“Over these many decades, I find unequivocally that each person has a unique one-of-a-kind way to speak/write in their own voice, from their own experiences and fantasies.

“In this sense, each person decides to go whichever way they like, or feel called to, in whatever pattern… depending only on what they themselves wish to accomplish or feel most fulfilled by in speaking, performing or/and writing.

“There is a long tradition of original voice. For instance, like their written works or not, Bret Easton Ellis has his own voice, as does Stephen King, as does The Buke, as does DiPrima and Ginsberg, Sexton and Teasdale and Dickenson. One would not mistake one for the other.

“My friend, the late Kurt Vonnegut, had a charism of personal voice and imagination. Alighieri’s voice is different than Yeats or Blake. Rumi is distinct from Kabir (Persian poets) who is distinct from Mirabai (Northern Indian poet).

“Stafford is different than Bly, though both are prairie poets. Alegria is different than Paz, who is different than beautiful Opal Whitely, who is different from the masterful Koch or the rebellious Sor Juana. Jung is way different than Freud, and Toni Wolff is differently voiced than either.

“I give you only a tiny sample above to speak of those who strove for/ dared to speak and write in original voice… this coming about by their investment, immersion in their personal interests, by way of speaking/writing in wild ways that came to them naturally, by truthtelling, by not sequestering knowledge or imagination, by leaving the constraints of ego, by speaking/ writing from their own life experiences and quandries, and by following through a dark woods, something that is sure-footed.

“I often see that one of the proofs of wild and natural voice seated well, is that though whatever we write or speak takes craft and is hard to do, even so, often also what we write or speak surprises us in some useful way each time we truly unleash.

“Then is when we think things, say things, write things we never could have thought of solely from ego… or when we were closed down, or trying too hard.

“I’d mention too one of the great secrets of writing and speaking… one that most writers and speakers either never speak of, or else only allude to, and that is:

“Sometimes, if we allow the gates that ego and culture pound down over most all creative freedoms… if we allow those gates to open (recommended), or blast them off their hinges (also recommended as needed ) an inner teacher, or a winged creature, or a little monastery of monks or nuns appears (choose your own image as you see it/them).

“These represent heightened intuitions about how to/what to write and/or speak next. These energies are deep in the work ‘with’ us. The old fashioned word for them is daemon: guide. There are other words as well, some less of spirit and more of earth.

“You will hear some novelists, for instance, say ‘the character took over the writing.’ This is code, for the writer being in wild voice and thought… being gateless. This is code for a daemon came near and thus became co-creator with the writer.

“You can perhaps see why some artists might not want to speak at length about such truths of spirit that they themselves have directly experienced. For some who have not yet been to hell and back nor seen angels, might think us all mad, or that Miss Millicent drinks a bit.

“Yet often only in heaven or in hell or from heaven or hell, does one get the bones to write with and upon, the clothing with which to fill out the characters. Yeats was our fellow traveler when he wrote, “Now that my ladder’s gone/ I must lie down where all the ladders start/ In the foul rag and/ bone shop of the heart.” With emphasis on rag and bone shop of the heart, where so many of us create from.

“So, stalwart and onward we go.

“These many ways of writing/ speaking/ creating are within the reach of all. But, for a price. The price is pulling away from ego and the overculture’s mufflings, and instead practicing creating without unreasonable restrictions in place that confine one’s creative potential to only ‘safe,’ manageable, acceptable somehow, not too risky outputs.

“I once was fired from a small neighborhood newspaper that had hired me to cover the arts beat in town. I only published one column before I was kaput. The editor and I remained friends all these years after ( and he was bowled over by subsequent publishing of wwrwtw a couple years later. “Didnt know you were a real writer,” he said in sweet/sincere apologetic voice.

“But, before that, when I had brought in what was to be my one and only column, he told me that my um style did not ah, match with uh, a small neighborly newspaperly er newspaper.

“So, I was ‘let go’ for writing about a so-fine jazz guitarist I’d just covered… that he churned his gut (strings) to butter, and made people jump and dance right out of their clothes.

“Ok, ok. It’s a little over the top for a neighborhood in which lived at the time more than a few upstanding elderly hairnet people, some blessedly smart and sweet, and ah, some not. I hope you are laughing with me. But within a couple weeks, some of the neighbors had buttonholed the editor on the street saying things like, ‘Hey who is that new voice, never heard anything like her writing before, more more’… well, safety, limiting risks somehow won that day.

“But nonetheless, stung and sad for a time, I managed to at least halfway buckle on my pistolas again, and took a deep breath and vowed, though probably not with as much confidence as Miss Scahhlett,  ’I live to fight another day.’

“And so and thus we go on, we all go on… all us stubborn, liquored up on soul and riding the mustang of wild voice, go on.

“In some ways, there is no more to say than that, for practice, practice, living on the edges, creating past the edges is the writer/ speaker’s center of work.

“Thus, the next step in the practice is to practice, and daily.

“And how one does that?  Truly, those decisions come under the category: ’to each her own’, ‘to each his own.’ You know your own way best, and if you’re lucky maybe sometimes too, you’ll come into contact withsome decently wise and kind curmudgeon or crone who lives at the side of the poetry road, and they might, if you sign up seriously, walk with you for a while. And yet, only if you see fit.

“Writers, speakers, actors, performance artists, storytellers come to study with me because they want to learn and/or deepen ‘original voice.’ I dont teach ‘motivational techniques’ to make a person stand out… Nor do I teach original voice. I conjure it instead, I push, pull, draw, evoke it out of others.

“How? Ah, therein lie the secrets. Cackle, cackle.

“Uno secreto: I offer a vision and a mirror, ways and means to teach the instrument that each person has been chosen by… or taken up… or been given… ways and means that take the learner to the nth and most finessed degree possible… the intention on all sides, only being this: to reach other human beings, to truly communicate with at least one other soul.

For many who study original voice consistently, there is desire and destiny, both. But first lessons? Layers of overculture’s overlays covering original voice often have to be peeled away, sometimes hard chipped off with gentle but firm chisel of confrontation… for ideas antithetical to free creativity are so tightly glued onto the person’s mind … they are often hardly aware of the insidiousness of them…  yet these glued down laminates inhibit free expression, ways of being and telling… that are far greater than ego alone.

“I’d just gently offer that at college fine art school long ago (when i was young, that is, loooooooong ago lol) that my friends who were students there (while I was going to hairdressing school) were encouraged to paint ‘after’ the hundreds of masters whose works were hung at the Chicago Art Insititute.

“This was honest endeavor… their paintings would be signed, by so and so, ‘after Rembrandt,’ or ‘after Goya,’ or ‘after Velasquez.’ We used to laugh together with good will, because most of the time, one may not have had to sign ‘after’ anyone as many student paintings in no way approached the finesse of the masters.

“So, students were/ are encouraged to make derivatives to learn brush work, to pay attention to caravaggio lighting, or scumbling, or pointilistic technique or whatever else, but only to a point, and only for a limited period of time, while at the same time doing non-copy/ non-deriviative works of their own that come purely from imagination and one’s own odd and wondrous inspiration, developing their own one of a kind style and mastery.

“So too, with my own students these many years, I hold to similar time frames. Learn someone else’s phrasing and voice if you like, but only for a period of time. After that, give yourself over to study original voice.

“In that study, I will want my young/midage/ elder writers and speakers to step to the high dive, no safety net, just their own senses and angels, taking flying leaps, many climbings and leapings. I will not ask anyone to dive from altitudes that I have not dove from in graceful and bellyflop ways myself.

“But it’s in taking the dives, that the form of free voice unbound at last, is learned; the exhiliration of it, the originality of it. I drive home time after time this singular question:” How do I know what I think til I see what I say?” Write/say… anything, take a chance, go high and wide and deep. Let us see what you really think by seeing what you say when you are in free fall, rather than on walking along on relatively safe ground only.

“I teach exercises I’ve developed re original voice, these in the main having to do with paying attention to one’s body, and one’s angels… that is, one’s subtle psychic impulses… and literal practices to unseat censoring, the judging of content or process, worrying about impact whilst creating in dead heat.

“Also, when I’ve taught small groups, the other writers are able to say immediately if another writer has hit it en puente, or sounds in content, process or voice, like x, rather than like themselves. This is valuable, kind and supportive mirroring to all concerned, not just the person doing the ‘floor work’ at the moment.

“I have never found that souls learn best by being abused, or treated harshly, being carelessly critiqued ‘for their own good.’

“Rather, I think by guiding with hard truths and soft kindness– when asked– and that is critical, ‘when asked’ …people make far more progress in whatever they’ve set for themselves in bringing forth new life that is one of a kind, with its own temperament, architecture and voice.

“I make it a practice not to comment on people’s content, never tell people their work is good, bad or indifferent. I only comment on process, ask questions, ask people if they are being true to their angels, asking who they hear in their souls,  and deepening the relationship to the guiding Self. This is not only enough, it is way, way more than enough. The effort has to be put into doing the work while doing the work.

“Although I’ve not taught small-group performance, writing and speaking for several years now as I’ve been bringing several of my own long works to fruition…. I am gearing up to do so again not too far down the road… and as I look back over my own life, over these years, I see in my learners as in myself, that there are so many ways to move in creative life, including beautiful stylized ways of writing /speaking that hold to strict forms, for instance like ghazals, haiku and many other forms. I love ghazals, even though I’m never sure how to spell the word correctly.

“Yet, too, often the unbound mind, the unfettered soul will create original forms of its own if allowed and encouraged, like the pattern created by the artists before soldering down the brass channeling for a cloisonné piece of jewelry.

“Then afterward, one pours the colorful melted vitreous glass of words and duende (*the goblin spirit of creativity)  into the channels… and at first, some might spill or blur, but young hands, with practice, soon become old hands at arts like these.

the Then, with more and more practice yet, and with freedom to place whatever colors we deem best into patterns we design ourselves, we find our ways in a new and original manner.

“When next I teach, I will return again and again throughout to this groundnote: offering to each learner, that when the time comes in our work together, and only by each learner’s own consent, they will be given gentle prods — until ready, set, go….whoosh– off the high dive they go… into the… swimming pool? Well maybe at first, but ultimately, off the high dive into the oceanic…

“for you see, in addition to clear practices, honed skills and wild courage one learns on dry land and by flying through the air… there is as much, and often far more treasure to be discovered and gathered up …during those long moments under the water.”

Blessing down hard on your creative life,
and with love,   dr.e
(from “Tending the Creative Fire” manuscript by cpe)

Chapter excerpt “ABOUT ORIGINAL & WILD VOICE IN SPEAKING AND WRITING”, from “Tending the Creative Fire manuscript” by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés © 1989, 2010, All Rights Reserved. This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author’s name and copyright notice are clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com

I put The Introduction here pre-publication for two reasons. 1) to allow others here a transparency so they can see into how one writer thinks/ weighs matters in creating, and why it often takes some cojones o ovarios and long considerations to coalesce a work, and to determine if we are not only called, but carry the required ‘keys’ to walk through the door and into the land of a new book….  and two, to place here the tone of my work on men for your knowings.

This is a draft, not a first draft, but a tenth (like sausaage making, one really might not want to see the actual outcome of wildly messy first-drafts… although someday too, I’ll probably put up a few of those just so other new/young weriters can see they are not alone) I’ve several titles for the book … For now, it is called “A Book For/To Men,” as opposed to ‘book about men…’ I explain more below…

INTRO to Dr. E’s Book For/To Men:

“Men began asking to have ‘a book of their own written by me, Dr.E.,’ almost the minute Women Who Run With the Wolves was published. The requests continued all these years, and I understood them deeply : a book of one’s own, written directly to a particular group was desired…  rather than having to reverse, as women have for years, as racial and cultural groups have had to do for years…  assuming that in the written word ‘men,’ women were implied too; that though a writer used the word ‘European,’ this also implicitly included Latinos, Asians, Blacks,  working class, et al, even though none were named explicitly, nor their differences noted closely.

“So, I took the requests from men to heart these many years now, literally 18 years, but I trembled and hesitated with my foot just before the threshold of the doorway in… to writing such a work. But then, I found the way in…

“I felt I knew women in depth, in large part because I have listened to so many women in my work, and also because I am a woman, one who has walked way down into my own dregs and zigzagged, breathless and half dead, but exhilarated to the place where one could say one saw what can be seen from Everest: Two worlds not divided, but held together by the mountain.

“Now nearly twenty years have passed since the first soul asked for a book regarding men, and though my eyesight has lessened in one way, another kind of sight has sharpened greatly… and through that second sight, I now see the key to the doorway clearly, a way to write a work for/to men. Here is the pathway…

“I see the way in that I did not see before. It happened this way: I’d been writing tales about men all my writing life, poems and essays and short stories and vignettes, but they have not been ‘about’ men in the usually ‘approved’ way of hard science.

“Please allow me to open a little window for you to see my past thinking through: In one of the beautiful educated worlds I walk in, the idea is often touted, sometimes forced, that we ought write ‘about’ matters and peoples. Study them or it, compile, test, judge, summarize.

“But my taproot for writing and seeing was born and driven into a different world altogether. I have no formal schooling in writing. Am self-taught. Am not a testing psychologist. And my favored research methodology is listening to the tiny as well as to the loud. To listen to the overculture, but to listen underground as well.

“Thus, feeling not educated well enough for this precious task of writing solidly regarding men, I thought/prayed over these years whilst hearing the voices of men asking me for a book: ‘Please, I cannot write ‘about’ men for I am not a man. Nor do I want to put forth men on glass slides for microscopic view. Please, help me to find another way if this book is meant to be.’

“–Now all this time later, having opened failry full the squinty eye of the crone, and now caarrying a heart as full of love as I can fill it most days, my angels suddenly offered me prime surveyor’s instruments to measure capability for writing this work.

“The measurements were to be taken by counting the pages, counting the stories and scrying them all to see what the central motifs really were underlying from the writer herself.

“Thus, in surveying the pages I’ve written about men over these many years now, most of which have not been seen nor published …. I see the measure of my writing/seeings/listenings, at last… and it is this: Whereas I feared I would be offering dust where nourishment and replenishment was most needed, by reading those pages for subtext (meaning the feeling/thought tones that lie under the actual words)…

“I could see foremost how much I have striven to describe the peculiarities, strengths, madnesses, colorations, wingspans, hearts and souls of men, how I have loved men, pitied them, been pleased by them, bowled over by some, heartened by most, learned to be properly wary of some, and also seen closely into their interactions, lacks of action and brave actions inter-generationally and otherwise with other men, with women, with children, with culture, with soul …

“And… in that measurement of subtext, I could suddenly see too the radical that allows me to find my way through to complete this book I’ve been adding and adding to for so many years… for as I peruse this pile of pages now, I see how often I write with love and tears and laughter– with and over the refugee men of my own family, how even as a young girl-child I moved to shelter them, interpret the bewildering world for them, protect them from villany and screed… and leaned close in to understand them, for they were all so deeply wounded and scarred from the mayhem, murder, rape and mutilations of WWII– yet gifted still in ways that were radiant. Even though their demons often enough pursued rolling hot, their generosities were enormous.

“I realized only recently, that these living experiences of walking with men of such heart-broken and yet strong psyches,  including my work with veterans recovering from post-trauma, the men who have been in my memoir gatherings, any man I have had contact with who has told me or tried to tell me about his life and soul… including those with happy-calm life experiences and accomplishments with only a few nicks and dents… that this is why/ how I can write a book for/to men.

“As I’ve thought about men, what they have taught me which is so much, what I have contributed to their lives, how deeply I’ve listened to them, I realized then, I’ve have witnessed more than most …the peaks and the hells that men can walk over and through. And these first witness experiences I’ve been granted, some so painful as to want to walk screaming and skinless after, and some so genuflective of a man’s great heart… that these and more, are the keys to the doorway to write this book.

“In measuring the landscape from the aerial view, I think I may have keys enough to pass through and to bring something useful and nourishing to men, and to those who love them in all the perfectly-imperfect ways most all of us attempt to live with one another.

“Thus, here, you’ll find writings of the most basic kind, stories clear and down to earth about the perils, griefs, mis-steps, unconsciousnesses, courages, insights, intuitions, treasures, descents, ascents and battle-passages a man may face… and sometimes more than once in a lifetime…

“here you’ll find as well tales and myths on sons and mothers, sons and fathers and siblings, the lone child, the fatuous marriage, true love, how to understand the non-understandable (women, soul and Creator), how and why men can be so maddening and angelic…

“Most all the stories here carry too, the presences of angelic beings in one way or another… which often both describe the genius of a man’s life… as well as, on some or on many days, the man himself.

“Thank you dear reader for waiting for me to understand how to seed and water, harvest and cook this work up. I hope you might find in this work a feast for you and for those who love you.”

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
From The Rocky Mountains, in the year 2010

by Dr. C.P. Estés

you know how people say
all those guys really do is lean against the girders
and whistle at girls and plan the perfect beerfest
in the Stratro-lounger each night… all while pounding
a nail or two daytimes.

I met a man today
a young man
with muscles
lots of them…
a weightlifter/ bodybuilder…

People say, they’re so taken with themselves
you know,
“all about themselves.”

He was clerking in a power-vitamin store
where I was buying the 4# jug of protein powder.
Upon leaving, my daughter pointed out
I was driving around with my new
license plates on the seat
instead of on the bumper
where they belonged,
and my temporary paper tag in the window
had expired yesterday.

I didnt want to get a ticket, so…
‘Can I borrow a screwdriver,’ I asked bodybuilder man…
thinking the store’d have one in back.

But, no, bodybuilder man
bounded out the door, across parking lot,
rummaging in his Jeep, but came back empty handed.
‘Thought I had one there,’ he said.

Today I met another man,
old construction guy with tool belt…
you know how people say
all those guys really do is lean against the girders
and whistle at girls and plan the perfect beerfest
in the Stratro-lounger each night… all while pounding
a nail or two daytimes.

Well, muscleman had hiked three stores down
where he knew construction man was working.
‘Got a screwdriver?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ said tool belt man.

I had my hand out, ready to take the screwdriver…
but no, bodybuilder man was already squatting
at my pickup truck, unscrewing the rusty fat bolts
and slapping the plates on front and back, right smart.

He stood. Grinned at me like he just caught
a mermaid on a safety pin with no bait.
I blurted out,
‘You’re one of the last of the royal knights, you know.’

And he did that ‘guy thing’ that any woman
who’s a woman, loves so much, that ‘duck and blush’
thing men do when they are heart-pleased.

And carpenter man came to the curb to get his tool,
and bodybuilder man said, ‘Thanks Bud.’
Carpenter man said, ‘Happy to help.’
I said thank you too, and his  whiskers expanded
and went wide as he smiled.
‘It’s my job Ma’am,’ he said, and he saluted me…
Marine eagle on his arm flexing over the anchored world.

You know how those tattooed carpenter construction
worker bodybuilding weightlifter young/ old guys are.
You know how they are.

They keep horses
down at the river,
an old underground river…
which still runs clear.

_______________

“You Know How They Say Men Are”, © 1999, All rights reserved. Dr. C.P. Estés, poem from La Pasionaria: Collected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés: A Manifesto on The Creative Fire.” This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author’s name and copyright notice are clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com

Filed under: The Good Souls Tagged: military men, salt of earth, the river, working class ]]> http://aftermidnightwriter.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/you-know-how-they-say-men-are/feed/ 3 Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés http://aftermidnightwriter.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/baptism-the-good-fathers/ http://aftermidnightwriter.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/baptism-the-good-fathers/#comments Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:56:07 +0000 Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés http://aftermidnightwriter.wordpress.com/?p=547 ]]> BAPTISM: THE GOOD FATHERS

by Dr. C.P. Estés

…We lost first one oar and then the other; and we cried out…

Our bodies painted red by the dawn sky,
our hair stuck up in cockscombs from sleeping,
we two snuck down to the rowboats.

We wobbled across the lake toward the lily ponds
to gather blooms for our mothers. What a big boy!
What a big girl! they would exclaim upon our return.

We tugged up the white blush flowers with roots so long,
till the bottom of our boat was filled to the bow.
And as we turned toward home the rain began.
Then fog threw back its hood and roared; and we rowed.
The waves turned black, and we rowed.

We lost first one oar and then the other; and we cried out.
Our thin night clothes stamped with cowboys and stars
went transparent like tattoos
all over our pale blue bodies,
and we cried out, Mother! Father! God! Help us!

Death put its hands over our eyes, and suddenly the fog
was pierced. Leaping and bucking came
a battered wooden boat filled with four phantoms,
rowing and rowing like madmen,
their faces distorted by rain and rage, eight oars
slugging the roiling waters over and over,
and they were calling out our names, bellowing
over the storm, Hold on! Hold on! We are coming for
you!

Vessel crashed into vessel, and big wet hands flailed
till two huge wraiths of the lake rolled into our boat.
They hooked oars into iron stocks, tethered the boats,
and we crouched beneath the phantom rowers’ arms
as they rowed and rowed, cursing words we did not know,
as they rowed through the heavy drapes of rain and noise,
and with every hit of swash, lilies spewed overboard,
floating and drowning in the spume behind us.

And when at last our vessels ran into the soft slough,
and the rain went sideways,
the gray-faced phantoms grabbed us up, snagging
long ropey roots and green-heart leaves
and dangling white lilies as well.

With us in arms they strove up the howling hill,
holding us hard against their bony breasts,
shielding our faces with their hands.

And then finally, in the sudden heat from the open cabin door,
they bowed their heads like horses, offering us
held out like armfuls of heavy wild bouquets,
– two trembling children covered with broken flowers –
delivered into the arms of the weeping women.

When I dream of that time so long ago,
though in years intervening,
there would be at least one long year
of silence, one of forgetfulness, and
one of forgiveness, even so — in that one despond
of fog and rain and waves, these flares remain lit:

the men
who rowed the boat;
the men
who climbed the hill;
the men
who carried us toward home …
the uncles, the brothers, the fathers…
who despite their imperfections,
did not forsake The Heart of God –
that is, a child stranded in the storm –
these souls, all of them, now anointed forever
with the waters from all the tempests
they have braved,
now anointed forever
by the fragrance of the wild lilies
they have, with great effort,
carried up from out of the dark …

———————

“Baptism: The Good Fathers”, © 1990, 2010, All rights reserved. Dr. C.P. Estés, poem from La Pasionaria: Collected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés: A Manifesto on The Creative Fire. This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author’s name and copyright notice are clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com

COWBOY CIVILITY IN AN UNCIVIL WORLD

By Dr. C.P. Estés

…suddenly some look-at-me guy at the bar cat-calls, “F- man, don’t you know more than one note, you loser?”

In ancient mythos, the rainmaker symbolizes a part of the psyche which detaches and leaves the mad world, going into the forest and down under the roots of the trees, seeing the world from there…

through a unique, set-apart zeitgeist, a spirit of our times that is not dedicated to apoplexy over cultural contretemps, but just calm observations, a remembering of honor… and unusual ways of dealing with the dishonorable.

Here are two odd rainmakers…

I was listening to some live musicians tonight, the stage was decrepit, the lighting too orange making everyone look like Tolland man from the peat bogs. Yet the old malnourished acoustic blues guitar player also played a mean blues harmonica that made your sternum ache in a way that is near ecstatic.

He some kind of shapechanger alright, looking like one creature one moment and some other kind of critter the next. He’s so skinny and his guitar so big, he looks like a leaf carrier ant. But, when he sings, he curls back his lips to sustain the notes and his big front teeth are exactly brother to the beaver, and his soft roll of pompadour wobbles like a cockatoo’s as he gets down.

The audience however, is rapt with his skill. He starts out singing on one note only, “I haint gonna go down to the city, I haint gonna go down to the well, I haint gonna go down to the city, cause they’ll chain me to a bad woman, take me straight to hell”.

He goes on and on in that one note only, adding more and more stanzas, telling the stories … and blams the strings fine on his black mirror guitar with the white piping.. and the audience is hanging on his heart, right with him.

…I’m easy for blues, so I’m swooning on the riffs, but suddenly some look-at-me guy at the bar cat-calls, “F- man, don’t you know more than one note, you loser?”… and then sits back, sweeping the audience, looking for others to approve his incredibly intelligent remark.

Except in the code of honor out here in the west, and perhaps elsewhere as well, hecklers of any kind, are considered perverts who smear themselves with their own feces.

So, what happens instead, is two cowboys stand up from their beers, and push their hats back on their heads and flatten their foreheads like diamondback rattlers, and walk all bow-legged slow toward the guy who just vomited up globs of ignorance for everyone to see.

and they are rainmakers… instead of creaming this fellow they consider a snotface tinhorn, instead of literally grabbing the nerve plexus in between his shoulder and neck til he screams like a girl… they take another tack.

Says one quietly, “Hey little brother, I probably misunderstood what you said, probably mistook that you meant to be disrespectful of this fine musician. You didn’t say that did you? I misheard you, right?”

And the other wrangler says, “Yeah I think I misunderstood you too.”

…and the tinhorn squeals in piglet, “No, no, you’re right, I meant my comment a whole other way, nothing mean. Not even a little.”

And the rattlers stopped rattling suddenly, and the cowboys knuckle-slap him a little too hard on the tender part of his upper arm, saying, “Well, great! We suspected we were the ones in the wrong. Thanks for setting us straight.”

But you can read in the assessing squints of the two cowpokes, their mouths are smiling but their eyes are not… if the man makes one smart aleck remark, they’re going to turn him into a bar rag– and less– on the spot.

And they bought a round of drinks for him, a poisonous brew called Gunpowder, telling him cowboys tossed this back in one gulp and always ask for more.

After they picked him up off the floor, and laid him back into his bar stool listing sta’board, they sauntered back to their tables, mission taken care of…

and the audience watching did not gloat, but gave quiet nods of approval…

and the acoustic guitar man who took on the faces of different animals as he played in all his passion, just kept on strangling the strings good, and sent the cowboys one military nod and a wink…

and went on singing his song of pirate queens and tender hearted men and the hard time long ago when men had to row for years to find their ways back home.

and all this tonight, in a bar nearly dark as night– even though conflict– the up close confrontation wherein everyone could see the pores of the faces, see how the amount of white of the eye changed with each emotion, hear the tones of each voice, smell the beer on mustaches, measure the man before them in spades…

and now this seemed like rest and restoration– not to mention original coyote strategy– compared to the petty and often pointless go-nowhere skirmishes fought at great disassociated distances in the upper world nowadays.

I hope even peeking into the above 3-D view of odd and interesting people who have equally odd and interesting ways of seeing and acting– rather than the same old predictable ways of responding– was refreshing for you too.

I hope too that the man who for whatever reason tried to broadcast insult he probably learned on the radio somewhere… saw something useful in maybe trying to be part of what people were enjoying, rather than trying to graffiti over it with his trite remark.

Maybe we all could sometimes use a refresher course in recalling there’s often no sense in throwing so much fire at those one doesnt ‘get,’ or care for… and certainly with nothing to show for all the flaming afterward.

Like my father used to say… he being a tailor from the Old Country:

“Smart people dont step in a pile of manure. They find a way around it.”
(… I think our cowboys did just that…)

and

“It’s easy to tell a man to go to hell, it’s much harder to get him to cooperate with your plan.”
(I think our lone man at the bar might be learning some of that now…)

I try to remember all these myself, for it seems a truism for striving to, not always successfully, but trying to lead a life of ‘Live and Let Live,’ rather than ‘Crash and Burn,’ …or  ‘Burn and Then Crash.’

May it be so for thee, also this day.

——————
“COWBOY CIVILITY IN AN UNCIVIL WORLD”, © 2009, All rights reserved. Dr. C.P. Estés, poem from La Pasionaria: Collected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés: A Manifesto on The Creative Fire. This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author’s name and copyright notice are clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com
__________

CODA
Painting by JoeRayKelly, ©All Rights Reserved… see his work here.

Internship: The Bad Fathers

by Dr. C.P. Estés

…I can hardly write on this page the words these two fathers said…

I
The first worst thing
I ever heard a man say,
came from a father who
had raped his little six year old son.
The father said the boy had
“…asked to be raped,”
because the child “…was acting
so seductive,
running around in his underwear,
showing his legs
and everything.”
This was the worst,
the very worst.
I have never come closer
to giving a death screech
and asking for the world
to be destroyed,
and for Creator
to seriously consider
never recreating the world,
or us,
ever again.

II
The second worst thing,
equal to the first worst thing,
I ever heard a father say was,
“Yes, I hit my boy
over and over
until he was like a rat
beat to jelly.
That’s the way you do it.”
He thought if he caused pus
to leak into his boy’s veins,
it would freeze into something
called “manhood.”

III
I can hardly write
on this page the words
these two fathers said.
But, they bear writing,
so that any child
might know,
that this kind of father
is not only dead mad, but
also dead wrong,
so that children
might know that they are
never meant to be
a donor child
for either parent,
not meant
under any circumstances
to be a blood sacrifice
to, of, or for, the family;
to, of, or for, any nation;
to, of, or for, any unjust authority.

IV
To the sons and daughters of parents
devoured by such demons,
Listen to me –
a father who believes these things
is sick to the very core.
Sick beyond belief.
Sick almost beyond understanding.
What these parents say,
is not only not true,
it is not even true
in Hell.

“Internship, The Bad Fathers”, © 1990, 2010, All rights reserved. Dr. C.P. Estés, poem from La Pasionaria: Collected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés: A Manifesto on The Creative Fire.” This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author’s name and copyright notice are clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com

Filed under: I Put The Culture on the Couch Tagged: assault on a child, brutal father, intrusion, lack of conscience, monsters ]]> http://aftermidnightwriter.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/the-bad-fathers/feed/ 1 Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés http://aftermidnightwriter.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/personal-journals-when-in-sight-of-the-far-encampment/ http://aftermidnightwriter.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/personal-journals-when-in-sight-of-the-far-encampment/#comments Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:49:19 +0000 Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés http://aftermidnightwriter.wordpress.com/?p=527 ]]>

WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THESE PAINTED JOURNALS

I’ve still a significant amount of 60 years’ work in journals.
But too, at different times of my life, I’ve lost some journals,
or accidentally left them on trains, and some have been stolen.

I’ve burned some for lack of space to store them,
and placed other pages of grief in fast moving water upstream.
I’ve torn out pages and made papier maché faces
with my handwritten words still visible
on the cheek under the eye,
or behind the ear.

I’ve shredded some journals to confetti
to make celebratory props for a child’s wedding play.
Some have been destroyed by angry people during my childhood
and by those maddened by love/hatred;
some were confiscated at school and never returned.
(You will write 100 times, “I will not write poetry during class.”)

Some are falling to pieces for I live in dry high country desert
these past many years, and the tree skins they are writ upon
are so, so old, the page corners can break like cracker
when I turn them.

Some are filed by year in a kitchen cupboard;
others have no years affixed and are stacked
with their blue and red and yellow spiral bindings
looking like metal serpents biting all the pages together.

Some are writ with reasoned straight lines of left-hand writing;
some are writ like a child writing cursive for the first time,
uphill, downhill, upside down… for these are my dream journals,
written in the middle of the night under only moon for lantern.

And some of my favorites are ‘my painted books’
with all my handwrought paintings, my invented fonts,
and wild illustrations marching across every open space within,
like some wild x-ray of a living human psyche.

And there are many notebooks with just a few pages writ,
for I loathed the slow feather of the ink on cheap pulp paper.
And there are more and different journals, square, rectangular
and all written in the language of quiet-personal/ present tense.

Many journals hold writings that seem like a conversation
held outdoors in winter,
wherein the words, the promises,
the secrets which will not remain secrets forever,
were suddenly frozen in the air as they were written
… and are thereby preserved in the meat locker,
for as long as long is long.

I’ve thought of willing my painted journals, my painted books,
and thousands of sheaves of handwrit pages:
There are the universities who would like my ‘papers.’
But I wonder at someone analyzing
these time-suspended beings,
and trying to thaw them out,
in order to write a paper
about ‘what she meant when she said x.”

No, these journals, for now, live as little catacombs,
and I go there sometimes, to visit the dead… and the living.
My journals are my clearest and cock-eyed witnesses
to my time spent on earth with the story hags, the poem potters.

Thus, my journals and painted books will stay with me a while yet…
But, in the end, at the end, I deeply sense now, am certain now
that  I am in sight of the last, far encampment…
that
all my papers
must return
to what they were once, long ago:  trees…

Thus, I’ve made my plan: I’ve left word
to consign my papers to the fire,
so they can become ash…
and thence be taken up in a soft woven bag…

and I’ve asked that whomsoever still lives…

to spread these ashes on the earth where those who love me…

want something hopefully beautiful to grow in my name…

something beautiful to grow from the humus of my agonistas, dreams and ideas…

something beautiful to grow from the ruthless counsel of angels in those pages,

the ones who bid me write:

“I hope you will go out
and let stories happen to you…
and that you will work them,
water them
with your blood,
your tears
and your laughter…
till they bloom…
till you yourself
burst into bloom.”

Thereby, may all find for us
the good evidence that this indeed
is what I,
and ever so many other dear brave souls,
earnestly endeavored to do
in this one precious and wild lifetime…
wherein from Mother Earth
came the ink, the pens,
the pencils, the pigments, and the papers
…but from the angels and the ancestors
came the stories.

Amen.

(and a little woman)

—————

“WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THESE PAINTED JOURNALS”, ©  2010, All rights reserved. Dr. C.P. Estés, poem from La Pasionaria: Collected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés:  A Manifesto on The Creative Fire.” This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author and copyright notice is clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com

*las agonistas: the agonies

Topmost image: a cairn, which is a stacking of stones, each stone placed with a prayer, and the cairn being built at a special place marking the leave-taking of one world, and the entry into another world in mind, spirit, soul or body, or all.

TO  THE DESCENDANTS OF  THE GREAT EUROPEAN TRIBES

If you would look into the last room of the starry night,
there are powers there with names:
Tannenbow, Valdar, Yaga, and others.
They are your ancestors,
they sneeze with all the  waiting for you.

They want to give you sword-making,
show you hidden ore amongst earth’s gasses.
They, like you, are a dust of glitter and light.
The names,  the names. . .
call them by name,
for they have gone shadowy
from lack of your remembering,
from lack of your love.

Your Deep Earth Drum still lives,
though more  more faint now.
Down there they have a theater waiting,
one that is lit by storms;
it takes only a name to start it.

Some firesides,  the good princes show up;
the blind one who steals earrings
during the night shows up;
the wise one who sings souls into Nod;
the long-chin who concocts sweets,
and herbs for healing,
who lays huts of boughs for grieving,
and extracts her cost.

The one who bleeds gold,
breathes there.
The one who releases the bright,
burning fire arrow, lives there.
They are all there.
Your ancestors live!

Quick! the names,
the names. . .
call them by name. . .
before they lose all water
and die.

——————–

CODA

To  Descendants of  Great European Tribes

The melting pot. Many of our poor grandparents and great grandparents, stepped into the crucible for the sake of protection for their offspring, their livelihoods, their families.

To meld one thing to another is one thing. But to melt things together, is another matter altogther.

I think salad is good.  A salad combined with greens or  with piñon or  feta, avocado, all else, is good—as long as it is not put into a blender, all  mushed together there… so each tasty thing loses its identity.

I do not want to live in an Osterized culture.

A clean mixed salad in which everything retains its shape, its ruddiness, its veridians, its cobalts, its marrones, its sweet amarillos, each with its individual flavor, its personal nuances… this is my idea of a succulent, wild, thriving tribe.

This doesnt require bangles and beads, but it does require the heart drum. To be connected to one’s ancestral roots so rich in songs and dances and ways does not mean being an anachronism, unless one wishes; it means to carry the spice and the fragrance and on the pages of one’s history to have writing and images that leap alive, not a dead blank pages wiped out by wars and tears, fears and lack of cherish.

This cuentito, To The Descendents of the Great European Tribes, was written long ago during a time I became aware many souls , carried an intense and sincere longing coming straight from their souls….  a longing to belong to las ancianas, the old ones.

Yet because of so much destroyed writings, artworks, recording of the heights of each conquered culture across the world, many  modern people were convinced by others that there was ‘no there’ left for them to come home to.

This is one of the greatest pathological lies in existence given to them by ‘the melting pot’ people. The “there” of one’s ancestry is still alive. It has largely been carried off to the many museums worldwide and to university collections and just takes a name, a name to start the heart drum back up… the giant heart drum that opens the doors of the ‘keepers’ who were once the slaughterers and the ‘stealers.’ Let it be as it was and forgive but do not forget what occured long ago, for blood and bone-shed is not the point now. The point now is the strength of the souls:  the names, the names, call them by name.

I encourage people especially to gather stories  springing out of their family taproots,  stories that come from their own authentically lived lives. When people do not gather the stories, this is how unique stories disappear from the  face of the earth; no war nor conquest or slaughter even needed.

One’s personal, familial, generational, legendary stories are lost by not being drawn together and told aloud. Thus a weird kind of cultural phenomenon occurs;  same ten pre-approved generic storylines are lugged about, and  told over and over again in film, on tv, in books, in schools, until everyone is bored out of their skulls.

Behind story, there is more than just history, there is the  imagination of your forebears. There is also archetype in your forebears’ stories… an ancient, ageless, personal,  universal memory that often acts as a riddle to be solved by the soul in order to live more deeply and with flourishing.

We can see, those of us who pursue such, that archeological, anthropological, museum, botanical, oral histories, zoological histories written by adventurers, conquerers, the conquered, eye-witnesses and second order or third order observers, and history and anthropology detectives… that those histories, once one peels away in the oldest ones the racist and sexist and other contaminations…  imbedded there is true treasure. Treasure from your own far-back people.

For artists and those who create, see, help and heal, one’s ancestry is an inexhaustible and incomparable research library. It is not a mere curiosity; it is a resonant life force.

Regardless of  circumstances of one’s birth, or years lived severed from such, it is still there for you. You may have left it behind, or had it taken from you, but it is like the ever thriving valley of the kings and queens, not that far under the surface, in a preserving climate, it is still waiting for you. It is all still there. The names… the names, quick, the names…

———————————

“To the Descendants of the Great European Tribes”, © 1980, 2010, All rights reserved. Dr. C.P. Estés, poem and essay from La Pasionaria: COllected Poems of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés:  A Manifesto on The Creative Fire.” This particular work may be used non-commercially as long as it is kept entirely intact, not added to nor taken from, and this complete notice including usage, author and copyright notice is clearly printed upon it. Other permissions ngandelman@aol.com

Image topmost: artwork by CP Estés: “Lost Angel Waiting To Be Found: Drumskin As Yet Unframed, Waiting For Familiar Hands.” ©2010. All rights reserved.

LITTLE LESSON-CITO ON DREAM/ IMAGE ANALYSIS:

Here is a small but very able tool I created to teach my psychoanalytic candidates and dream group leaders, able dream analysis…

for although psychoanalysis is a wondrous endeavor in many ways, sometimes it is taught in formulaic ways that are thrilling intellectually, but miss the blood and bone of the living flesh of psyche entirely.

Thus, I built over the years some small but effective tools for doing a very personal research on images and ideas that come to you, or /and that matter to you.

———————————————————————–

A TIME-TESTED (by me and my students) USEFUL TOOL

FOR UNDERSTANDING YOUR OWN DREAM IMAGES IN DEPTH:

…I developed what I call ‘a hint-question’ to help you see more, in your own way, about images dear to you… not out of a book, not projected or suggested by others… just you.

Often we are alone on our voyage at night or in other times of day. Though it’s excellent to have able crew while sailing, there are times when the captain is to retreat to the map room below deck to scry the lay of the land and seas using her/ his own instruments of sense-experience, brain-pan knowledge and dead-reckoning… that would be you, here and now… the captain of your own dream ship.

So, say for instance you dreampt something like this:

I dreampt I rode on a plover bird,

and whilst doing so, a magpie came

to offer me a piece of advice about my soul.

————————————————————————–

TOOL# 1: Part One

1. Do the following: Divide a sheet of paper into five sections. Doesnt matter which way. However you like, columns, squares, circles… for good order should not block creativity but rather enhance creativity… while developing order.

2. Write atop of a section so in the end you have five sections all headlined with one of these: Why, How, When, Where, To Whom (of “of Whom”/)

3. Then, answer this question with regard to your images, imagining the original dream as stated above: As the winged are different than the finned, write down why, to your mind, birds are different than fish (or compare to ocean mammals if you like.) How are they different? When, Where? and To Whom are theses two forms of life– pisces and aves–  different?

To my structural way of creating such a grid, your answers will speedily map a good deal of the world we call your psyche/ soul/ heart regarding winged ones, (and fish, or whichever Genus you decide on for comparison) either in image or in reality.

TOOL # 1: Part Two

4. Once you have answered this question of how x is different than y in order to squeeze the juice from the image in a larger context… Sit back with a nice cup of tea of your choice and contemplate your answers then. Let yourself be drawn to, or intelligently find what has meaning for you to focus on. Leave the rest behind before moving on to make comparisons between the plover and the magpie.

TOOL # 1: Part Three

5. Now, create the same 5-sectioned schema on a new sheet for your two birds.

6. Then ask this: How is plover different than magpie? Why, to your mind, is plover different than Magpie? If you find sameness you have not outlined in Part One, add that too. Answer in the main, When, Where? and To Whom are theses two little winged creatures different. You can also answer how they are complementary and why, when, where and to whom, as well.

The point is to again draw forth the essence of the images.

TOOL #1, Part Four

7. Then, the same as before. Sit in calm and relax for a few moments or as long as you are able. Consider what  you’ve written here. Ask how it relates to your life right now. Is there a message?

——————————————————————————–

In Further Analyses

For many, just the writing in sections, rendering the essence, brings surges of Aha, and sometimes burbles of Oh no, and all in between.

Often it is the process of following the flutter of all one’s deeper thoughts, feelings, memories and ideas about images, rather than trying to ‘nail the butterfly to the wall,’ so to speak, in some semblance of ego’s satisfaction alone– there! It’s that, that’s what it all means…

but instead, trying to behold the images and their ultimate meanings to you– more gently and expectantly– not worrying so much about whether one is incubating a boy or a girl, but rather following the fluttering and flashing insights, the moving of life within, dreaming while awake how one will take what one is birthing out into the world today, or one day.

To behold images that come to us in dreams and daylight as though we’ve never seen such a thing before, the Buddhist beginner’s mind which can also be called the mind belonging to the Child Spirit, to test the images and ideas against other things we know, to consider their essence as recognized by artists, prophets, seers and ordinary people down through the ages… these ways are some of the most meaningful dream analysis, the most life-giving in terms of self-research on one’s own image-making, image-valuing instincts.

There are several other ways to analyze images and dreams so one actually learns and creates new pathways in the brain, so that messages sent from Source greater are actually received, so that even mundane guidance given us is better understood. In all respectful ways, dreams and images can be understood as messages and messengers, some wise, some funny and tricksterish, some so vast our little pea brains can barely grasp but a little bit of what stands before us. All images are as usefully useful as we have capacity to understand in that moment. And that most often is amplified just by our awe and respect for the image to begin with.

Too, I’ve made an audio CD program at Sounds True, entitled “In the House of the Riddle Mother” which is about dreams and the cogent, odd, mystical and down to earth analyses of images. Those who know my work, know I abide by the idea that mystical matters must be brought more than halfway down to earth in order to benefit from their unusual intelligence, their strange and wondrous ways and means… that we are as humans as much in need of practical maps and guidances as we are made of dust from the stars in need of finding our most useful ways to sprinkle that dust over whatever and whomsoever has need for ‘remembering’ here on earth.

Also, if in a few days I can clear time needed (I’m a slow writer and it took me near all afternoon to write this article), I’ll write about another tool I have taught to psychoanalytic students for decades for deeply analyzing dreams. There are several powerful ones. Although, truly? One tool alone, when used with faith, patience, effort and consistency, will serve better than ten others that go unused.

Til then.

____

CODA

Today, I took time away from ‘regularly scheduled work’ to answer a question from a person at my facebook page with the article you see above. The person had asked about what certain symbols in dreams might mean. This article resulted, for though the question was brief on its face, it was very rich and required, I thought, a much longer answer.

I put it here too so other people who’ve not found the facebook page, might find us here first. (This whole electonic everything is so new and so wondrous to me; that people can connect at the speed of light instead of the speed of a potato… wow. I hope I made you laugh?)

There’s a serious reason to take time away from other commitments sometimes. It is not predictible for much depends on my energy that day (I often say nowadays that my energy oddly runs out before the daytime does…lol) and all  other promises to be kept.

Even so, often I try as I can to answer most any question put to me that I might have a useful answer to, in part because there are some quesitions put before me by you dear souls, that are actually of benefit not only to you, but to so many others were they answered on a broader scale… but also and especially I note something else as I become older…

as I now have far more years behind me than ahead of me, I want very much to equip those who wish… with  tools for seeing– the tools I’ve created as well as the tools handed down to me through my long studies– so others can self-nourish, carry utmost self-knowledge on their own… anywhere, anytime and be independent when they choose, and close-in learners as they come to know/ feel/sense/ be reminded of their calling in life. So, for these reasons, and more.

And with love, dr.e

————————-

Photo of Ringed Plover by talented photographer, Garth Peacock.

Magpie, by another talented photographer, Paul C.

…a badly burned little koala bear who was caught in a horrible flash forest fire and who tried to escape by running across the burning ash, thereby having badly injured burns to his feet. The firefighter found him cowering by a tree stump…

May peace be with you and with your heart.

There is free will. And also, often, there is a destiny component to poor choices we make. From some of the worst of the worst, can come deep learnings, deep meanings… thus ‘failed’ matters ought not be attributed just to our naivete or lack of foresight/ insight, or perhaps injured instincts.

Even when a partnering in work, home, or love, or business did not work out, there is something larger than grieving it, and that is, learning about it– the how, why, when, where, who, what lies underneath, out of sight, unconsidered, necessary–

Thus learning, not just for oneself… but in order, also, to teach others… to light the lanterns for others who are also treading a dark, dark forest.

To any and all who find need of these words…

When knocked sideways more than once in a seeming dead reckoning repetition of something negative… it is good that one sit with someone wiser and loving… a truthteller who tells hard truths with soft edges. Tell such a person what’s happened to you. Listen to and follow their wisdom for you. No excuses. No more. None. Rather, now, only listening and learning. Trying new ways. Speaking your story, but taking in new. Often the more listening, the more learning. The more observing, the more insight. The more learning, the more New Life.

You know the saying, ‘same actions create same outcomes?’ To my mind, another way of saying this is… new life is built on learning, not on endless blind grieving.

I know it’s hard to turn gradually from grieving so hard, to learning bit by bit, building new life. To learn to trust onself again. It’s been and continues to be hard for all of us, each in our own way. There is no one on this earth who is not suffering, caring, straining, weeping about something…

Yet, for deep angers, disappointments, big hurts, jagged woundings, being burnt and more than once … the eventual remedy is learning to see, deeper and larger… in ways that bring consciousness yes, and also bring warmth to us each day, little by little, lifting us back into the most Loving Being we were born to be… rather than sitting endlessly in the ashes with no fire lit, a cold hearth.

The tending to the fire gracefully enclosed, the fully lit Life Force of Love, comes from us. Not from ‘out there.’ A woman who is healed is a formidable and sweeter than sweet soul, having her scars on the inside where they belong and her warmth for others on the outside where it belongs. Not the other way around.

We are all still working at this… some are a few steps farther along than others, some a few paces behind. This is fine. We all have different challenges, and we all learn quickly or slowly depending on what the challenge is.

There’s not a one of us who hasn’t bashed forehead against wall over same issue more than once, before finally being able to just stop, let go, and travel onward. Remember? from wwrwtw, “Tears are a river that take you somewhere… somewhere better.”

To love with little return is one of the ways of many human beings on earth, to keep trying to love even when clear one ought just stop and move on. This is not a failing however, but rather an extremely touching human trait of being dedicated to loving as much as one can, sometimes even when one senses or knows better.

Thus, with such a deep drive to love inherent, it takes time to process what is good and not good for the soul… and eventually, it is usually with great bewilderment and regret that one finally realizes that a certain idea or dream cannot be, and leans forward to row free of the wreckage, and onward.

As you know, none of us are alone, although surely it can feel like arctic wind across our bodies in the midst of summer. But, even if we were in prison, even if we were living in Antarctica, we are not alone in the world of souls. The world of souls cannot be imprisoned or isolated.

I dont ‘believe,’ I know that though we all have different challenges, we are all walking along together. All of us– the scraggly, unwieldy, passionate, strong, defenseless, brave, upbeat, sorrowful, strange, far-seeing, half blind, fiery, part-dim, beauteous, bountiful– all of these in just one single woman. You.

All of these traits in all of us. Every soul filled to the brim with radiant actualities. And further possibilities. Siempre. Always.

Peace be with you.
with love,
dr.e

_________

CODA

1. The communication above is here in order that it not scroll off the facebook page nor be buried in comments where I first posted it, having trouble posting the original without it disappearing (duendes, e-goblins)…  so the person on fb whom I was writing it to, might have a better chance of seeing it in full here as fb collpases long comments to a few lines. Thank you B for making the original cry that so many have also made while treading forward on what I call ‘the zig-zag path.’ If others too, have need of these words, those souls are very much welcome here also.

2. The photo above is of a badly burned little koala bear who was caught in a horrible flash forest fire and who tried to escape by running across the burning ash, thereby having badly injured burns to his feet. The firefighter found him cowering by a tree stump and approached, bent down and offered a drink to the little guy from his water bottle.

It made me weep to see how the little creature trusted so much and put his little paw on the firefighters’ hand, not only that it occurred, but that others across the world could see it occur…  that so many might see and thereby remember our true relationship– a soulful one– near and with creatures.

I knew I had to keep this story above the waterline, so there is my article about the Aussie firefighter and the little injured koala bear, which you can find here at themoderatevoice.com… a politics and culture blog where I am deputy managing editor and a columnist along with 20 other international journalists. Wait a few moments at that site for the youtube filmicito to load too. Creator bless us all.