONXrA

References:

Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. (Available from Amazon Books.)

Lonegren, Sig. 2007. Spiritual Dowsing. Glastonbury, England: Gothic Image. History of the earth energies, healing and other uses of dowsing today. A book for the spiritual pilgrim. Initially published 1986. ISBN 978-0-906362-70-9.  (Available from Amazon books).

Afghanistan: Memory and Tragedy

Photo by Steve McCurry  www.stevemccurry.com

 

I am very deeply saddened by the fall of Kabul, and of the country of Afghanistan, this past week to the Taliban, a violent, feudal, fundamentalist regime.  While it was probably  inevitable that it would happen, as Afghanstan is a country that has been devastated with war ever since the coup of 1973,  I do not speak to that here, or try to analyze the sad desolation of the country since that time.  And while debate and blame rages on the internet about the U.S. withdrawal, leaving the people of Afghanistan  to their fate, while internet voices loudly blame the Bush presidency and the military complex for invading in the first  place,  and equally, while voices on the internet condemn Biden's presidency for withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years.............I don't chose to speak to that either in this post.  

I just grieve for the people of Afghanistan, some of whom I knew long ago in my youth.  I grieve especially for the women and girls, who will now be utterly oppressed by a patriarchal religion and regime that regards women as, in essence, slaves.  And affords them virtually no freedom. They will have no sovereignty any longer, and many will be punished or killed for whatever freedoms they briefly enjoyed during the American occupation.   I grieve for the hope so many Afghans had when they were liberated, at least in the urban centers, in the early 2000's.  I grieve for the intellectuals, the doctors and teachers and artists and writers and scientists, who will now be forced to flee, if they can, from a feudal oppressive religious regime that will allow no free thought or freedom of speech.  I grieve for the genocide that will now come, indeed, is no doubt going on as I write, as people who are accused of being associated with the Americans are killed by the "rightous warriors" of Allah.

Or "God", or "Mohammed" or "Yaweh" or even, sadly "Jesus"  -  all the womanless, merciless   gods of authoritarian Patriarchy, concretized into religions that their enlightened Prophets of long ago would no doubt be horrified by.  All the suffering, all the endless violence in the name of these "gods", whether it is the burning of witches at the Inquisition, or the  enslavement of the women of Kabul.

I GRIEVE FOR THEM ALL, AND PRAY, EVERY DAY, FOR THE RETURN OF THE GODDESS TO OUR BROKEN WORLD. 

Photo by Steve McCurry  www.stevemccurry.com

 

1966:  A Memory 

Photo of Istalif area

Istalif, outside of Kabul, was famous for its blue glass artisans, and its beautiful blue pottery.  Maybe it still is. I don’t know – my memories are of bulky azure glasses, and thick strands of cerulean beads that jingled on the camel harnesses, and occasionally the wrists, of nomadic Kootchi women passing through Kabul, where I lived as a teenager, as they made their seasonal routes  in caravans.  Probably they no longer do this journey through Afghanistan, which has been war torn for so very long.  I don't know, but I remember the Kootchis,  and I remember the camels.  

My father worked for U.S. A.I.D., and I attended an international school in Kabul.  This was during the very hopeful and prosperous days of the Sorbonne educated King Mohammed Zahir Shah  who was dedicated to modernizing the country, and brought into Kabul embassies and aid from countries aroundt he world.  The American Compound and community in Kabul was extensive, and included my father, who worked with the Teacher's College at the University of Kabul.   It was an exciting time for the country - in Kabul women were becoming educated, taking off the veil, western technologies and medicine were flooding into the urban centers and being dispersed into the more rural areas, and even the arts flourished in Kabul. 

And I was just another "embassy brat", finishing up my last high school  year at A.I.S.K. (the American International School of Kabul).  I was 16,  and like all 16 year olds, I thought mostly about romance, adventure, and what was "new and happening", which at the time was  the Beatles, mini skirts, and Swinging London. 

Just before I left Afghanistan, my family went for an excursion to Istalif,  a village not too far from Kabul.  It was late spring, and waters rushed down in cold, lively streams from fierce mountains still snow-clad.  Many  westerners went to Istalif to sight-see, and there was a rather  exclusive restaurant that catered to foreigners there - it offered a good view, and  coffee and pastries.

Shop in Istalif with famous turquoise wares

Debbie Simon (my best friend) and I were, like all 16 year olds, eager to get away from the boring conversations of our elders. Dressed in our French coats, our high black boots and mod turtlenecks, with adolescent stealth we escaped the tabled terraces for a while, to walk below on  granite boulders that overlooked a stream.  We were young, fashionable, and elated with the prospect of leaving Afghanistan.  Debbie was headed home to New York, and I was going to London to attend a secretarial college.  

Debbie’s father worked for the Embassy, and both our fathers had completed their assignments.  We were going back to the states at last!   Back to  the Rolling Stones and boys and beaches and college sooner or later.   As we talked excitedly, not so far away was a familiar sight – a group of local women doing laundry by the stream. Seeing us approach, they had dropped their chadoris over their faces, and now resembled a collection of multi-colored tents huddled among the  rocks.  We paid no attention to them, and they returned to their work.

I didn’t notice when one “tent” disengaged from the rest and quietly approached us.   But we grew silent as she came to stand,  silently, about fifteen feet before us, her face hidden under layers of pleated cloth, an opaque net before her eyes.   As we watched in surprise, her hands emerged from the chador to lift it above her face.  

Before us stood a girl of 16 or 17.  Black eyes lined in kohl shone with humor.   She smiled shyly at each of us as she lifted her veil,  and then she dropped it before her face again, turned and walked back to the group of veiled women as Debbie and I stood  silently on our rock by the stream.

I don't know why she approached us. Perhaps she just wanted to let us know that she also was young and pretty, reminding us of our common youth, and yet living in worlds so far apart.   I never forgot that moment - it was a gift.  

I also never have forgotten the enormous privilege my life has been.

Photo by Steve McCurry  www.stevemccurry.com

Photos by Steve McCurry  www.stevemccurry.com

Prayers for the Dying - 7 Years later

"Prayers for the Dying" (triptech) 2014

I remembered that exactly 7 years ago, in 2014,  I had life support withdrawn from my brother, Glenn, and had to watch him die.  Glenn suffered a massive stroke that left him brain dead in 2008.  But because he did not leave a living will, and my mother refused to remove life support, he was artificially sustained by life support for 6 years.  In 2014 I was able, finally, to remove life support and allow his body to die - although I very much felt his spirit had left long before that event.  I made a series of sculptures for him, sculptures that were really prayers made visible to, I hoped, help him to leave this world.  I just felt like remembering today, and sharing those sculptures.  I copy below the post from 2014 that still describes the event, and the sculptures, pretty well.  Wherever Glenn is, I know that his suffering is long past him, and I believe he wishes me very well.  

============================================================= 

 August 2014

 

   Do not stand at my grave and weep,
    I am not there; I do not sleep.
    I am a thousand winds that blow,
    I am the diamond glints on snow,
    I am the sun on ripened grain,
    I am the gentle autumn rain.
    When you awaken in the morning’s hush
    I am the swift uplifting rush
    Of quiet birds in circling flight.
    I am the soft star-shine at night.
    Do not stand at my grave and cry,
    I am not there; I did not die.

    Ann Frye

"Form Is Empty" (2009)

In 2008 my brother suffered a brain stem stroke.  Because he did not have a living will, since then he has been on complete life support.  In 2009 he was pronounced brain dead.  My mother is now in a nursing home with Alzheimer's, and my other brother has finally agreed to allow me to withdraw life support for Glenn, which we will do on the 15th of this month.  

 Above is a card I made for Glenn  in 2009 when I created a "Dia De Los Muertos" Alter at Wesley as their resident artist.  The images reflect things that Glenn loved, and dreams, such as travelling to India, that he had.  

Below is one of the three sculptures I made in 2009 for Glenn, honoring his long interest in Buddhism. All of them have tiles with words and phrases pressed into the clay, symbols and antique designs, all of them, like pottery shards, broken, disordered, "de-constructing".  In this realm of being, words and symbols are what we construct our ideas of life from, the "shells" we create our identities from.  In  "Form is Empty" I saw the hand of the dying reaching through the shattering of form toward the offering hand of the Divine, the greater Self. 

It's been such a long time that I have grown numb to it, to be honest, worn out.  I've tried all kinds of strategies to come to grips with the situation, including calling in a medium several times who told me that Glenn was not in his body, and that he had "crossed over".  I was comforted by that.  Towards the end of his life Glenn was a bitter recluse, and I know that he was tired of the life he had.  That made the situation that much more awful to me.  I'm relieved that this is soon going to be over.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” 

Gospel of Thomas

I suppose it sounds hard, but people take a long time to die, and after a while, you just have to go on with life, or you lose your life to the dying.  I was my beloved grandmother's caretaker for 5 years as teenager, and I learned after a while to be "selfish" enough to allow myself an adolescence.  To survive in a family with much dysfunction.  In many ways, Glenn was the most sensitive sibling, talented and intelligent,  and I'm not sure he did "survive" - so many of the things he wanted to do he never was able to.  

I often think of the quote above from the Gospel of Thomas.  I think Jesus was talking about the great creative drive that every being incarnates with, a kind of individual purpose or purposes we all have.  We have to be responsible to the needs of family and tribe.........but we also have to honor what Joseph Campbell called "following your bliss", your unique path and calling. Sometimes the demands of family or tribe are wrong, the values inappropriate.  Sometimes relationships keep us from evolving..............In examining my life, I'm glad I was both rebellious and "selfish".   I wish Glenn had been able to do so as well, and I think of him free, and able to create a new life in the other realms.

Form Is Empty

"The Heart Sutra" (2009)

One story I remember was in 2011,  when I began to remodel my mother's house after she went into assisted living.  My other brother, David, left Glenn's room exactly as it was, including a locked closet that was full of guns, reflecting the paranoia and isolation Glenn felt. David refused to open it.   Finally, when he went back to California, I decided to clear out Glenn's room no matter what David thought, and I painted it a bright sky blue, as a ritual, to embody peace, and the open sky, release.  As I was painting around the door of the locked closet.........it very gently opened!

I took the guns, sold them, and sent the money to a couple of charities, including sponsoring a girl in Nepal, which I felt was another way to change the energy, to "open the way" for Glenn's spirit to be free.  I like to think, am pretty sure, that that opening door was Glenn's way of letting me know that all was well.  Unfortunately, my other brother refuses to consider anything he thinks is "metaphysical nonsense", so he's unable to benefit from experiences like this.

 In the 2nd piece, "The Heart Sutra",  I used the hand of a 90 year old woman and a 9 year old child.  The Heart is what lies between.

One of the things I hate about any kind if  fundamentalism  is the endless heavy footprint  of patriarchal preoccupation with sin, punishment, torture, etc.  The Old Testament tribal war gods have a lot of rules, and no mercy.   I've met people so terrified of death because they feel they'll be tortured forever  by some vicious god or devil. 

 How much wiser the Egyptian concept of Maat, who holds a feather and a scale before the door of  death and new life.  With "the Questions of Maat", the Goddess helps souls to weigh the lives they've had, to understand, to "fore-give" and be "fore-given".  She is both grief and praise, and as I understand the word "forgive", it means to not hold on, but to release the energy in order to give it fore-ward, into new form, new love, new creation.   When at last each soul is  "as light as the feather of Maat", the door opens, and they can pass on.

"Holy Mother Take Me Home" (2009)

A River Runs Through Us

   

"Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. "

Norman MacLean, "A River Runs Through It"

The last piece, "Holy Mother Take Me Home",   is a prayer to the Goddess, the Source.  I used a child's hand again, and the broken shards, with all the words, float down the river of light.  We're all children, really, all children.  She reaches out Her hand to take us Home.  It doesn't matter what you've done, where you've been, what kind of life you think you've led or not led.  She waits.  

It's been a long journey Glenn.  Be at peace.  

"We have been raised to think that our body ended here, with this bag of skin, or with our possessions or education or house.  Now we begin to realize that our body is the world."

Joanna Macy