Old Photos

 Griffith Park, 1928

Girl and Horse, 1928

by Margaret Atwood

You are younger than I am, you are
Someone I never knew,
you stand under a tree,
your face half-shadowed,
Holding the horse by its bridle.

Why do you smile? Can’t you
See the apple blossoms falling around
You, snow, sun, snow,
listen, the tree dries
and is being burnt, the wind

Is bending your body,
your face ripples like water
Where did you go?

But no, you stand there
exactly the same,
you can’t hear me,

forty years ago you were caught by light
And fixed in that secret place
where we live, where we believe
nothing can change, grow older.

(On the other side
of the picture, the instant
is over, the shadow
of the tree has moved.

You wave,

then turn and ride
out of sight through the vanished
orchard, still smiling
as though you do not notice)

old photos,

escaping a tin box:

stories with wings

 butterflies, or white moths

fluttering at the glass

lighter than air, these memories

quietly,
through 

an open window

(2011)

Vijali's World Wheel

Many years ago I saw Vijali Hamilton become GAIA, as she began her "World Wheel" project, a series of artworks she co-created around the world with many people.  She has been weaving the World Wheels for over 30 years now, and has founded the World Wheel Center near Santa Fe, New Mexico.  

Vijali as "GAIA"

I just felt like sharing her work here. Perhaps one of my favorite points on her first Wheel was when she went to India, where she met a group of Baul musicians, and ended up staying in their village, and creating with them.  

Here's what she had to say about it:

Creating A Mandala House For A Village — Falling In Love with a Village 

West Bengal, India

"In West Bengal, India, I fell in love with a group of destitute Baul folk musicians who were singing for money on the train. I kept giving them coins to stay in my compartment and eventually they invited me to their village.

They were as generous as they were poor. When the villagers heard that a guest had arrived, they spread a mat under a tree for me. Women brought spiced tea, and the children of the village put jasmine garlands around my neck and danced and sang. A full moon appeared and the night sky shimmered with stars. It was one of the most beautiful evenings of my life.

I asked them the three questions I ask in every country. They answered, "We come from the womb of our mother. We really come from the mother who is the Earth. We are part of the Great Goddess. Our essence is the Great Kali." I also asked, "What is the imbalance in your lives and in your village?" They replied: "We are exhausted and under strain all the time because we have to go out and wander so we can make money. When we come back, we don't always have enough money and food for our families." And my third question, what could heal their problem? They answered, "To really love our singing and not worry about the future. Just to keep on doing what we are doing, but give up anxiety and be God conscious every moment of our day."

They found a hut for me and I moved into the village. I became aware that the tribal village was made up of mixed castes. I kept imagining them all sitting down in one circle. Finally I saw what was needed - a communal house, a commons where they could come together, practice and perform their music, have their own pujas (ceremonies), and hold school for their children. This is how I came to build the Mandala House in the village.

At first the Bauls just watched. According to the caste system they only sing, they don't do any physical work. But as I, their honored guest, worked with the low castes in the mud, someone came to help. Then his brother came, then the father, and pretty soon someone else in the village would stop and say, "Oh, my goodness, you don't do it that way; here, let me show you." And they would help. That's how it happened."

Pilgrimage to the Callanish Stones

"Older yet and lovelier far, 
this Mystery, 
and I will not forget"

Robin Williamson ("5 Denials on Merlin's Grave")

I have always wanted to see the Callanish Stones, far out in Scotland's Outer Hebrides.  The Stones (Clachan Chalanais or Tursachan Chalanais in Gaelic) are on the west coast of the isle of Lewis  in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.   Construction of the site took place between 2900 and 2600 BC, though there were possibly earlier buildings before 3000 BC. Amazing.

No, let me amend that. 

I have always wanted to lay my head on the green breast of the Great Mother, dreaming Annu, and stand with my hand on a great stone made of the oldest rock in all of Europe, raised by Annu in the mists of time, and  raised again  in  mystery by an  ancient people laboring on a far island lonely in  the windswept Northern Sea long before even Stonehenge was raised.  I  want to see the Summer Solstice Sun rise between those stones,  or see the moon rise between those portals to the the heart of the Earth they en-circle.  I do not believe that one can "see" the Callenish Stones.  I think one must go in pilgrimage, perhaps not on one's knees, but bringing an offering, and an awed and reverent mind, ready to receive vision and instruction from the Numina that surely still live there.  And perhaps only poetry can do justice to the experience.

I've been wondering why I've felt so strongly about going to England this summer.  I feel great honor at being able to share my work at the Goddess Conference, and fascinated by the opportunity to learn about standing stones and crop circles and earth energies at the  Glastonbury Symposium.  It seems a nice symmetry as well that the person who introduced me to dowsing and Earth Spirituality all those years  ago, Sig Lonegren, also lives with his wife in Glastonbury.  Circles.  But gradually I've been realizing that this trip is really a pilgrimage.  

In a previous post I mentioned a vision I had back in 1989.  In that very tangible vision, I saw myself flying over a circle of standing stones in a very green place - people in white were walking through the green to gather there.  Then I saw myself flying over layers and layers of South Western petroglyphs - they just kept receding into the red rock, an overlay of  Story.  Finally, I flew over a freeway system in Los Angeles, but the pattern of the freeways became a figure 8, the infinity sign.  Patterns, Pictographs, to it seemed a language of Gaia speaking through the "works of man".   Spider Woman's Hands.

Dreams and visions have many dimensions of meaning, and they speak in a language of symbol and myth with an order that is not always within linear time.  Having said that, I re-member, as I write this, that long ago vision I had while sitting in my truck at a rest stop in Virginia (not very romantic, that part.  But sometimes you don't have to climb mountains, apparently.)

Most of my blue-eyed ancestors came over to this country from England.  The family were shipbuilders.  There's a lake in New Hampshire, a lake in California, and a lake in Minnesota named after adventurous family members.....they got around, and apparently also liked to be near water.   And a few ancestors, who I know less about, were already here.  And I more or less grew up in Los Angeles, so there is that dimension to my personal history.
 
With my Spider Woman project, I think I've done my best to penetrate "layers of story" here in the Southwest, for Grandmother Spider Woman, in Hopi and Dinah mythology, and perhaps with the prehistoric Mississippian peoples as well.......is often viewed as none other than Mother Earth Herself, the Creatrix/Weaver at the center of things. 

Perhaps this pilgrimage will reveal more of what that 1989 vision meant.  And perhaps some of the meanings of that vision I've already lived.   More on this as it unfolds.

Here BTW is a wonderful magazine about Earth Mysteries particularly in Great Britatin:    Northern Earth

 

I'm grateful to Rupert Soskin and Michael Bott for their 2007 film "Standing with the Stones", and in particular, the video excerpt below on the Callenish Stones.   To read more about Rupert Soskin, visit his website: 

http://www.standingwithstones.com/Landing.html

We have a beautiful mother
Her teeth the white stones
at the edge of the water
the summer grasses
her plentiful hair.

We have a beautiful mother
Her green lap immense
Her brown embrace eternal
Her blue body

everything we know.

Alice Walker

Robin Williamson & Silbury Hill

Photo by John Haxby

I bought my ticket to England, to the Goddess Conference, and a ticket for the Glastonbury Symposium as well.  Whew!  Now Visa owns my soul, no doubt.  But ever since I read The Veiw from Atlantis  in the early 70's by John Michell, I've wanted to visit Silbury Hill, and walk among the megalithic stones of that  landscape.  And one of the voices that captured my imagination was the Scottish Bard, Robin Williamson., and his wonderful narrative poem "5 Denials on Merlin's Grave".  Here the great Bard tells a much shorter tale, with images of  Silbury by Glaznoz. 

Perfect!

A few new masks

 "Isis"

 Sometimes I think the Archetypal realm comes dangerously close to opening a door stage left into my waking life.  I remember when I opened my gallery/performance space in 1998 I found that making a space was like an invocation to the Goddesses and Gods. In other words, "If you build it, They will come". My experience bears this out.........but just make sure it's a beautiful space, physically or psychically, with lots of humor, no assumptions, and try to get your ego out of the way as much as possible. I no longer can afford to have a gallery, so the art itself is the invitation ("invocation" is a great word, but sometimes sounds so "heavy". At least, that seems true today). And masks are the perfect invitations, because they are empty until they are worn, at which point, they invite the wearer/dancer/storyteller to enter their world, and allow their world to look out into this one through the eyes of the mask.

I don't have a stage, or cast, or building, but I'm inviting Story to use these masks.  So perhaps the best way to begin is with Goddess (Isis),  and the Butterfly Woman (Pollinator and Messenger)......and the Sacred Clown, keeper of the balance, humor, and the liminal, the keeper of the boundaries.  Does that make sense?

 "Butterfly Woman"

 

"Clown/Contrary"

 

 "Dragon Lady"

I'm not sure where the heck this scary looking Dragon Lady came from (well, I do have a cast of the Borg Queen that occasionally wants to become a mask)......but I figure she must have turned up just to make sure I have a few good personal boundaries as well! 

The Questions of Maat

"In Ancient Egypt, it was said that in the Underworld Maat waits before the door all souls must enter. She holds a scale and a feather. Maat weighs hearts, and none may pass until they have answered her questions, and their hearts are as light as the feather of truth. Can each answer "yes" ? How heavy is each heart? Because to dream a new life, you must know the life you have lived, forgive and be forgiven." **

I've been reading several books about "underworld" Goddesses, a very common theme in early cultures, because the underworld was understood as  the womb/tomb of the Great Mother, the place of return and rebirth.  To the Greeks, she was Persephone, Queen of the Dead and  Hecate, Guide of Souls.  To the Norse, Hella, Lady of the realm where  souls were healed of life, and awaited rebirth. In Egypt, Maat, who was also the Goddess of truth and law.   I don't know why I've been thinking about Ma'at, but following those threads, I found an excerpt from a 2002 performance, and some writings in my journal from several years ago. 

It's interesting that Truth and Justice should be linked in Egyptian mythology with the underworld - the womb of rebirth.  To enter that realm, one's heart must be as light as the feather of Ma'at.  If a soul is too "earthbound", too heavy with materiality, the crocodile that is shown below her scale awaits to seize it. If a soul is too untouched by life, too light because there is not enough of life's experience that have been digested, the hawk  will seize it.

Maat's name, literally, meant "truth".  Her questions do not "damn" those who wait before the door....but without answering them, without finding the examined truth of one's life, no passage to other the realms was seen as possible. Maat's questions are the questions each person must answer sooner or later: "Who or what have I not forgiven?" "What have I done or not done that I cannot forgive myself for?" "What part of my life story have I not been able to forgive?"  "What am I unable to let go of?"  (And having been through therapy, which is a kind of "incarnate life review", I might add that another question would be:  "How have I distorted the memory of this experience so that I no longer know what the truth is, but continue to react to it anyway?")

Language can reveal ideas that are we unconsciously take for granted every time we open our mouths. (and each language has its unique cultural flavors of  meaning). In English, to "fore-give" is to do just that - to give the energy forward. To the future, to new possibilities.  When we don't "fore-give" we're left dragging around psychic baggage, grey thought forms, stories told so many times they have lost any semblance to the truth.  We're psychic hoarders.

I am not saying that fore-giveness is not a complex process. Sometimes it involves working through unconscious layers of experience, telling a story over and over until it can be seen, and that's why one often needs help from an impartial listeners.  I think that is what Ma'at also is - the One who Listens.   But ultimately I believe fore-giveness comes from being able to gain a wider perspective, a perspective beyond the narrow confines of the personality, to the Soul's perspective. Being able to see the broad weave of our lives, the ways we were challenged and deepened by our experiences, our betrayals, our failures, our losses, our ignorance, as well as our gifts, abundance, and the love we were fortunate to be given.

I think of so many times in my life that things I thought were unfair, or misfortunes, in fact were blessings. Maat's Truth is often a paradox. A Buddhist I met once told me that we should cherish all sentient beings, because, from the perspective of  Buddhist ideas of reincarnation, any sentient being you meet has at one time or another been your mother, brother, lover, enemy, has been your food, or has devoured you. 

One thing is certain. When we don't "fore-give" we are unable to move fore-ward because we are stuck in the strange bardos of the past. 


** This was from the play (excerpt below). The actual questions of Maat vary depending upon the translations - some of them were recited in the background, in English and in Hebrew (since we lacked a native speaker of ancient Egyptian) while a Sharon Kihara danced as the "Muse" for the Writer, performed by Dorit Bat Shalom.  

Video from 2005 of Masks of Goddess Project

I finally figured out how to do UTube, and had fun putting this video of my MASKS OF THE GODDESS Project, made in 2005.  I sold the collection in 2008, after they traveled throughout the U.S. for almost 10 years.  It was a great privilege and honor.