IncantationOne SelfPhotographs Lessons

Crow lives sometimes in her hair. She tells her not to but she doesn't care.

The hot river is the dirtiest-clean smell she knows.

When the sun goes & the dark comes, the wind stops almost completely.

She is Joker. She celebrates as Witness the week of the Fool.

Not Easily When we get beyond beauty and pleasure, to the other side of the heart (but short of the spirit), we are confused about what to do next. It is too easy to say arriving is enough. To pretend the music of the mountain needs only to be heard. That the dance is known by the dancing, and the lasagne is realized by eating it. Not in this place on the other side of desire. We can swim in the Aegean, but we can't take it home. A man finds a melon by the road and continues up the hill thinking it is the warm melon that will remain after he has forgotten the ruins and sea of the summer. He tells himself this even as the idea of the taste is replacing what the melon tasted like.~Jack Gilbert

I had understood freedom and security. The need to rattle the foundation of habit. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to laugh. I felt invincible, untouchable, I had extended myself, and I believed I could now sit back, there was nothing else the desert could teach me. And I wanted to remember all this. Wanted to remember this place and what it meant to me, and how I had arrived here.~Robyn Davidson

She knows Crow is teacher, and holder of good medicine, too. Of course she forgets that sometimes{sometimes that forgets she}too

Feminist Spiel: because duality is part of My Own Perfect Symmetry

So I'm getting a kick out of the feminist blog-rave and sensationalism going on last weekend over the cover of Mybama on Ms. Mag.

(click on image to visit the Ms. homepage)

Evidently some "feminists" were up in arms about the supposed symbolism of a male trumping the inherant female gender issues that make up feminist claim. Well. Let's take a closer look:

(from dictionary.com)
fem⋅i⋅nism 
/ˈfɛməˌnɪzəm/ –noun
1.
the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2.
(sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.
3.
feminine character.

All right gang, first of all. I don't know about your own understanding but to me common sense dictates a rather empirical base application of equality: it requires differences. Thus equality extolls the value of venerating the differences between varying ideals, genders, races etc. Making room for each of those differences, of there own right, to be accepted as equally important. I mean, right? Obviously this is where the lines blur and the principal of ethics is called in to question. But to me, the above premise of beginning with differences is the first and most clear place to start.

So now let's apply the definition of feminism. Not as a movement, but as a word usage minus the loaded contextualism that's granted its connotativeness, as happens to most words or ideas, absloute bastardization--so much so to be a feminist is practically taboo ever since we got out of the 90's and the "Decade of the Woman". (here's where I, if i dont hop off the box, launch in to an all out bitch session bemoaning media irresponsiblity and the absolute rampant yellow journalism that i claim to take such staunch dispute over though aint that blogging? here an opinion there an opinion everywhere opinion-pinion...)

Again, feminism: 1.the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. Nothing more, nothing less. A simple call for recognition of women's, who are inherantly different from men, yes! equal social and political rights. If you believe in that--guess what. A feminist are you...

If I claim myself to be a feminist under these standards, then there is not a damn thing that is male-hating or bashing about me. No! (and truly, that is the case....i loooove me some men) In fact, to me, what it indeed claims is that I venerate the differences....

To me, my modern feminism is about humanitariasm. That despite our differences we all are equal, and that indeed within our differences lie our strengths. Thus the ethics of equality is room for understanding. A model of this, one in which I personally find all sorts of guideposts, symbology and messagry to inform my own journey of being human, is absoloutely found through inspection of the values historically held as, and yes, in my opinion at times underminded, female. That does not complete the neccecary view of what it is to be human, no! But personally for me messagry, story, psychology and spirituality that empowers the deep
feminine helps me find balance and power inside of me.

This quote by Virginia Wolff, and the art of Kjersten Hallin deGaia (available here ) is a fine example: "As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the world." I find personal, not female, power in this because the deep values in me (that some modern "feminism" deactivates!) of Caregiver and Mother see value in all life, regardless of division of country, class, race, gender or state. This is messagry existent in my own cosmology that I have sought to claim and empower. Likewise, however; are the ambitious fighter energies in me, that Underdog Avenger superman thing--that deeply symbolic decidedly male quality that my father his self embodies and that exists in equal part in me.

What I mean—to me, as a modern feminist, I advocate seeking balance of the counter powers that exist in every one of us—the intuitive, the emotional, the creative—hence the supposed "feminine"; as well as the ambitious, the logical, the physical strength of what is associated with the "masculine". Mind you these are connotative applications of ideas, but born of the system of duality pre-existent in the natural world and meant, I believe, to foster through the pressure of opposing forces better self-understanding. Sure as you or I are living we have strong tendencies towards certain traits—male/female, left/right brain, call them what you will. Seeking awareness and balance on a self-development level is the purpose of informing ourselves of our own set of skills. Change literally begins within, the human heart is literally the force that grounds the human feet in the physical community s/he then calls home—the communities where we make our stand. Walking, being the change amid the flux of such opposing energies as conflicting as they are out in our world is just what this grand tapestry is ultimately all about....

So go on Obama! I'm proud to call you a feminist, too, and to count you among the many responsible peoples trying to take a stand.

On Poetics and Diane diPrima

I'm working obscene amounts of double shifts lately. obscene. so yesterday i forced myself in to the obligatory doing absolutely nothing. the night before the prospects of no plans no calls no errands no nada to have to do seemed great, but actually going through with it was a little tough. made me feel less than worthwhile. have always been in to identifying the mean teeth of doubt in my consciousness, the terms of which like a tape looping i or one plays over again throughout the head without really separating out from and seeing, and so take for granted. so i'm programmed to think that taking time off is lazy or gluttonous. go figure--of course i am.

anyhow hell yeah let's hear it for 8 episodes of the first season of SexintheCity woooohooo and also Knocked Up and the very stupid Walk Hard. and front porch time and, oh yes, an hour and a half lazed in bed w my new Vogue and a cup of hot mint tea. got my rest, got my soul full again, got my juices flowing--which was necessary if i want to get a blog in before today's 12 hour shift...

***

So the afternoon before last Laura Walsh and I drove to Newark to U Del to check out the original manuscripts (oh god my heart beats faster and the water tingles in my mouth whenever i say that) of Diane diPrima's Freddie Poems. What is of interest to me here is a fine, exact example of my take on poetics. Firstly, her Freddie Poems, far as I'm concerned, is one of diPrima's clear transitions, visible within the poems themselves, into her experience of poetry as an alchemical function. Thus we witness her own self-transition and initiation, in the alchemical tradition, of go-between if you will, of she who transmutes self and journeys between the outer and inner worlds, or between the levels of consciousness. Secondly, in the exact tradition of this and in a very personal and real way, this piece of diPrima's work specifically impacted my own life many years later. This is a prime function of poet-(or artist)-as-shaman, as Gary Snyder explains in his Real Work interview with Paul Geneson of the Ohio Review (Fall 1977): "For the poet in particular, a sense of the need to look at the key archetypes image and symbol blocks and see if the blocks are working. Poetry effects change by getting at the archetypes and getting at people's dreams about a century before it actually effects historical change..."

You see, diPrima wrote this collection while in the midst of grieving the loss of her close friend to suicide. This was nearly fifty years ago. I discovered the existence of the Freddie Poems when reading her memoirs in the Fall of 03. At that time I too was in the midst of grieving the suicide of a close friend, and keeping a journal to him which would eventually become my first complete collection of poetry. I was actually calling that project the Mike Journal then! And likewise, the experience of chronicling my process of grief and understanding was my induction in to the tradition of poet as journeyer through other forms of consciousness by mere means of creation.

Wow, I am so wholly took by this concept of poetry, or any art for that matter, as means of transcending our ordinary incidences in life by penetrating to a more intuitive and in-depth, in-bliss experience. Seeing the Freddie Poems for the first time, and in their original form! was so powerful for me. I still do not, and likely will never, have words to give justice to how rich an opportunity this was. What I can do, rather, is defer to Snyder again. Reading those poems, finding the eternal echos of archetype and symbology that diPrima encountered, and nodding in recognition that I too found those same rhythms, themes and postures in my own poetry to Mike was a home-coming of the purest sense. It was affirmation of the the most primal patterns of our humanity, of the never ending cycles of lifedeathlife, and it made me beam with love to have this opportunity to exist. It was acknowledgement in my own soul, a deep-breathed sigh of comfort and relief, and mostly of pure elated satisfaction and awe.

From Snyder:

As a poet, I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic; the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. Whatever is or was in any other culture can be reconstructed from the unconscious through meditation…the coming revolution will close the circle and link us in many ways with the most creative aspects of our archaic past.

Happy Beltane!! I Celebrate the Wheel of the Year

Cycles absolutely are one of my favorite parts of life. This intrinsic quality of my nature is and always has been a calling towards the Wise Women Way. Regardless of whether or not one’s seed continues to drop every month, our tides are compelled not just by the moon, but by all the cosmos in all Its perpetual spinning. As women, we are deeply, intrinsically connected. We each, should we so be beckoned, are tied to the She that binds. As the spiral journey of the year turns and grows and flowers, seeds and dies, so too are our own specific deep callings unturned. To be one with the energies of the Earth and the Cosmos is to understand the way these energies move in us each a truly sacred Harvest of the Soul.

Samsara and “Un”-programming
I am a Reiki Practitioner experienced in healing and release by the phases of the moon. As well, my own form of trance work and deep meditation is influenced by a Buddhist technique known as Vipassana. The Buddhists and Hindis teach of a phenomenon called samsara. Using my own terms, my own mystic/esoteric application, I’ll describe samsara as such: energy bands, or frequencies. A friend, and also a fine yoga teacher, says samsaras are “like long-made water-marks in stone.” Responsible for our unconscious behavior patterns, for our old reactions or stuck thoughts, samsaras manifest as our personal chemical blueprints that can and do drive us in life. They keep us trapped in all forms of unconscious dance, products of our own fears or unchecked motives and behaviors. It is our samsaras that are responsible, in Eastern thought, for unabated cycles of reincarnation. Unchecked “programming” plants the energetic seeds of our next incarnations to come and to come. Perhaps most importantly, samsaras are capable of reprogramming, or maybe better put, being “unraveled” from our core.

Blessed Be the Way!
Here is one of my favorite symbols of She: veiled in cloak, broom in hand. Housecleaning. A willingness to do one’s own work. To get in their, in the dirt, and inspect. Self-wisdom is an ability to clear away the past and to surrender deeply and willingly to one’s own spiral rhythms as they turn. Personal responsibility is truly honoring one’s unique powerful ebbing and flowing presence of She. I am not sure when I truly began this understanding, when I took the responsibility of taking a better look at me. What I do know is that when I began to recognize my own unique energies, I could slowly start to see the larger patterns or vibrations that capable of harmoniously moving me.

As physicists have long proved, our bodies our Self are nothing more than mass conglomerates of little atoms, vibrating at will. And consciousness? A Buddhist will tell you consciousness is ALL and NOTHING at once, and once perceived, is misery, for only the ego may perceive itself. So in this three-dimension form we are trapped, merciless, to our ego’s wiley way’s. Ahh, to be a Wise Woman, though! To understand that it is this very blessed dance of divine chaos, of duality, which is creation, which brings Oneness to all things.

Our etheric body vibrates and moves at its own rhythms, manifesting in form from the most powerful tool we have: our thoughts. So samsaras exist in form: how one holds her body as armor against emotional pain or in response to stress, how disease or good health manifests itself, chronic aches, or an accident or even the lucky arrival of a check on time. And as samsaras, too, are connected to the vibration, to that ONE ENERGY incapable of being destroyed, so too are they affected by the grand cosmos, by our blessed earth and the celestial heavens, by the axis on which She turns.

Thoughtforms imitate the rest of the natural world, manifesting, going through the format of full growth, and then in to death and dying. The energy is never destroyed, only changed to different forms. In fact, thoughtforms actually initiate the natural world, whether one is magically inclined or not. Those vibrating atoms, simply put, are at our command. In our conscious realm of third dimension, all matter appears to exist in form, and forms are interpreted, consciously or in our subconscious, as symbol. Symbology is messagry for us whether in words, pictures, ideas or a concrete item such as a chair. All life is creative messagery meant to help aid us, to continue us on in our dance of creative discourse and milieu interspersed equally with creative grace and harmony. Archetypes, for example, are symbology, existent in our energy bands and making up our karma and life patterning. The Wheel of the Year spins as twelve houses, four elements, seven directions, 13 moons and the ever-constant variances of the perfect union of light and dark. Each of these influences are full, too, of symbols or energy swirls, and pull us forward or draw us back according to our own personal vibrations. Every individual is different in this, yet so too are we each connected and affecting the Great One.

My Own Spiral Wheel
My own “patterning” over the years, I have learned, looks something like this: It is Beltane this week. My preference is to honor the Earth Way by marking both the calendar holiday and the traditional lunar or “energy” holiday. For Beltane this energy is most present around the time when the moon is full during a Taurus sun. After years of commitment to my own spiral journey, I recognize that the energies of the lunar holidays always seem to move me most naturally, and often in deep, unexpected ways. Often I receive soul gifts of clarity, of well-felt sacred awareness of the deep Within in sacred harmony with that which is outside of me, and of how truly I am fully connected.

At full moon of Taurus I was busy, did not recognize that Lunar Beltane was not only fast approaching but was about to pass me by! My romantic relationship was going through some painful changes, and at work some heavy personality conflicts were continuing to arise between my boss and I. I was numbing out, just trying to march dutifully through my days. What do you know, Saturday of the full moon, despite the fact that I had not adequately given myself the quiet time I require on an almost daily basis, I was graced.

We know that Beltane traditionally is a fertility celebration. Well, fertility in the natural world is simply a seeding process, a time for creative union, for the fire of life to merge and burst forth, a time to celebrate the fecundity of the Life process. It was indeed that day that Union struck me: I was hit, almost broad sided in fact, going about my business at work when suddenly not one but two deep and clear insights struck me. Two precious seeds of light. Each involved my side in what seemed to be the ongoing conflicts in my romantic and professional relationships. Of course neither of the problems were suddenly or spontaneously “fixed” as result of this information. But a new line, a new vibration of thought had entered me. I can happily report that in silence and trance I witnessed my currents, and took responsibility for the attitudes and behaviors in me in need of change. And peace and connection have begun to return to me. In my romantic relationship I am working on letting go of some old shame and trusting more; in my professional relationship it is about balance (a regular lesson for me as one born on the Spring Equinox), a need to be at once more assertive while learning too to not always take things so personally.

Most amazing about this recent experience is the beauty of my soul’s alignment: at Samhain my clear intentions for the coming Harvest Year of My Soul were to commit myself fully to my Art (that of sharing my voice through healing, writing and empowering community.) At Yule I saw clearly in my darkest darkness what, of my Self, I would be up against. My specific fears of standing in my Truth, which would have to be confronted in order to access my next level of Self and Power. My Voice must be aligned with my Will and be True if it is to Matter. Indeed, on some level both the conflicts I am currently working through in my relationships are power struggles that my soul’s samsaras are attempting to work out in order that I have better boundaries when it comes to my own Personal Will and Power. I can track this forward to Brigid’s Day, when my inner fire illuminated for me a “seed” of specific action I needed to take to confront my fears, which I did, though because of my fears I did in a dishonest way. So of course by Equinox, when the results of this action had begun to “flower”, it was clear that I was in for some emotional turmoil and quite a lot of pain and confusion to sort through. Indeed, both conflicts with my partner and at work were resultant of this action. I have found Blessings to always be the benefit of discord, however; and I firmly believe that in the alchemy of soul process and growth, we unravel in order to come back together as a more authentic version of who we truly are. I am thankful that I did not, as far as I know, interfere in any other’s Will as result of this, and am equally thankful that my own soul growth seems to be right on chart!

As for my Intentions in the physical form, here I am, day before Calendar Beltane, sharing my voice: at once healing and helping my Self be healed. What more could I ask for, indeed—what better Harvest fruit could there be? And so for me it is true: As much as my Love exists and is grown by the sun, the earth, the moon, the stars, the trees, as much as I must be under moon regularly with my bare feet planted in the ground, I continue to find it best to honor Her in all her forms by starting within, with me. As Within, so Without. The Wheel of the Year, as I honor it, never fails to honor me. I love the earth, the moon, the sun, the cosmos as they spin. I love too the world within and unto my Self. Knowing the intimate experience of such great union of All is truly a gift that continues to give.

© 2008, Kelly McMullen