PERSONAL JOURNALS: WHEN IN SIGHT OF THE FAR ENCAMPMENT

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.

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The Mother Ship: When A Good Mother Dies

I think sometimes this day, called Mother’s Day is all the more poignant for those of us who never had a mother or who had a good mother, a good-enough mother, who is no longer with us in the flesh, but certainly in spirit.

For those whose good mothers have died…

…for those who were lucky enough to have had what I call, “a beautiful, imperfectly-perfect mother,” but one who too early passed from this world, especially hard when she has been the ground note for her sons and daughters.

Some of us did not have a mother we can remember without fear, but even that doesn’t keep us from recognizing that special bond between many mothers and their children wherever we see it– and blessing that such bounty came to pass for them.

This is just meant to place a hand on the shoulders of those who might miss their mothers, just to take a moment to say, even though your mom is gone or leave-taking in some way, there was and is presence of her still. As long as you are here, she is here.

In some good way, she is here.

Not physically, and I know too, like you, how deeply we humans can be made completely undone by the loss of the physical person to embrace, hear, sit next to, smell, touch, laugh with, argue with, listen to, ask questions of, and love, just love.

Yet, in some way, if one looks and listens, the loved one is near. I tell my children about those they have lost, look for the signs. There will be signs. The souls will let you know. Love is not severed by death. Grow more astute to read the signs.

One of my dear friends just buried her mother, and another dear friend’s mother is ‘disappearing’ from Alzheimer’s— there are many other ways to lose one’s mother… including long-standing estrangement for good reasons, or sometimes foolish reasons, sometimes just a long mismatch or misunderstanding.

Paul Marsh, Carrier of Stories Across the World, Passes Away In Milan

A letter to the dear souls who knew and loved Paul Marsh, even though I do not know all of you by name… I think of you very much now. cpe

Paul Marsh… dear father to his precious children, dear husband of the beautiful and feisty Susie Marsh, sweet friend to so many…. Paul was the foreign agent for my work through my U.S. agent, Ned Leavitt, who also treasured him.

Paul, and his wife Susie, and Marsh Agency colleagues, were also the carriers en masse of thousands of authors’ stories across the world… finding homes in publishing houses as far-flung as Iceland, Estonia, Korea, Turkey, Brazil, Germany, Japan and most any nation in the entire world with a printing press.

Just this, in between my bursts of tears hearing this devastating news of Paul’s sudden passing… Paul was the last of the gallant men of the world, a man who was quietly wise… incredibly so in a time when edginess has been vaunted as absurdly more valuable than depth.

To us United Statesians, Paul, having diplomas from Cambridge and University of Göttingen, also had a personal reserve, that seeming reticence that Brits are sometimes known for ‘across the pond’ here.

But I found over the years (he has been ours for over 15 years now) that under his quiet demeanor, I could say silly things to him, and he would giggle like a child.

Thus, at book expos,