YOU KNOW HOW THEY SAY MEN ARE…
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.”
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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… Read the rest of this entry »
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,
Read the rest of this entry »
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.
In remembrance of the collective unconscious
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; Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
…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?’ Read the rest of this entry »
AfterMidnight Writer...Underground Writings of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés 