tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61108103093193036402024-03-13T07:34:25.583-07:00Whitewave's Wild Food Guidewhitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-83268395326740886302014-02-01T11:58:00.001-08:002014-02-01T12:01:41.759-08:00A Traveller Lives Between Worlds<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EKfPuwyCINU/Uu1KV5EwZGI/AAAAAAAAAcc/ylXxLDa9FO8/s1600/IMG_3325.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EKfPuwyCINU/Uu1KV5EwZGI/AAAAAAAAAcc/ylXxLDa9FO8/s1600/IMG_3325.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anonymous Mountain</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't know the name of the mountain in the photo above, or even if it has a name, though I suspect it does. The people who look down when I climb on the bus, people who don't want to meet my eyes, but do anyway when I say <i>buenas dias,</i> taking an empty seat if there is one, knowing no one will sit next to me on the ride into town unless they absolutely have to--these people who share this view with me--are the kind of people who name mountains. They have relationships with these mountains, unlike me, who is rootless here, a traveller between worlds who wants to feel settled on this mountain without settling here, not longer than for a couple of months, anyway. I suspect the task is hopeless, but am willing to try. Right now I am developing relationships with two large spiders who climb down from cracks in the ceiling of my bungalow to their daylight hunting grounds in the folds of my shower curtain. There are red beetle-like bugs that crawl across my floor and bed, welcome spots of color in this desiccated landscape. I am told it will not rain until May. My skin is parched even though I slather it thrice-daily with coconut oil. When I look in the mirror I see all my wrinkles have blossomed in this dry heat. There is no hiding my 46 years here. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I may not ever feel at home here. I am not motivated at all to learn more Spanish. I can make my basic needs known and that is enough for the moment. I am hoping my inability to converse in the local language will deepen my relationship with English, that my native tongue will give me the water I crave. Of course, Spanish, the conquerors' language, isn't the indigenous language here. It is Nahuatl, which I have not yet heard spoken, though I suspect it is the native tongue of the people on the bus who live higher up the mountain than me. I am between worlds. I will probably stay there. This gap between what I want--to be at home--and what will most likely occur (who am I to expect this land to know me without taking the time--the years--required to get to know it)--is where I will begin. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A Traveler Lives Between
Worlds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I came to this
mountain,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I left a hole that needs
to be filled <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">by another woman’s
footprints.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She must be willing to
follow deer tracks <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">through dunes, to wonder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">if the herd would accept
her if she<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">stepped off the path into
the long grass<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">to lie with them in the hollows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When the moon is full she
must walk the fields<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">watching moths burn,
return alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">to a cold house. She must
be willing to love<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">a harrier that has no
regard for her, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">flying low over the thicket
she is not meant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">to enter, her skin
fragile against thorns.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The knowledge of where
the robins <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">shelter in snow must be
enough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">to survive the winter,
and she must want, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">at least once, for winter
to never end. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then she might see the
snowy owl <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">she waited so long for she
forgot <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">what she wanted. She is
the one <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">shivering under goose
down I write to now:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are extra sweaters in the upstairs closet.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Layer cashmere under wool. Walk outside <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and tell the brown thrasher who lives in the
thicket<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">he is yours to watch now. My feet <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">are finding their way on this mountain<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I want to call home.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-25970882927026611092013-12-16T13:20:00.001-08:002013-12-18T07:00:16.359-08:00Medicine Wheel Walk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On Saturday, Dec. 7, I walked from my house on Block Island's east side all the way to Dories Cove on the West Side. I began by standing in a small circle of stones in my front yard--a Medicine Wheel where I go to center myself and connect with the spirit world. The elementals are still vibrant on Block Island, and the presence of ancestor spirits is very strong. My intent was for my walk to follow the wheel's rim through the Golden Door of the East, heading south where spirit manifests physically, on to the west, where we go to die and be reborn, ending in the north in the hopes that the island would give me a vision. As I walked the directions, I was amazed to see how the colors of the wheel--yellow, red, black, and white, had messages for me the entire way. I am working on an essay about the walk, but would like to share some pictures with you now.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iyMrm1qog4I/Uq9exmI_O_I/AAAAAAAAAW8/JPn0IzLWtBE/s1600/IMG_3116.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iyMrm1qog4I/Uq9exmI_O_I/AAAAAAAAAW8/JPn0IzLWtBE/s400/IMG_3116.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First message from the spirits as soon as I walked onto the East Beach.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hiMTvD8DikI/Uq9fWMuU_vI/AAAAAAAAAXE/UB0RzIGEmP4/s1600/IMG_3119.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hiMTvD8DikI/Uq9fWMuU_vI/AAAAAAAAAXE/UB0RzIGEmP4/s400/IMG_3119.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Petroglyphs in the Sand</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UH81rajna0U/Uq9gn1e52UI/AAAAAAAAAXo/cuvMdtC46YY/s1600/IMG_3121.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UH81rajna0U/Uq9gn1e52UI/AAAAAAAAAXo/cuvMdtC46YY/s400/IMG_3121.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A detour onto the road showed me I was on the right track, as did the red sign below, encountered when I turned South at the ferry parking lot.</td></tr>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3HEr-qj6eoA/Uq9gdpzh05I/AAAAAAAAAXY/BXT7JvTtWEI/s1600/IMG_3126.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3HEr-qj6eoA/Uq9gdpzh05I/AAAAAAAAAXY/BXT7JvTtWEI/s400/IMG_3126.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bird pellet (Regurgitated food. Probably from a crow.)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Red buoy points the way south.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ballast brick tossed overboard long ago.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rusty shipwreck at SE Point.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Turtle joins me on the walk.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JOxZfm7lur0/Uq9jXcl5L0I/AAAAAAAAAYk/MSyIK31TN68/s1600/IMG_3171.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JOxZfm7lur0/Uq9jXcl5L0I/AAAAAAAAAYk/MSyIK31TN68/s400/IMG_3171.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Normally I would be dismayed that people had graffitied a rock, but I was delighted by the red letters.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9aqKzDEidps/Uq9qOHxqchI/AAAAAAAAAak/C2YfR0oWlS0/s1600/IMG_3173.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9aqKzDEidps/Uq9qOHxqchI/AAAAAAAAAak/C2YfR0oWlS0/s400/IMG_3173.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This red balloon reminded me of the entheogen amanita muscaria, further enhancing the visionary aspect of this trip.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dcLdmXPcWGA/Uq9rEecdYTI/AAAAAAAAAa0/G3CCWtotxgw/s1600/IMG_3172.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dcLdmXPcWGA/Uq9rEecdYTI/AAAAAAAAAa0/G3CCWtotxgw/s400/IMG_3172.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bluff guardians.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o8oTe4zNIcA/Uq9rCpYKmJI/AAAAAAAAAas/VX1YgJqRDG4/s1600/IMG_3181.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-o8oTe4zNIcA/Uq9rCpYKmJI/AAAAAAAAAas/VX1YgJqRDG4/s400/IMG_3181.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I read later that a forked tree is a part of the Sun Dance ritual.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kJ_rsvfXYhc/Uq9rSrUjwdI/AAAAAAAAAa8/Ns9Tfj2AcTg/s1600/IMG_3182.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kJ_rsvfXYhc/Uq9rSrUjwdI/AAAAAAAAAa8/Ns9Tfj2AcTg/s400/IMG_3182.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Following deer tracks on the beach.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PdO7HyQv64U/Uq9raWsLUCI/AAAAAAAAAbE/PhAdUMcDLog/s1600/IMG_3192.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PdO7HyQv64U/Uq9raWsLUCI/AAAAAAAAAbE/PhAdUMcDLog/s400/IMG_3192.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">South side. My legs really hurt by now.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fallen World War II watchtower.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cormorants explode from their guano coated rookery just beneath the bluff's edge.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MOrI4tKLENA/Uq9tCsZ7MxI/AAAAAAAAAbw/0j02I9uohGc/s1600/IMG_3203.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MOrI4tKLENA/Uq9tCsZ7MxI/AAAAAAAAAbw/0j02I9uohGc/s400/IMG_3203.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This black stone greeted me when I rounded SW Point to the West Side.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dead seal. Seals are the totem of lucid dreamers.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I was tempted to spend the night here as the sun set.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Someone picked up these black stones from the beach and left them on this boulder for me to find.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goose is the totem of storytellers.<br />
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It was dark when I entered the domain of the North, ruled by the color white, so I don't have any photos. Rest assured, I did receive confirmation that my prayers were answered from the ancestors. You will have to read the essay when it is finished to discover what happened. In the meantime, thank you for accompanying me on this walk to re-weave us back into the hoop of life.</div>
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whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-34681866663220632822013-11-27T12:30:00.001-08:002013-11-27T12:30:21.518-08:00Whitewave's Wild Food Guide: The Spiral Journey, Or a Heroine's Quest to Be at ...<a href="http://wildblockisland.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-spiral-journey-or-heroines-quest-to.html?spref=bl">Whitewave's Wild Food Guide: The Spiral Journey, Or a Heroine's Quest to Be at ...</a>: Even though the dirt path along the Urubamba from Pisac to Taray was flat, I was out of breath. I had only been in the Andes ten days a...whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-66787966683009793842013-11-23T11:47:00.000-08:002013-11-23T11:47:00.583-08:00Close Encounters on the Other BISome of you may not know there is another "BI" in my life besides Block Island. I have lived four times on Hawaii, known as The Big Island, and have written a lot about some very traumatic experiences I went through while living there. Last night I was thinking how there are some things I just don't write about. Not the traumatic things--if anything I have defined myself as a writer through trauma--but the joyful, transcendent, and sublime experiences. In some ways it's because I just don't have the language for it, so I find myself copping out by falling back on phrases like "Somehow…..it happened," or "There is no way to say it…" Phrases that let me off the hook for describing the emotional texture of the experience.<br />
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So last night I decided to write a poem about one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life, the kind of experience that if I really let it in would change my life by opening my heart fully to the wonder of actually getting to live on earth, that would make stop feeling sorry for myself, or feeling that there was no point in trying to change. I decided to write about the night my friend Savory took me night swimming with manta rays.</div>
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Now since you are not reading a poem at the moment, you may have guessed correctly that I determined, as I did after attempting to get it right, that this experience did not want to be a poem at all. It wanted to be a few prose paragraphs in which I tell you how Savory, Renate and I drove to the Sheraton and parked our dilapidated trucks at the edge of the parking lot where Savory said we could walk out over the lava and swim about a quarter mile to the hotel who shone lights on the water to lure the mantas in for their guests to watch.</div>
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Renate opted out from the get go and proceeded to the hotel where she promptly got a good buzz on with a mai tai, claiming a spot for herself on the stone seawall with her purchased drink to watch us.</div>
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But first there was that quarter mile swim through the dark to get through first….</div>
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Actually, first I need to tell you about Savory, whose fluidity is an essential part of this story. Savory is one of the most courageously strange people I have ever met. I grew up in small town New England. Even the few gays I knew were conservative, and they were all old because to have been out in my high school was seriously not an option if you wanted to survive.</div>
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Renate told me about Savory before I met him, but I was still taken aback at our first encounter. Savory was not gay like I thought from her description. He was a straight man who dressed in women's clothes. I had heard about hetero men who did this for deviant sexual thrills, but Savory dressed as a woman all the time--in daylight. He was a carpenter! He wore lipstick and pearls and a stuffed bra under his wife-beater. On the job he wore jeans, but when not working he favored sarongs. The breasts were always there. You couldn't not look at them. It was like seeing breasts for the first time, looking at Savory's stuffed chest. Even more eye-opening to me was the fact that he had children--two with different women. Although he dressed as a woman he did not want to sleep with men. He wanted to live with women and he did. I tried to imagine kissing him (he was attractive), but couldn't. I was far from New England, in a world too alien, which bring me back to the manta rays…</div>
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But first I do have to say that trickster Renate wondered as we got out of the truck if Savory was going to wear a bikini, and what his penis looked like. He did not. He took his bra off and donned a short wetsuit over his trunks and flat chest. I was suddenly aware of him as a male in a way I had not been before. I trusted he knew what he was doing because he embodied masculine authority, telling me toI strapthe waterproof headlamp he gave me to my mask and to follow him out onto the black lava. I was nervous but was good at pretending I was not. If I hadn't been good at pretending I would still be in my hometown, right? Savory snapped a glowstick and embedded it in the crook of a palm tree. "So we know where to get out of the water on the way back," he told me. Gulp. Otherwise we could swim straight out to sea and you know what waits out there beyond the edge of the reef, right? You said, not me. Sharks.</div>
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I had never been on a night dive before. Once we were in the water I quickly lost my fear of the dark, surprised myself with the wonder of turning my head to shine the lamp on some new part of the ocean floor where coral and reef fish went about their business as if there wasn't a spotlight in their faces. Of course, it did cross my mind that night is when the sharks came out, but I just kept pushing that thought away until it sank to the bottom, trusting my strong legs to keep kicking me toward the lights from the Sheraton.</div>
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Renate waves and hallooed from the seawall, mai tai in hand. We waved back, bathed in the hotel's light. The nightly arrival of the mantas was quite an attraction and had attracted a large crowd. So far there was just Savory and me, cavorting like seals. I decided to put on a show for the tourists, turning somersaults under the water, doing back flips as they oohed and aahed like I was a trained beast at Seaworld. Underneath me a school of mullet flashed in synchronous motion, the moon goddess Hina's creatures, silver-swift. I was quite happy to perform for the tourists, had even forgotten for a bit while we were really there, until a large very well-lit boat lumbered into view, coming out of the dark into the water lit by the hotel lights. This was a tourist boat out of Kona loaded with tourists who had paid to swim with the mantas. Savory and I were gleeful, not only because our payment was just that quarter mile swim through the dark, but because they shone high beams into the water that made it even brighter. We swam out towards them and sure enough, coming towards us so slow we could see the edge where the dark began and the light ended, a manta. I took in a huge breath, cleared my nose and dove down. One, two, three, and then too many to count, gliding out of the dark to feed on the invisible, phytoplankton they filtered in through their gills as they flew. Savory and I flipped and soared with them. Even better, a scuba diver from the tourist boat lowered himself to the bottom with a spotlight he shone up, attracting even more mantas. If this sounds invasive, well, it is. It also provides the mantas with a fine meal since it is the light that attracts their prey.<br />
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If you have never had a manta swim straight toward you as you flipped back with your arms over your head in a long, slow arc, coming so close you almost rubbed bellies, let me tell you, it is one of life's sublime experiences. This encounter was so alien, so other, I actually felt like this is what it must be like to meet aliens. The mantas were cognizant, focused, playful, agile beyond belief--and they accepted our presence. I don't think the commercial boat operators were too keen on us though, since if the secret got out about how you could just walk through the parking lot to swim with the mantas instead of paying a bunch of money they would be out of business. Then again, there was that swim through the dark to factor in….I haven't been back to Kona in a few years, but I bet Savory and I did not ruin their business.</div>
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After awhile I started to feel seasick from the rocking waves so Savory and I swam back. Like he said, it was really hard to tell where to get out of the water. Thoughts of sharks once again crept in. I have never been so happy to see a glowstick in my life.</div>
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We hauled out, stripped off our wetsuits, toweled off. I put on my sweatshirt and shorts. Savory put on his bra and sarong. Tipsy Renate rejoined us and we headed off to the only place open besides the Sheraton to fill our bellies (out of our budget and not likely to want us ragged undesirables at their bar), a sports bar with widescreen TVs blaring some game I could not conceive of liking when the wonders of the deep were just a quarter mile away. We got some strange looks. I realized as we were sitting there that it was not so much that Savory was dressed as a woman that bothered people, it was that he acted like a man. Energetically he was a man and the men in that bastion of American masculinity were threatened by him. To them, Savory crossed so many boundaries he was an alien. The beautiful thing was that to him, he was right at home, in his body that could soar underwater, fluid and fleet in the dark when the hotel lights were flicked off and the mantas rose toward the moon lighting the ocean from within.</div>
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whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-9659753130624888812013-10-06T17:51:00.000-07:002013-10-07T15:12:22.619-07:00The Spiral Journey, Or a Heroine's Quest to Be at Home on Earth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even though the dirt
path along the Urubamba from Pisac to Taray was flat, I was out of breath. I
had only been in the Andes ten days and we were 10,000 feet above sea level. I was having trouble with the altitude. Five days ago I had turned forty, the traditional milestone of middle age in my
culture. I didn’t feel middle-aged, like my life was halfway over. I felt like my life was just beginning. It
was not like I left the United States to avoid turning 40, I just opted to mark
it in my own way. I didn’t ignore my birthday on the day after Christmas. I told
my new friends and we spent the day touring ruins and a salt mine in the Sacred
Valley. We went out to lunch and someone
gave me a <i>cintura</i>. If this sounds
uneventful, well, my birthday is the day after Christmas. I had had forty years
to get used to the fact that Jesus’s birth was more exciting than mine. The day
before I <i>had</i> ignored Christmas, I suppose, losing myself in
the Pisac ruins so that I had to stumble down the jagged mountain, searching
for the path in the dark. It took hours—my friend was terrified, we had no food
and no water, and for some reason I was
wearing flip-flops that were shredded in no time. I took them off and walked barefoot down the loose mountain scree
interspersed with ancient Inca stairs that were so worn they were far short of
level. For some reason I had no fear. At a few points I had to coax her down by
getting her to sit and slide down on her butt. She almost had me convinced we
should spend the night on the mountain and wait for morning, but I was
determined we would sleep in our warm beds that night. By the time we gotto the bottom of the trail
it was raining. I remember how good the mud felt between my toes. I wasn’t
worried at all I would cut myself and get a deadly infection. I felt heroic,
which was the whole point of this trip in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When we reached Taray,
we turned off the red dirt path on to the cobblestones of the village, heading
up the small valley carved into the massive Sacred Valley that ran from Cusco to Machu Picchu by a waterfall
we could hear the whole way. It was flowing down to the Urubamba, we were
hiking up, huffing as our legs felt the strain of the altitude. I did my best
to ignore the nervous chatter of my two companions, met only a few days before.
Faint-headed from fasting, the earth rolled
like a ship’s deck. I wondered if asking these three strangers to come with me
had been a mistake. Somehow I was ashamed of them, as if their small talk to
pass the time and get to know each other a little better was a weakness. When
they asked why I was so quiet I told them I was having a hard time with the
altitude. I could tell they thought I must really be out of shape, or perhaps
just a lazy American (one of them was a
Swede who had raised six children on a mountain, the other two a couple, from
Canada I think, robust and cheerful). I
didn’t correct them. I had been preparing for this hike up this mountain, into
this valley, for years. I was on a quest and willing to be misunderstood. In
fact, I was used to it. 40 years old, unmarried, childless, a poet—this was
only the tip of the iceberg of the ways I had separated myself from mainstream
American culture. I was also used to being a scapegoat for those who were
unwilling to face their own inner pain, and the destruction our species had
wreaked on the earth. Still, I was in pain. Not to be overly dramatic, but I
had thought about killing myself many times and wished I was dead even more.
Although I am jumping ahead in this narrative by relating my current
understanding of why I wished I was dead, I feel that is necessary to reassure
the reader that I now see suicide as an impulse of the soul —a darkness so
immense and overwhelming that arises when the soul can no longer tolerate
whatever is stopping it from being whole. Somehow through the years of despair,
I managed to keep hold of the belief that life was a heroic journey, and that
suffering was part of this quest to become whole. Still, as someone who had
studied initiation, I knew that I had spent too long in the Underworld. I had
tried for years to find my way out, but had failed over and over. I decided,
like a true hero, to try to blast my way out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">All of the above,
and perhaps something more I can only
say felt like the plant actually calling me, led me to Peru to drink <i>ayahuasca, </i>the sacred medicine of the
Amazon, although I was in the Andes, following someone I trusted to the
doorstep of Alonso del Rio, a <i>maestro</i> who had spent years in the
jungle with the Shipibo, and who I loved immediately when he’d asked me to come over so he could meet me before
the ceremony. I felt inadequate of course, because I was narcissistic and
loathed myself. I thought Alonso must have not really wanted me there, but said
yes because we had a common friend. I felt like a fraud, especially because I’d
brought these chatterboxes along. When we got to the temple I slowly separated
myself from them, hoping no one would figure out we were together. We weren’t
really. We had all just met. But none of the others gathered there knew that. I
had no idea it was possible to not judge, or to have compassion. I saw people
through the filter of my own self-loathing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Because it was New
Year’s Eve it was a large ceremony. The temple built of red adobe, was round,
and had a thatched conical roof that spiraled toward the sky like the steeple
of the Congregational Church I attended as a child growing up in Connecticut,
only we didn’t enter it by walking up steps, we bowed down because the door was
so low there was no other way to enter. It was dark inside. I had expected that, but when confronted with how dark it was
even before the door was closed I wondered if I could make it through the
ceremony without panicking. I had read that sometimes people lost control of
their bowels on <i>ayahuasca</i>. I could
imagine nothing more humiliating. I memorized my way to the door, worried that
I would make a scene if I had to get out. Since I had always been
claustrophobic, there was a good chance I would. Although I was nervous, I calmly took a seat
against the wall, gathered a couple of thick wool blankets around me and laid claim to one of the plastic buckets
placed around the room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The buckets were for
“getting well,” i.e. vomiting. Instead of being considered a sign of sickness,
vomiting in an <i>ayahuasca</i> ceremony was
a sign that you were purging spirits on a physical level that were making you r
soul sick. As I sat there, I felt a chill from the ground creep into my bones
and wondered if it was actually coming out of them. My heart was cold. I kept
my head down and didn’t make eye contact with anyone in the room. I was
terrified, but numb, ready to endure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ayahuasca</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
is known as the vine of the dead, or the vine of the soul. It is used across
the Amazon by indigenous people to heal sicknesses of body, mind, and soul, as
well as to connect to the spirit world for instructions on how to live. I had
read many wondrous accounts of people who had been healed of addiction,
depression, even cancer by ayahuasca, all of them harrowing. From what I had
read, everyone’s experience was different. The medicine gave them what they
needed, although there were identifiable realms where people encountered snakes, condors and jaguars, as well as
geometric patterns I had seen stitched into fabric by the Shipibo, proudly
sported on the bags and backs of the North Americans and Europeans flocking to Peru for <i>la medicina</i>. Everyone I had spoken to had agreed that the
intentions of the medicine were good. Those who asked for healing often
experienced terror because they needed to
face fear inside themselves. The goal was to encounter death in order to be
reborn. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If <i>ayahuasca</i> does indeed give those who seek healing what they need,
it makes sense that westerners who share the paradigm of the masculine heroic
quest would suffer in order to purge and be reborn. Although female in body, my
consciousness, like most westerners of all genders, was skewed toward the
masculine, addicted to striving, progress, and achievement. An intense person,
I expected to have an intense experience with <i>ayahuasca</i>, to face my personal demons and emerge stronger on the
other side. Like I said, I was going to blast through the Underworld. At the
time it did not occur to me that it was ironic that there were so many
spiritual seekers on a <i>heroic</i> quest
attracted to <i>la medicina</i>, also called
<i>la abuela</i>, or grandmother. What kind
of grandmother sends her children to hell? One who loves them enough to drag
them down into the earth so they can
release their fear of leaving it when they die. One who is willing to
strip away the illusion of order to reveal the truth that Chaos is our mother. <i>Ayahuasca</i> shows us we are creatures of
the dark and must come to love it to be whole.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> I expected lights, colors, serpents and jaguars,
demons or fierce angels. As Alonso sang and played his guitar, I could sense the
shift in the dark when the others in the room with me began to hallucinate,
retreating into private worlds. Nothing was happening for me. I wondered if the
<i>ayahuasca</i> was working. About
forty-five minutes into the ceremony I began to feel nauseous. The dark
thickened, became denser, pressing me down. From a far distance that was also
right inside my head, pouring into the left side of my brain, I heard an old
woman’s voice, high-pitched, singing in a language I didn’t know. I could no
longer hear the music in the room or even sense there were others there with me.
I was being crushed by an immense pressure that seemed to come from within me. I’ve tried for years to put what I felt into
the words, but I haven’t really been able to yet. If I had seen images, maybe I
could have, but all I experienced was emotion—terror, dread, the certainty of
annihilation (I said later it was like the way it must feel to put your neck on
a block on a scaffold knowing that in the next second your head would be
severed by an executioner’s axe).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nx1tT0R0b3E/UlIDl1hux3I/AAAAAAAAAVo/v-OGhqGMMek/s1600/black+hole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nx1tT0R0b3E/UlIDl1hux3I/AAAAAAAAAVo/v-OGhqGMMek/s400/black+hole.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NASA image, black hole</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">And then it was over. I
didn’t know it was at first. All I knew was that the fear was gone along with
the woman’s voice. I could hear Alonso again, feel my body against the earth
wall. A smell drew my nose to touch my alpaca shawl. It was wet—I had vomited.
I had no memory of vomiting. I wondered if I had fainted, if I had lost
control, but the people on either side seemed unaffected by me, still immersed
in their private journeys. The main thing I felt was relief. I relaxed into the
wall, completely lucid and listened to the music for what seemed like hours,
until everyone had returned and a fire was lit in the center of the room. When
the flame lit the room I met people’s eyes in the circle, saw myself in them
and let them see their beauty in my reflection. To be honest I didn’t know it
at the time, but for the first time ever I was present and fully in my body. I
fell asleep on the temple floor under a mound of wool blankets at peace, though
a little alone. Everyone else had wandered off together, but I was used to
being alone. My ability to endure loneliness, not to have need of anyone, was
something I took pride in, although at the time I wouldn’t have said that, and although
I told my companions in the morning (they had seen all the bells and whistles:
snakes, mantis-like beings, colors) that I was content, I was not. I had wanted
a vision. All I got was some time in the dark. They couldn’t wait to go back
for another ceremony. I had no desire to go back. I could still feel the terror
of waiting to be crushed by that black hole. I wasn’t much of a hero after all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I did go back for one
more ceremony. This time I prayed to have an easy time and my prayer </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">was
answered. I saw the lights, the colors, angels and lost relatives, was blessed
by the music and wandered down the mountain in the morning with the
hummingbirds at dawn. Another person I brought to the ceremony had left before
it was over—a taboo—and I had been asked to go out and bring him back. He
refused, saying the </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">ayahuasca</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> was
weak and he was going home. I felt ashamed I had brought him with me, though no
one shamed</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">me. I also felt ashamed that
apparently I preferred weak </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">ayahuasca</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">.
The next day, listening to him complain, it occurred to me that there was no
way Alonso was brewing weak ayahuasca because his intent was to rip people off,
or because he thought we couldn’t handle it. I had faith in the medicine by
then and knew that each one of us who drank Alonso’s brew was drawn to him for
reasons we most likely were not aware of. I can’t speak for my friend, but a
couple of years later, still in despair, I wondered why I didn’t swill as much </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">ayahuasca</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> as I could when I had the
chance instead of prolonging the misery of trying to get out of the
Underworld.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">At some point the thought
wandered into my mind</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">that blasting
through was exactly what I did </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">not </i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">need.
I needed to be nurtured (psychiatry says that the root of narcissism is
improper nurturing. Think of that the next time you’re frustrated with a
narcissist.)--to be embraced and soothed. I needed a heroine’s quest, not a
hero’s. One that would take me into my body instead of out of it. My hatred of
my body, which I had been trained to see by the masculine paradigm as a vehicle
for my self, was just as intense as my hatred for that self I was trying to
bring fully into the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The next winter found
me returning to the Hawaiian Islands, where I had been severely traumatized
fifteen years ago while living on the Big Island. Fifteen years later I was
still so ashamed of things I had done, I had never spoken of most of what I
went though there. Even more telling, was that I was ashamed of what had been
done to me, things I had no choice in because I was female and not strong enough to fight back against the
physical violence I was subjected to. My body literally erupted when I set foot
on Maui. I got my period three weeks early waiting at the luggage carousel,
blood flowing so heavily it seeped
through the dark jeans I had donned back in the Rhode Island winter. It didn’t
show, but the smell was on me. Everyone knew. I was a creature of shame. I
didn’t deserve to be in Paradise. Although it was not my intent to return to
the Big Island, the scene of my trauma, after a week at my friend’ s house on
Maui, I was all of a sudden boarding another plane to Kona International
Airport. Landing in the harsh, black lava beds after the lush green of Maui was
a shock, but as I looked up at the vog coming off the mountain and smelled the
sulfur in the air, I knew I was home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Vog is short for
volcanic fog, a result of the continuous eruption of Kilauea, the volcano on
the east side of Hawaii that is the home of the goddess Pele. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TGqNn8T-T2o/UlIAWnoxneI/AAAAAAAAAU8/VdWzOCHXpsY/s1600/Pele.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TGqNn8T-T2o/UlIAWnoxneI/AAAAAAAAAU8/VdWzOCHXpsY/s400/Pele.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pele, by Herb Kawainui Kane</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Fifteen years
earlier I knew nothing of Hawaiian culture or mythology. I had no idea that
Pele was alive and that she could tear your life apart if she chose,
steamrolling over you the way she destroyed the village of Kalapana , birthing new
land, sharp and brittle as glass, as she dropped off the edge into the sea.
This time I knew more, but I was still not taking her seriously enough to
consider that this living goddess needed to be propitiated with sacrifices and
offerings if you wanted to live on her island. I had literally crouched twenty feet
from where she flowed into the ocean, thinking I would be allowed to go back to
Kona to swim with dolphins all day and wear </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">plumeria
</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">leis. I did this time around. I even stood at the top of Waipi’o Valley,
where I had been such a foolish victim fifteen years ago and told myself I was
not afraid. I believed I had exorcised those ghosts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C3dLoYd2-V0/UlH_tFTPoQI/AAAAAAAAAU4/aQotsvOeQWw/s1600/waipi%2527o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C3dLoYd2-V0/UlH_tFTPoQI/AAAAAAAAAU4/aQotsvOeQWw/s400/waipi%2527o.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Looking back, I think
it may have been all the time I spent with the dolphins that forced me to
finally begin dealing with the reality of having a body It was, after all, my
body that enabled me to swim with them for hours in the clear, blue bays of
South Kona. Although being such a tough coconut to crack I never cried, it was
quite common to hear people weeping in the water or on shore afterwards,
overwhelmed by the beauty of the dolphins, convinced their hearts had been
opened by contact with them. I guess I would have said that happened to me at
the time. I certainly knew that I loved them, and felt their pleasure in
swimming with me, </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">blowing rings underwater
and playing “the leaf game,” but I think that my heart at the time wasn’t open
enough to even know that it wasn’t open. I was still traumatized, in a state of
shock, and although my attempts at blasting through the shock had not been
successful (or at least as not as successful as I wanted them to be), some part
of my soul caught my body’s attention . A few days before I returned to Rhode
Island, my body took over.</span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DIZgdPpfM6Q/UlH_bF4HI4I/AAAAAAAAAUw/0a5EUT_LfMg/s1600/Jen+and+dolphins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DIZgdPpfM6Q/UlH_bF4HI4I/AAAAAAAAAUw/0a5EUT_LfMg/s320/Jen+and+dolphins.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That's me swimming with dolphins!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It was not just the
experiences I had my first time on Hawaii that separated</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">my spirit from my body. Like so many in our
culture, I was a victim of other forms of abuse. Not that I was special.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The way I see it, we are all trauma survivors
of a culture which has tried to annihilate the feminine. Since we all have a
feminine half of our soul, we are all damaged psychologically as individuals by
the abuse to the earth carried out by the masculine paradigm that treats our
planet as a resource to be harvested, justified by the desire that endless
growth is necessary for our survival. On the plane back, I was struck with
diarrhea. It didn’t seem too alarming at the time. I figured it was nerves or a
travel bug, totally ignoring the fact that this was bloody diarrhea. I ignored
it. In a miracle of denial that I still find amazing, I convinced myself it
would go away if I stopped eating and slept a lot. After about a month of this
I could no longer walk. A friend called my parents because that’s who you call
when are 41, single and poor, and I got on a small plane that looked like a
mosquito and flew the 12 miles to the mainland. My father took one look at me
and drove me to the hospital. I still thought I was fine and would be better
soon. The doctors were astonished I had not sought help earlier. Apparently, I
was in a drastic state, my bowels close to rupturing. They told me I could have
died from blood</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">poisoning if that had
happened, hooked</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">me up to an IV and
started pumping with me the drugs that saved</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">
</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">my life. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Eventually they told me
I had ulcerative colitis, a chronic disease that I would suffer from for the
rest of my life. Their advice was to try medication, but that I would most
likely need surgery to have my large intestine removed. The medicines would
suppress my immune system, leaving me open to other illnesses, and had a high
risk of cancer associated with them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ulcerative colitis is an
autoimmune disease. Researchers are not sure how it happens, but something triggers
the immune system to turn on the body and attack it. In my case, it was the large
intestine, which serves to eliminate waste from the body. Seen on a symbolic level,
it could be said that my body was at war with myself because I was holding onto
toxic emotions caused by trauma and abuse. Of course I refused to accept the diagnosis,
and as soon as I was released from the hospital (I actually went back two more
times that summer) started a regimen of holistic healing, convinced I could
heal myself through herbs, the right food, affirmations—whatever it took. If I
had to look dead-on at the trauma I had gone through, I would do it. I would
face my addictions and explore every ignored and abandoned corner of my psyche
that cried out to be acknowledged. Although I was careful not to use words like
fight and conquer in reference to my disease that was exactly what I was doing.
Ulcerative colitis was my new heroic quest and I had no doubt I would conquer
it. I refused to believe in the word chronic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Over the next three
years I went on and off medication. I would be ok without it for awhile, but
eventually my bowels would flare up and my life would become regulated by shame
and access to bathrooms. I would eventually give in and go back to the doctor
and they would put me on prednisone, nothing as heavy as the chemotherapy
treatments of Remacade that I had needed the first flare-up. I took this as a
sign that I was improving—I didn’t need the big guns anymore. I was still in
denial, still in fight or flight mode. The fall I was forty three I once again
booked a flight to Hawaii, even though the colitis was slowly flaring, denying
it could stop me from returning to the place my heart longed for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I turned 44 in Puna, a
remote jungle district of the Big Island that is just miles away from the
active lava flow. You could say I was living in Pele’s back yard. I was living
in a community called Kalani in a tent, chatting with my fellow volunteers at
meals, schlepping laundry baskets and making beds, all the while dashing off
into the bushes because I couldn’t make it to a toilet. I stopped eating again. Despite starving
myself, my body was still subject to violent spasms, as if it was trying to
purge itself of itself. Eventually I was too weak to work and laid in my tent
all day, getting up when my bowels spasmed to go in a bucket outside my tent.
In the end all that came out of me was red, bloody mucus created my body in
attempt to soothe my macerated intestines. It looked a bit like lava.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L6pKb39ePUs/UlIAtxuCD-I/AAAAAAAAAVE/DdPFTvm8QyE/s1600/lava+wave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L6pKb39ePUs/UlIAtxuCD-I/AAAAAAAAAVE/DdPFTvm8QyE/s1600/lava+wave.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">After a month of this I
stumbled into the Kalani office and </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">mumbled that I needed someone to drive me to
the hospital in Hilo. The reaction of the doctors was much as it had been back
on the east coast, shocked that I had made it so long. They had no idea what I
could endure. I lay in a bed in the Hilo Medical Center for two weeks. I shit
in a commode next to my bed and sometimes the floor, sometimes on myself, just
as I feared I would during the </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">ayahuasca</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">
ceremony three years earlier. I was treated with nothing but respect and
kindness by the orderlies who cleaned up the floor, the nurses who helped me
shower, the doctor who sat by my bed for an hour (it was a much slower pace in
a Hawaiian</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">hospital than on the
mainland) chatting about literature, and by the social workers who got me into
the Hawaii state medical system to pay for all of this since I didn’t have
health insurance. I slept very little because of the prednisone. As I lay awake
in the dark listening to Coltrane on my headphones one night, I finally
surrendered to my illness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I had always heard
there was peace, even bliss, in surrender, but I could never do it. I could
never do it because it can’t be done. It has to happen by itself and requires total acceptance of what is, no
matter how painful. I needed to accept
ulcerative colitis, not just acknowledge the traumas I thought had
caused it. I needed to accept the help
of those doctors and nurses and the state of Hawaii who paid for my hospital
stay. I needed to believe that I deserved to be helped simply because I was
human. I needed to learn how to stop feeling ashamed. This was the heroine’s journey—not to struggle
against, but to embrace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XHAP0iDMaFg/UlIBRJWijuI/AAAAAAAAAVM/oGfCPYA_DYE/s1600/coltrane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XHAP0iDMaFg/UlIBRJWijuI/AAAAAAAAAVM/oGfCPYA_DYE/s200/coltrane.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Make sure you bring this with you to the hospital.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the things I had
to embrace was the shame at the core of my self image. I was led by a therapist
to the work of Karla McLaren, an empath who defines shame as a form of anger
that arises when a boundary inside has been broken by something you’ve done or
have been convinced</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">is wrong. You can
read more about her work at </span><a href="http://www.karlamclaren.com/" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">www.karlamclaren.com</a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">McLaren distinguishes between authentic
shame, when you actually have done something harmful to self or others, and
manufactured shame (being shamed), which happens when we are coerced into
embodying someone else’s ideas of right and wrong. The practice for working
with authentic shame, according to McLaren, is to “make it right,” by
strengthening your boundaries and atoning for your transgressions and amending
your harmful behaviors toward yourself and others. Viewed in this manner, shame
has the potential to provide deep healing for the heart. I found that as I
began to work with my authentic shame, my compassion deepened and I was led to
begin the process of forgiving those who had shamed</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">me. Ultimately I was grateful for all of it.
Being a victim had put me on the path to sovereignty.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In that hospital,
spiraling into other dimensions through Coltrane’s saxophone, I began to truly
inhabit my body. I was even grateful for Remacade when the doctor put me back
on it. If my body needed to be injected
with a toxic chemical in order to be well, I would give it what it needed. When
I was finally well enough to leave the hospital and return to Kalani, this time I really was
living in Paradise. The sound of rain on my tent roof, orchids in trees, the
welcome of everyone in the community that I had only lived in for a month,
clean sheets to be folded, beds to be made, rooms to be vacuumed--I passed the
rest of the winter there and flew back to Block Island and have been here since. I am still taking
medication, although it is the mildest, least toxic one available. My
second to last doctor told me my colitis
was so severe it probably wouldn’t work and recommended I should continue with
the Remacade treatments, but I told him no. My latest doctor told me when I saw
him three months ago that my bloodwork showed no signs of colitis. If I
continued to show no symptoms for another six months he would support my
decision to gradually wean off medication.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P7jZIGWMYtM/UlIE-OdwoII/AAAAAAAAAV0/r4vPDwATOb4/s1600/IMG_2321.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P7jZIGWMYtM/UlIE-OdwoII/AAAAAAAAAV0/r4vPDwATOb4/s400/IMG_2321.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reclining Buddha, Kalani Oceanside Retreat</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A couple of years ago I
had a colonoscopy to see how my bowels were doing. Because the medication
suppresses symptoms the doctors have to look inside to see if the tissue is
affected. At that point I was in a rebellious stage, not taking my medication.
I decided to eat only fruit for the week before the test so there would be
nothing for the doctors to see. By the time I got to the hospital my blood
pressure was so low they couldn’t anaesthetize me all the way. I consented to
the procedure anyway, telling myself I would look away from the screen so I
wouldn’t be repulsed by the site of my intestines. Groggy from the anesthesia,
weak from fasting, I turned my head slowly turned toward the monitor like one
of the sea turtles I used to swim with at Honaunau, The Place of Refuge where Hawaiians
who had violated </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">kapu, </i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">sacred law, would
be given sanctuary if they could reach </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">it.
What I saw on the screen was like a hallucination, unexpected, hard to believe--and
totally convincing. A white serpent lived inside the dark of my body. As the camera
revealed my interior, I was awestruck at the sight of my intestines, spirals of
glowing pink-white flesh, perfect, mysterious, beautiful. A revelation. I
smiled and asked the doctor, “is that me?” He was nonplussed by having a
patient who was awake, but he answered,. “That’s you, all right.” “Amazing,” I said,
closing my eyes so that I would always remember what I had seen. I had finally
accepted my body. My first place. My last place. Now, every place is inside me.</span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MzRq3UGWpJA/UlIBvJQ5RuI/AAAAAAAAAVU/Owb0bH-LtDk/s1600/dna+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MzRq3UGWpJA/UlIBvJQ5RuI/AAAAAAAAAVU/Owb0bH-LtDk/s400/dna+image.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">DNA, the double helix</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-23435723410895216742013-09-30T18:44:00.001-07:002013-09-30T18:52:16.215-07:00Fragile as Glass<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today, sitting at Vaill Beach with a friend, a surfer walked up to us, waving a glass float he had just found tucked into a crevice in the clay bluff. I was immediately envious--I had wanted to find one ever since Wakefield glass blower Eben Horton started putting them out year as part of his Glass Float Project. Details about the project can be found here: <a href="http://www.glassfloatproject.com./">www.glassfloatproject.com.</a> Anyway, I was not only envious, but upset with myself for being envious. "I want to find one," I whined to my friend. She looked at me in sympathy, having found one last year.<br />
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After she climbed back up the steep Vaill path, I thought to myself, I am going to walk down to the end of the cove. Maybe I will find one. Then I realized that even though I wanted to find a glass float, that I knew they were out there--I hadn't been looking. I had given up.<br />
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I give up a lot. Every day I go to work I feel like I'm giving up. My failure to find joy in my livelihood crushes my soul, even though on a day to day basis I usually find some humor or small pleasure in my tasks. Still, it is not enough. The child inside me is very sad and does not believe that things will ever change. I've got a litany of excuses for why the world doesn't want my heart's work, but none of them really matter. If the child inside me was in charge, then hope would be enough.<br />
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Today, not really believing I would find a glass float--I figured that surfer must have found the last one--I finally did. I didn't just wander up to it. I was looking. Hoping I would find one, paying close attention to the flotsam and jetsam at the base of the bluffs. Sure enough, there it was suspended in the torn netting of a washed up lobster pot.<br />
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It was much more solid than I expected when I picked it up. Not fragile at all. I felt a strange emotion well through me--delight, then satisfaction. I smiled to myself and became quieter, although there was no one there to hear me. I kept walking until I reached the end of the cove, laid on the sand belly down. Fell asleep like a child holding my glass ball, half believing it was too good to be true. When I woke up it was still there, solid in my hand--something I had longed for. A dream that had come true. Today I fed the child inside me. She gifted me in return with her innocence. With her trust that I will guide us into delight.<br />
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<br />whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-26106392178085163502013-08-30T18:58:00.003-07:002013-10-25T10:52:11.228-07:00Choose the Moon<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
house is on a strip of land called “The Neck,” a bridge between the head and
body of the island which has been my home for the past twenty one years. At
some points “The Neck” is so narrow you can see the ocean on either side. I
know that if the wind is blowing from the southwest the waters of The Great
Salt Pond to my right as I bike into town will be placid, but if it shifts to
the northeast I’ll have to pedal against a headwind that will make my thighs burn.
I know that the buck will appear in the field near my house when the light
turns rose-gold, burnishing the fur on his newly sprouted antlers. I know where
the robin and his mate nested after the landscapers cut down the cedar shrub
where they were nesting without their permission, and that the gulls that soar
in the ferry’s wake sleep in the dunes at the far northern tip of the island. I
have felt the jetty rumble at the harbor’s mouth, witnessed the cormorants that
sleep in the cracks between stones explode over the black ocean. I know where
and when the moon will rise as the year turns, how the tides will affect my
moods, when I should write, and when I should be still, watching the silver
light break and reform, break and reform, as the waves touch the shore. I
wonder if they long for land? If they know it exists, or if they discover it
each time they break? If it hurts to break, or if they are numb to it, do they
arrive here weary and grateful, or are they impassive, beyond the simple
emotions which weigh me down or lift me up, depending on the moon? I wonder if
the moon cares that its light which I find more beautiful than all others, is
just a reflection of the sun’s? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
didn’t learn any of this from books, but I am compelled to write about it. It
has been an act of healing, first for myself, now for others as I begin to
flower in the world. Over twenty one years on Block Island, I have broken and
reformed many times, enough now that I know that this cycle is endless, and
rejoice that this is so, for every time I break, my roots grow deeper, not just
my roots to this island, but the roots to my soul who remembers that it is
connected to the whole earth, every blade of grass and every stone, every
person I pass in the grocery store whose eyes I don’t meet because I’m in a
rush, or annoyed, or exhausted, or the drunks who stumble out of the bars at
night who I sometimes deride, even the customers in the sandwich shop where I’ve
been working lately with special orders. At the end of a busy day, and
sometimes in the middle of the chaos, I try to remind myself I am here to
witness and to make connections. I use the poet’s tools of line and metaphor to
weave a tapestry that will re-enchant the earth so that everyone who comes in
contact with my words will once again recognize that Earth is sacred, something
that should not be bought or sold. Though my work is personal, my goal is
political. I aim to heal and initiate on the individual and cultural level with
the hope that my voice will play a part in re-envisioning social and economic
systems that are mutually beneficial for people and the plants and animals with
whom we share our home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
has not been an easy path towards even realizing this was my goal. First, I had
to go through the process of initiation myself, without even knowing that I
needed to, or that it was happening in the first place. My severance from
society and descent into the Underworld, two necessary steps in the initiatory
process, led me into years of self-destructive behavior that was the primary
inspiration for my work for some time. Now that I have pulled myself up out of
the Underworld, I look at my scars and am in awe that I survived, but don’t
feel compelled to share the details. I have learned to be intimate with myself.
Now I can look beyond my well-formed boundaries and write about what I see on
the other side of my skin—the doe grazing in the shadow of the stonewall, the
hydrangeas growing through the slats of the porch railing, a thousand insects
whose voices blur together as one. I want to learn how to speak insect, to
apprentice myself to that <i>zeeg zeeg zeeg</i>
I hear just now…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
was recently awarded a fellowship and the local newspaper asked if they could
do a brief interview. Heading into the office, I was vain enough to prepare
some answers in my head, as if I was getting ready to make a speech at The
Academy Awards. “What inspires you to write?” I imagined the editor asking me,
hands poised expectantly above his keyboard. It turned out that he did not ask
that question, but my answer to my own question surprised and delighted me. I
have written so long with a goal in mind—to heal, to transform myself and our
sick civilization, that I didn’t expect the answer to be, “I write because I
love words.” But there they were, the words that told me I had finally arrived
where I’d longed to be for so long, somewhere I can create by tapping on keys,
or by swirling wet ink across white paper, somewhere that is filled with
silence <i>and </i>sound, with acceptance
for all that is, the beautiful and the terrible, the unknown territory inside
my body and the earth’s, the unexplored corners of my soul and the world’s. I
love these words that allow me to push the edges back a little further, to go
deeper into the shadows with the deer, to break with the ocean, over and over,
to reform like the moon’s reflection. It is painful to be torn apart. There
will always be a gap between our bodies and our souls. But words are a bridge,
a strand of pearls around a neck gleaming with silver light that soothes the
skin after the sun has gone down. I am surrounded by ocean. I am all shore. I
am an island of words returning its touch. It is beyond my control, sometimes
fierce, sometimes gentle, but my response is not. I choose the moon and its
tides. I choose to be broken, again and again. I choose to open. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">#blockisland #foraging #whitewave #blockislandpoetryproject</span></div>
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-27223509284187718992013-08-08T10:27:00.003-07:002013-08-08T10:27:48.953-07:00Plant Spirit Lessons with Pokeweed<div style="text-align: center;">
This giant pokeweed appeared on the back north-facing side of my house last summer.</div>
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Over the winter there was a leak in the water main coming into the house that was flooding the basement. The backyard had to be dug up to get to the leak. As of now, one summer later, not much has grown back except for the pokweed, bigger and bolder than ever!</div>
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An herbalist friend of mine told me once that whenever a plant shows up in the vicinity of your dwelling place it is most likely there because you need it, so when the pokeweed showed up last year I took note. I did know that pokeweed shoots and leaves are edible in spring, although like milkweed they need to be boiled at least twice. Not being a fan of boiled, mushed greens, I've never tried pokeweed. I did eat some berries once, thinking they were sumac. They were horrendous and I spat most of them out which is a good thing since apparently they can cause severe digestive upset. </div>
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This year when the plant reappeared after the backhoe did its best to eradicate it, I resolved to do some research about the medicinal qualities of pokeweed on both physical and spiritual levels. My intuition, combined with my brief taste of the berries told me this was a powerful, intense medicine. Pokeweed has magenta stalks and when the berries are ripe they are also magenta. The color is fierce and startling. To be honest, I was a little afraid when I saw this plant last year in my yard, and even more unsettled when it came back this year after the job the backhoe did on the rest of the vegetation. A friend told me he has rubbed pokeweed on skin cancers on his face to burn them away. (and that it worked.) In other words, this is no soft, velvety mullein good for soothing sore throats. Pokeweed is serious business.</div>
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This morning I finally got the courage to look into pokeweed's uses. According to <a href="http://www.witchipedia.com/pokeweed">www.witchipedia.com/pokeweed</a> the plant is not only used for healing cancer, but for inflammation as well. Since I've been on a healing journey with ulcerative colitis for the past 5 years its presence in my backyard made sense, although the specter of cancer scared me since the incidence of colon cancer in people with UC is high.</div>
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I have been hospitalized with UC four times. Two times the reason I've gone into the hospital was because I was in such denial that I could not cure myself that I refused to acknowledge that I needed western medication. I had trained myself to always look for the spiritual and emotional source of any illness and believe that imbalances in these areas cause disease to manifest physically. To me, western medication, which focuses purely on the physical components of disease, was simply applying a band-aid. If I could go directly to the source of the spiritual imbalance through doing the required emotional work, then I believed the physical disease, which every doctor assured me was chronic and would be with me for the rest of my life, would resolve itself.</div>
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My belief was arrogant and it is not a surprise to me that I ended up in the hospital a 4th time last year. It was never going to be "I" who healed myself like some kind of new age superhero. I've written a long essay which I am currently revising about my journey with ulcerative colitis, but one of the insights that I will share here that came from my last hospitalization, was that being so sick was an opportunity for me to surrender, to be completely vulnerable, something by constitution and life experience that I have learned to avoid. I realized that I had been in protection mode (often called hyper-vigilance) for years. I also realized that the greatest surrender for me would not be to go back into the Hawaiian jungle and tough it out through fasting and herbs, but to hook myself up to the scary infusion machine that pumped toxic drugs into my system that suppressed my immune system so that my body would stop attacking itself.</div>
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The two weeks I lay in bed in Hilo Hospital, tended by kind Hawaiian nurses and aides, was one of the deepest spiritual journeys of my life. Because of the drugs, I barely slept so the border between me and God was thin. I had no control over my body in a lot of situations that, in the past, I would have found humiliating. To my surprise I found that by losing control, by having to rely literally on the kindness of strangers--I had no family anywhere even close, no medical insurance, and no money, I was able to shed many layers of self-protection that kept me from accepting the simple truth that I was human and deserving of love for this reason only. I didn't need to do anything to earn it. Instead of being ashamed that I was broke and sick, I was grateful for all the help I received from everyone in the hospital and from the community in Puna where I had been living as a volunteer. There were even moments of bliss. As I detail in the coming essay, I've been on medication since, although fortunately not the chemo because it was making my hair fall out. Most of it has grown back and I am continuing, now that my body has been stable for a year, to look into the deeper levels of my disease.</div>
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So.......last week I actually started watering the pokeweed when I water the grass seed I planted that is not exactly flourishing. Fortunately the owners of my house are not exactly plant savvy and think it is a shrub. Maybe a butterfly bush which it slightly resembles. I don't think, if they ask me, that I should cut it down. I might even have to refuse if they ask. A scary prospect, since my housing depends of pleasing them. Today I observed that it is on the north side of my house. As a student of the Medicine Wheel I know that the north has to do with ancestors and wisdom. Sometimes I've felt that getting ulcerative colitis was not only a way for me to clear personal karma and stored emotions, but to clear it for my family as well. Not just the relatives I know or have been told about, but my whole genetic line going back to the beginning of, well, humanity, or at least civilized humanity which currently is in a state of healing crisis itself. I have done some of this work through ceremony, but apparently one of my life lessons is to figure out how to actually live in a body. I have been so good at checking out of my body, that I had to get sick to actually accept that I had one! My intuition was right on here, I think, since one of the other things I learned from witchipedia was that pokeweed, in addition to being used to treat inflammation (ulcerative colitis is inflammation that occurs in the lower digestive tract due to an auto-immune response, which means the body is as at war with itself) has traditionally been used to break hexes and protect areas from harmful or negative influences! As an HSP (highly sensitive person) <a href="http://www.thehighlysensitiveperson.com/">www.thehighlysensitiveperson.com</a> I am aware that I absorb energy and emotions like a sponge, so the fact that pokeweed has come to assist me is pretty exciting. I also feel that I am committed, in a calm way, to my journey with ulcerative colitis. I'm not trying to get rid of it anymore. I no longer resent the 4 pills I take every morning or that I can't eat a normal diet. UC has given me boundaries, which I was in severe need of. Pokeweed is here to take me to the next level. I am ready to dive deeper into my genetic memory, to ask my ancestors what they need in order to free them, possibly from a hex that has been passed down through our genetic memory into my body. I am really feeling honored that pokeweed has chosen me. I plan to keep watering. And even if I am still a little afraid of it, I look forward to when the berries, which have appeared in the past week become so flushed with desire for life that they turn an intoxicating purple. This time I will not eat them, although I am hoping the birds in the thicket over the stone wall enjoy the feast!</div>
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whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-37635670147682688992013-06-30T15:12:00.001-07:002013-06-30T15:12:41.215-07:00Ravished By Rhode Island's Swans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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“Good, that’s one less pest we need to deal with,” said the local Nature Conservancy educator as he handed off my bag of organic vegetables at the weekly CSA pick-up. I had called his office earlier to report the dead bird. I knew he and his colleagues were interested in anything out of the ordinary and had called before with reports of strange birds or dead marine mammals I’d come across on one of Block Island’s remote beaches. “On the mainland the DEM addles the eggs so they won’t hatch,” he went on to inform me. I stuffed my anger and retreated down the barn ramp with my bag of vegetables, ashamed.<br />
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It was a young swan, silver-gray instead of white, but fully grown. It lay belly-up on the strip of emerald grass between the paved road and a stone wall. Its long, curved neck was stretched all the way out, exposed to the cobalt sky in what, if it had been alive, I would have called rapture. There were no marks on its body I could see, so I concluded it hadn’t been hit by a car. I had never seen a swan in the road anyway, and it was too perfectly composed to have been flung to the side of the road. When I touched its belly it was still warm. I felt firm muscle under feathers. Looking up, I noted a power line above and deduced maybe it had flown into it, which would account for the perfection of its death, shocked out of the sky to land on the grass, wings slightly open and loose at its sides like a yogi in savasana.. Later, The Nature Conservancy confirmed that it had hit a power line. Apparently swans have poor frontal vision and often collide mid-flight.<br />
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When I think of swans I see them as a poet, not as a scientist. I see the “The Wild Swans at Coole,” who drift in Yeats’ poem “on the still water,/mysterious, beautiful,” not the pests that have been destroying pond ecosystems in North America through overgrazing of subaquatic vegetation, not a bird so aggressive it drives out indigenous, threatened birds like least terns and skimmers. I did know not to get too close to a swan. As a child we used to feed a flock of waterfowl at the town docks not far from our house. My parents always warned us to step back whenever a swan lumbered out of the harbor for a breadcrumb. They hissed when they approached, and I had no doubt they could, as my parents warned, break my legs, but this threat of danger only increased my awe and fascination. The swan was not silly like a duck, it was seductive and sinister. It got what it wanted. My brother and I scattered our whole bag of stale bread and ran from them. Not a crumb for the ducks. I learned of Zeus transforming himself into a swan to ravish Leda. Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan,” makes the power of the swan visceral. One of the reasons it is so disturbing for me is because there is a hint of sexual pleasure in what we are told is a rape. In one essay on the poem I read that what we are reading about in Yeats’ version of the story is not rape, but ravishment—a forced surrender to the divine that results in a deeper ecstasy than can be experienced if one surrenders willingly. Yeats writes:<br />
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A sudden blow: the great wings beating still<br />
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed<br />
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,<br />
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.<br />
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How can those terrified vague fingers push<br />
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?<br />
And how can body, laid in that white rush,<br />
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?<br />
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A shudder in the loins engenders there<br />
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]<br />
And Agamemnon dead.<br />
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Being so caught up,<br />
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,<br />
Did she put on his knowledge with his power<br />
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?<br />
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I have to admit I don’t know how I feel about this. A part of me feels it is true, a part of me does not want to feel that way. I have recently become aware that my best writing comes from this uncertainty. Most of the time I don’t know what I know, or even what I think until I begin writing, so this is ripe territory for me that I plan to explore when I finish this essay. In the meantime, I can say that the swan is a powerful totem in many cultures. In general, it is associated with fluidity, intuition, dreaming, emotions and creativity. When it appears in our lives we may become more in touch with our intuition, or have a visionary dream. As many know, swans mate for life, so they are associated with love and devotion. In the Celtic tradition they are linked to the sun gods Belanus and Lugh, and to Brigid, goddess of fire, healing and poetry. The Celts also saw the swan as a vehicle from the Otherworld to this one and tell the tale of Aoifa, the Irish princess whose four brothers were condemned to live as swans by a jealous stepmother. Aoifa remains mute for seven years and weaves four flax shirts that break the enchantment.<br />
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In the “Ugly Duckling,” by the Danish storyteller Hans Christian Anderson, we find an awkward, speckled cygnet raised by ducks who thinks he is ugly in comparison. Once he sees his inner beauty, he is transformed into a glorious white adult. He earns his beauty by transforming from the inside out. In German folklore, we are told of Swan Maidens who become human women when they take off their feather robes to swim at night in a lake. When a hunter steals the feather robe of the youngest of seven swan sisters, she, freezing after her nocturnal swim, has to become his wife when he refuses to give it back. If she wants to survive she must accept his cloak, which she does, following him home to become his wife and bear his children. When she discovers her feathers hidden behind the wainscoting, she takes to the air, abandoning her family, telling her daughter that if her husband wants her back he can follow her to the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The husband sets out to find her, and after a series of trials he wins, through trickery, a cap that makes him invisible and shoes that will carry him immediately to his destination. At first he can’t tell which of the seven maidens is his wife, but he asks the king if he can hold the hand of each woman. He knows his wife from the calluses on the forefinger of her right hand, roughened by years of sewing his clothes. The king, as a man of his word, hands over his daughter, and the hunter takes his wife back to the forest. However, this time he lets her keep her feather robe so that she can visit her family whenever she wants.<br />
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Stories like this used to infuriate me. When I learned to look at folk tales through an archetypal lens, my views changed. Instead of oppression, I saw transformation. When each character becomes an aspect of one’s consciousness, myths act as a guide for our souls. Our reactions to them—where we find ourselves in the story—can give us a glimpse into the unconscious. We are able to see what we are hiding from ourselves, and if we allow ourselves to be penetrated by the story, we open up the possibility of birthing a new aspect of ourselves which will add to the depth of our vision and our capacity to relate. We all have a swan maiden and a hunter inside us, and sometimes we need a magic cap and shoes, and a bit of trickery to get past the conscious mind so we can get to the king inside us who will give us permission to marry. The goal is always union. That’s why so many stories end with marriage. The male aspect of ourselves unites with the female and a child is born. In our own brains, we have two hemispheres, the left representing masculine qualities, while the right is a container for the feminine. They are joined by the corpus collossum. When the hemispheres are in balance we make choices that are based on intellect and intuition. We are in desperate need of this holistic way of perceiving in our culture, which over-emphasizes the left brain, keeping us isolated from the rest of creation.<br />
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The mute swans, scourge of freshwater and brackish bodies of water in the northeast U.S. is not a native species. It was imported from Europe in the late 19th century as a decorative embellishment. Someone had the idea it would be inspiring to watch them glide on ponds, and unless you know the damage they do, it can still be inspiring. In fact, I know the damage, and am moved beyond my rational thoughts into ecstasy when I see one. There is no denying the physical beauty of this white bird. Like all wild creatures, they tried to escape, and were successful. The first noted escapee in Rhode Island was actually sighted, in 1923, here on Block Island. It pains me that swans are wiping out other birds, and I understand the DEM’s approach. What I don’t like is the pleasure I heard in the Nature Conservancy educator’s voice when he told me about the addling program. (By the way, addling consists of coating the eggs with oil, usually, corn, smothering the embryos so they die in the egg. The eggs are left on the nest so the swan will not hatch new ones.) I don’t think the pleasure I heard in his voice was in killing, it was pleasure that I was hurt. He was mocking my emotion, which has no place in his world where a cool, rational intellect is necessary in order to choose who will live or die. I respect him for it, but I wish the scientist in him could have encountered the poet in me with a reciprocal respect, a willingness to cooperate, instead of ridicule, an acknowledgement that the imagination has as an essential role in restoring balance to our ecosystem as the mechanics of science.<br />
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In The Nature Conservancy view “nature” is entirely ruled by chemical and biological forces. Their answer is to add a few drops of swan poison and the ponds will right themselves. On the other side there are people like me who mourn the swan as well as the loss of skimmers and least terns. We are often called sentimental and would not survive the survival of the fittest if it was a purely physical contest. In the case of imagining possibilities, we are not only more flexible, we are muscular as well, and have an essential role to play in re-establishing balance so that life on our planet can go on.<br />
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When I weep for the destruction of beauty I weep for the death of the imagination. According to current science, the corpus collossum, the part of the brain that connects right and left hemispheres, is not fully functioning in humans. Since the Enlightenment, we have valued the intellect over intuition to such an extent that it’s as if the bridge of the corpus collossum has become so tattered, like one of those rope bridges you see strung across ravines in wild places, it’s about to collapse, leaving us on one side without a means to cross to the other.<br />
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Poetry still exists in the world. Even in Western culture, people still tell the old stories, adapting them to current mediums. Darren Arronofsky’s film “Black Swan,” based on Tchaikovsky’s ballet, sourced itself from a Russian folk tale is a recent example. Although many would deny it, we still need myth and poetry. Although the ropes are near to breaking, and there are only a few wooden slats left, it is still possible to make it across the bridge if you have the ability to leap. I’m not sure how to cross over in a practical sense. I could try to get a job at the DEM and tell stories about Swan Maidens to my colleagues while we sneak up on swan nests at night to addle their eggs, but I suspect they are not hiring poets. This essay, cloaked in the logic of grammar, is a start.<br />
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So I ask you to join me in noting the parallels between ourselves and mute swans—neither of us are indigenous to this continent, and we are both beautiful. What happens when we view ourselves as the invasive species? In China they limit population growth through mandatory abortions. We in the U.S. have not yet reached that point, and I hope we never do. I pray that we find a way to merge with this land, before we and the mute swans cause more extinctions. Until this happens, we are invaders on this continent. My prayer is for us to become natives.<br />
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The way to do this is to listen to the old stories, because they are the earth’s, and contain a wisdom far greater than what can be discerned with the scientific method, which does not connect biology to the soul, although, as shown in the analysis of fairy tales by William Irwin Thompson, they contain knowledge about our biological origins that have been proven in our time by science. (His unfolding of the Rapunzel story in Imaginary Landscapes is fascinating.) This is true of many indigenous cultures today. In “The Cosmic Serpent” Jeremy Narby writes of how knowledge of DNA, the fundamental structure of life, is revealed through the Amazonian plant medicine ayahuasca. The growing popularity of ayahuasca in North America points to a shift in our collective consciousness. More and more of us are called to follow the shamanic path which provides a direct experience of the divine that is outside the possibilities offered by the scientific method.<br />
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Consider that our collective unconscious may have summoned the mute swan to the shores of North America because we knew we needed to be reminded, like the ugly duckling, of our own beauty, or that we called the swan to us because we need to be forced into surrendering to the truth that our actions are destroying Earth. In “Leda and the Swan,” Leda is ravished by Zeus. Forced to surrender to divine sexual ecstasy, she incubates, as I mentioned earlier, either one or two eggs. In the story where there are two, out of one hatches the divine Helen and Castor, out of the other, the mortal Polydeuces and Clytemnestra. It is Clytemnestra, the mortal child, who kills her husband, King Agamemnon. When the King in us dies we lose our sense of inner authority. Without divine guidance, the King flounders and is lost in the Wasteland, dragging the rest of us behind him to wander in the gray landscape, wondering what we are missing.<br />
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I don’t expect the DEM to stop killing swan embryos, but since we humans brought them here, we have an obligation to them as well as to the native species. This is obligation includes doing the inner work that will lead us to the satisfactory conclusion found at the end of Shakespeare’s comedies—marriage. Writer and explorer Jay Griffiths, in her conclusion to “Wild,” writes about the difference between Shakespearean comedy and tragedy. Comedy ends with us married. In tragedy we end up lying in pools of our own blood on the palace floor. Nature, which we have declared outside of us, marries everything it can. We may die on the forest floor and rot back into the soil, but that is a form of marriage, too, isn’t it?<br />
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Right now you could say that western culture is heading toward a divorce trial that will end in a settlement that is not going to make anyone happy, even if they do survive. However, there is an underground movement to bring marriage back in fresh, new ways that serve the soul, instead of the traditional function of marriage as a union to benefit material growth. When this kind of marriage becomes the standard, it will mean the two hemispheres of our brains have been re-united, our imagination will be able to assist our intellects, and we will find a way to live in balance with the rest of life, like the way we did before we believed we were thrown out of the Garden of Eden for knowing ourselves. The mute swan calls to our hearts to surrender body and soul with the fierce longing of a bird that has no voice. The swan, at home on land, earth, and air, is considered a master of all three elements. In Seamus Heaney’s poem “Postscript,” the swan, seen as “earthed lightning” becomes a master of fire as well. Heaney writes:<br />
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And some time make the time to drive out west<br />
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,<br />
In September or October, when the wind<br />
And the light are working off each other<br />
So that the ocean on one side is wild<br />
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones<br />
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit<br />
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,<br />
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,<br />
Their fully grown head-strong-looking heads<br />
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.<br />
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it<br />
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,<br />
A hurry through which known and strange things pass<br />
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways<br />
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.<br />
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In this poem fire becomes the creative spark we need to ignite our vision. Notice what is required: our hearts blown open.<br />
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According to legend, the swan finally sings when it dies. My hope is that we never hear this song, unless it is in our imagination, where the aspects of ourselves that keep us from union die a glorious death, enveloped in a reverie of white wings and a song that can only be heard once in life, those moments when we swoon in the arms of our lovers. Surrendered, we know rapture, touched by the divine we become fully human. The whole planet rejoices at our wedding.whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-44609892058865497932013-06-25T19:12:00.003-07:002013-06-25T19:12:40.627-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Today I braved snapping turtles and snakes to wade into the wilds of Franklin Swamp to gather</div>
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Cattail pollen!</div>
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It is highly nutritious like bee pollen and fun to gather. Just grab yourself a glass jar and tap a catkin with your fingers. In about an hour you will have a tablespoon!</div>
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Cattails were a huge food source to the indigenous people of New England. They ate the rhizomes (the roots that grow horizontally), the shoots (which I love!), the pollen, and the catkins, which I have never tried but are perfect right now, so stay tuned for part two of this adventure. They also covered their wigwams with cattail mats. Did you know that according to the Narragansetts, they learned to build wigwams from muskrats? If you've ever seen a domed muskrat dwelling this makes perfect sense. Muskrats are also residents of Franklin Swamp and are much more mellow than regular rats. The other day I came across one relaxing with a turtle on my way to a gardening job. It took about 5 minutes for either of them to move when I came upon them in my Jeep. Fortunately, I was not in a rush!</div>
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Cattails are self-pollinators. They have a male and female flower, as you can see here in these photos. I'm sure there is some sort of scientific name for this, but I don't know it. If anyone does, please enlighten me. </div>
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Cattail pollen can be sprinkled on food or baked, but I am just going to add this golden goodness to my smoothie tomorrow and see what happens. My sensitivity to food and drink has been really heightened lately, so I am expecting some spectacular bliss to come my way considering the glorious beauty of this gift from the deep wilds of Franklin Swamp where the snakes are slithering and the turtles are snapping, where you could, at any moment be surprised to find yourself face to face with some ancient part of yourself you thought no longer existed. That's what I live for. That's what I call glory. Here's to passing summer days drunk on pollen in a haze of delight, to laughter and sunlight, to wandering, and to wonder. To pleasure in simple things, like the color yellow. </div>
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Smile back! This is what's waiting for you...</div>
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whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-44284298947986274392013-06-19T05:47:00.002-07:002013-06-19T05:49:46.919-07:00Feverish Spice Bushes by the Sea<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">How's that for a title! These feverish spice bushes of which I speak are how Robert Bly translates "los nardos febriles" in Lorca's poem "Malaguena." In the third stanza we hear that there is "an odor of salt and the blood of women in the feverish spice bushes by the sea." Some say Lorca was actually referring to tuberoses, but I prefer Bly's translation because it reminds me of sea rocket, the spicy succulent that is blooming in the dunes right now all over Block Island. When I pick a leaf and put it on my tongue, it burns. I think of Lorca and suddenly I am not on Block Island about to head out to the oyster farm. I am riding a black horse bareback over the deep roads of the guitar. There is a tavern in the distance. I can see the light spilling through the cracked door. If I enter, I will never be the same. The sea rocket burns my tongue. I enter. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">Malaguena</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">La muerte </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">entra y sale </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">de la taberna. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">Pasan caballos negros </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">y gente siniestra </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">por los hondos caminos </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">de la guitarra. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">Y hay un olor a sal </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">y a sangre de hembra, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">en los nardos febriles </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">de la marina. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">La muerte </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">entra y sale, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">y sale y entra </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">la muerte </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">de la taberna.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3c3c3c; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-align: center;">--Federico Garcia Lorca</span>whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-91517797655376320342013-06-14T09:08:00.000-07:002013-06-14T13:18:34.132-07:00AbundantFor a long time my thoughts were shaped by the words not enough. Not enough time, love, money--especially money. Foraging opened my heartmind to the truth--there is more than enough. It also connected me to the cyclical nature of time in an immediate way. As I became attuned to the cycle of wild time, my body calmed down, and then my thoughts, and my heart flowered.<br />
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There are so many plants waiting to be gathered right now! I wake up excited to greet familiar friends that I have not seen for many moons. Milkweed is everywhere--in fields, at the edge of stone walls, sneaking into gardens where it suddenly becomes a weed. I don't want the milkweed to feel unwanted. As a gardener, I work for people who want their "weeds" removed. Their weeds became my dinner, the tender shoots seen in this photo:<br />
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When you snap a stalk you will notice that a white sap oozes out, hence the name milkweed. If you get it on your skin it will itch and burn. If you eat it raw it will really be uncomfortable! Milkweed needs to be boiled in at least two changes of water. Some of the old field guides say three, but I think they liked there greens more cooked than we do. I have had no problem with two changes. The easiest way is to boil two pots, throw the shoots in, boil for a few minutes, dump, put them back in to the other boiling pot until they have reached, as the guides say "desired tenderness." (Isn't that what we all want?) They taste like green beans and are delicious hot or cold. I liked to eat them in a dijon vinaigrette.</div>
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Below are two photos of milkweed flowers about to burst. They can be picked now and eaten. Parboil them. I like to make wild tabouli with them. The look and the texture is similar to bulghur wheat, though the taste is lighter and fresher. Add some chopped almonds and dressing of your choice (lemon, vinegar, herbs, mustard.) </div>
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Many of you probably know that milkweed is the favorite food of monarch butterflies. They rely on it to complete one of the most incredible journeys on our planet, migrating to and from pine forests in the mountains of Mexico. To me, the most inspiring aspect of this journey is that they change forms halfway. A butterfly leaves Mexico, flies all the way to Block Island, lays eggs which become a caterpillar, which weaves a chrysalis around itself in which it completely dissolves. When it emerges, it is winged again, ready to fly south to begin the cycle. </div>
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We are at a time on our planet in which many cycles are coming to an end as the result of human action. I feel immense sadness when I think that maybe one day butterflies will not appear over the bluffs and come to feed on flowers in the island's fields. I am also coming to trust that there are larger cycles that I can't see. The butterfly is a symbol of psyche, the soul. Could it be we, like the caterpillar, are dissolving into something we don't recognize yet, something light as breath under wings, translucent and shining with the knowledge of our own beauty? That is my wish for us all. </div>
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<br />whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-25656173511610970472013-04-09T11:12:00.002-07:002013-04-09T11:12:57.773-07:00First Greens<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
After work the other day I looked closely at my lawn. The grass is still brown, but when you bend down I saw all these lovely green plants blooming close to the ground! The leaves were tiny, not enough for a salad yet, so I picked a handful and added them to my salad dressing. It was the best salad I've had in months!</div>
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Plantain, is delicious in salad and also stops cuts from bleeding.</div>
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These tiny chickweed starbusts seemed happy to see their friend sorrel after the long winter.</div>
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Winter cress, related to watercress, but thrives in soil, not water. It has a short season, so look for it now.</div>
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Dandelions are at their most delicious before they bloom.</div>
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Tasty young chicory greens are easy to identify by the husks of their old stalks that were strong enough to withstand winter winds.</div>
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<br />whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-70442897085680606822013-04-04T08:51:00.003-07:002013-04-04T08:51:51.376-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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They are almost here! Can you feel them about to burst?</div>
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-32067424346366627432013-03-31T13:54:00.003-07:002013-03-31T13:54:51.623-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Easter morning dreamers</div>
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-60559730800700229882013-03-29T12:59:00.003-07:002013-03-29T13:02:06.456-07:00New WebsiteI am happy to report that this technically challenged poet-forager has completed her first website! Since I have not yet figured out how to add a link to this blog on the site, I thought I would begin with linking to the site from this blog. Please take a look at <a href="http://www.medicinewheelwithin.com/">www.medicinewheelwithin.com</a>. More content will follow soon, but in the meantime it's a look at the ideas I have been developing over many years on Block Island about how self-transformation and cultural transformation can occur simultaneously when we listen to Earth and act on what she tells us.<br />
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I will be guiding those who feel called to connect with the earth's stories here on Block Island in a series of workshops this April at <a href="http://www.bipoetryproject.com/">The Block Island Poetry Project</a>. The first weekend, April 11-14, I am incredibly honored to be teaching alongside Coleman Barks and Li-Young Lee. From April 18-21 I will be hosting an in-depth exploration of The Medicine Wheel Within path that will also include working together on the craft of poetry. This second workshop will be taught by donation so don't let lack of money stop you from joining me. I will happily take daffodils as payment!<br />
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<br />whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-62845627615620540472013-03-29T10:08:00.000-07:002013-03-29T10:09:09.797-07:00Dream WeavingOne summer I worked as a private gardener three days a week on an estate on the island. It was the kind of job where the owners tell you to make sure you bring your own water because they don't want you coming into the house for a drink. I was so beaten down this didn't even make me angry. That's just the way rich people are, I thought. The water from my house tastes better, anyway. My thoughts were bitter, and so was my heart.<br />
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One morning when the homeowners were not there, something happened that is so extraordinary I haven't known how to tell it. I have avoided telling it because I thought no one would believe me. For a time, I felt like it was more important to keep it to myself, that the magic of this even would dissipate if I told about what happened that morning as I approached the blueberry bushes covered in netting that kept the birds off the berries. I never went into the blueberry garden. I was told to leave it alone and did not want to be accused of pilfering berries. But that day as I wandered by, I noticed something was caught in the net: a dragonfly. It was a very large dragonfly, larger than any I had ever seen. Blue and silver, gray and green, colors of the swirling ocean--but with its wings pinned, this dragonfly was still. It looked at me with its enormous, globular eyes and I fell into the blackness inside myself. I opened the gate and walked inside, walked to the corner near the top where it was stuck and decided I had to free it. When I touched the net, trying to pull the gaps wider so it could escape, its trapped body began to vibrate in panic. Its wings were so thin. I knew if it kept up like that, they would tear. I was so scared they would tear before I could get it out I started to cry. When I say I was desperate I mean it. I had no choice. I took my knife out of my pocket and cut the net. The dragonfly shot straight into the air like a rocket and left my crying.<br />
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This was one of those days when the weight of grief was so heavy on me I didn't know how people could think I was not about to sink into a hole in the earth right in front of them, but somehow I managed to convince everyone I was normal. After my daily duties were done, I hiked out to the dunes on the far side of the North Light, and lay in a bowl where you can look up and see nothing but sky and sand. If I had been able to cry, I would have. Instead, I wrote two words in the sand with my finger: "Help Me."<br />
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Night calms me. When everyone goes to sleep, I awake. It's as if once the day's pressure to be productive is over, I finally allow myself to do the work I am meant for: to dream, to weave, to create beauty. That night I sat reading in bed. Something hit the screen of my bedroom window. Heavier than the usual insects throwing themselves toward my light. I got out of bed to take a closer look. It was the dragonfly. There on my screen, miles away from where I had freed it that morning. Its colors by night were even more iridescent. I was struck again by its size and its incredible black eyes. We looked at each other for a few minutes until I broke the spell to go upstairs to get a field guide. I had never seen a dragonfly at night before. I wanted to look it up. I was strangely calm that I knew it was the exact same dragonfly, almost as if I couldn't believe it, as if I didn't deserve something so wonderful, as if there was no way a dragonfly could care about me, as if magic didn't really exist in the world.<br />
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I walked back downstairs, book in hand, and it was gone. What I read in the book still gives me chills: dragonflies do not fly at night. Later, I read that fairies often appeared to humans in the form of a dragonfly, and for awhile I told myself the fairies had answered my call for help. Maybe it was a fairy I freed from the net over the blueberries, but now I can see that it is even more wonderful if it was just a dragonfly. How marvelous that when my broken heart called to the world in two words etched in sand, that a dragonfly came to let me know that someone heard me. That I have ever again doubted that I am loved by the earth, amazes me. That I did not change my life that moment. Maybe some revelations are so shocking that they have to be softened by time in order to be absorbed by our fragile bodies. I was sobbing when I cut it free, terrified it would die before it was loose, that its wings would break against my fingers. I saved its life. It knew it. Why should I be surprised it returned the favor?whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-13122622002700639752013-03-11T13:50:00.004-07:002013-03-11T13:50:57.031-07:00Beautiful Dreamers<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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My process, in writing and life, has up until recently, been
to make things more complicated than they need to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes I have presented my complications
as art. Although I’m embarrassed about this, I have compassion for myself. I
was lonely and needed help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I craved
human companionship like water, but there were things I had to learn on my own,
without the comfort and reassurance of mirrors so that I could learn to see with
my own eyes. At first I became more selfish. Every crow call I happened to hear
was a message for my ears only, and I wanted you to know about it. Over time I
learned to see how my impulse to share was founded on the need to be seen, not
on a desire to see someone and else, which is what it takes to make a true
connection. This shifted for me this winter without me knowing it. The shift
came either through writing poetry, or I noticed it after in my poems. Probably
both, which means I have entered the realm of relationship I longed for.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that I see a bird
and not a message, I am less lonely. In not needing to be seen, I see myself,
and begin to ask forgiveness for my human arrogance that has kept me separate
from the world. This is lucid dreaming I think. I am awake inside the dream,
open to participating in creation, instead of thinking I can either control it,
or have no control at all.</div>
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I once led a group into The Maze, a nature preserve on Block
Island with serpentine trails where people who have hiked for years still get
lost, for an authentic movement session. Authentic movement is a practice
developed by a Jungian analyst to connect to the unconscious through the body.
The work is done in partners, with each person switching roles as witness and
mover. Starting on the ground, the mover follows the body’s impulses, while the
witness holds the container. After the movement is complete, each person writes
of the experience, with the understanding that, for the witness, everything
written about the mover, is a reflection of themselves, and not just a
statement about what they saw. Mover and witness have separate experiences that
are also the same. </div>
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After we were finished
I called everyone together to share their experiences with the group. One woman
broke down in tears, telling us how she hadn’t touched the earth for years with
anything besides shoes because she was so afraid of Lyme disease. Her grief was
not just for this, but that, until she had sat down on the ground and touched
it, she hadn’t even noticed.</div>
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How much are we not noticing because we’re afraid? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why are we afraid? The earth meets all the
needs of every other creature on the earth. Do we really believe that it’s not the
same for us? I invite you to wake up inside the dream of a being without words,
whose language comes from the sounds water makes over stones or falling on
leaves, a dream that doesn’t need to be interpreted, all of its meaning unto itself.</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Note: versions of this letter have been sent to The Block Island Times and the
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I encourage you to write your own letter. The Army Corps of Engineers is taking public comments until Feb. 10. Please ask that a full Environmental Impact Study be done on the Deepwater Wind project.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I am writing to express my public opposition to the
Deepwater Wind application to build a wind farm off Block Island. I have
hesitated expressing my opinion in a public forum so far because, while I am
opposed to corporate control of our energy, my primary objection has been
emotional, grounded in what I at first thought was aesthetic dismay—I couldn’t
bear the thought of seeing those windmills on the wild ocean, but which I
realized on further contemplation was a belief that this wild seascape was
sacred and should not be altered for the short term needs of humans in
transition as industrial capitalism makes a last attempt to buttress a failing
system that has put short term profits over the long term interests of all
creatures sharing this planet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">From what I’ve observed about the political process
in my lifetime, emotional reactions are usually more detrimental than helpful.
However, after reading the letter published in last week’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Block Island Times </i>by David Lewis, in which he eloquently merged
his emotional reasons for opposing Deepwater Wind with the intellectual, I am
moved to add my voice to what I hope will become a growing opposition before it
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As David Lewis said, many other voices have
expressed their opposition for a variety of reasons. What I would like to add
is a call to stand up for something sacred, which in my definition is something
that should not ever be bought and sold. We are living in perhaps what is the
end of an era where industrialized humans see themselves as the center of the
world, a position of arrogance which we have used to justify ecocide and the
genocide of cultures who live in closer alignment with Earth and its millions
of other non-human residents than we do. I say the end, because there is a good
possibility, backed up by scientific evidence for those who need it, that we
are rapidly creating conditions which will be inhabitable to human life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">While green energy like a wind farm may sound like a
solution to this problem, it must not come at the expense of the wild. As a
student of permaculture I learned that sustainable systems are created by
assessing the energy available in a particular place and then creating methods
to channel that energy to meet the needs of everyone in the system—people,
plants, and animals. Basically the way humans lived before industrialized capitalism
took over the world, and a way of living in accordance with natural cycles so
eloquently documented by Thoreau in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Walden.</i>
Even in the 19<sup>th</sup> century Thoreau felt a need to escape civilization,
writing words that seem prophetic now as we face not only the destruction of
our biosphere, but the destruction of the sacred in each one of us if we allow
the wild to be destroyed. “In wildness is the preservation of the world,”
Thoreau wrote, creating space for hope. It is my hope that others will join me
in protest of Deepwater Wind, and in envisioning ways of producing—and
consuming—energy that are truly sustainable and local. </span></div>
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-77033167548119622092013-02-02T07:55:00.000-08:002013-02-02T07:55:38.525-08:00In honor of the goddess Brigid<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ghazal of the Waiting Field</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">All these
years I’ve never walked the field next to my house </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">because there
was a wall around it, missed three ponds in hollows</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
couldn’t see from the road!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A family of ruddy ducks takes flight when they
see me, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">leaving the shelter of their small pond</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">for
exposed water?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
crunch of my boot heels in rocks is so loud</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">it hurts
even my ears. Oysters dreaming in the shallows</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">tighten
their shells.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Once a
wave washed over the island, left me floating.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I should have called to the other dreamers in the water,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">not waited until I woke up.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
Goethe said, “Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">with beak
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe
it’s enough to discover where the deer sleep,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">dreams
pressed into the grass: a star turning with the earth</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">away from
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Night without
wind, take me back to an innocence</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I may
have never known. Let me sleep in grass </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">under
winter stars.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today,
when I stepped over the wall into the field, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I didn’t
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">in every
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Who
ripples water when there’s no wind? I don’t know</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">who I
asked, choosing a path just wide enough</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">for my
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">All these
years I’ve never asked, never even wondered</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">when geese
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">surrendered
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How could
I have not known you? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wing
beats whistling on a night without wind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rocks,
still, as water breaks around them.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>My thanks to Robert Bly and Ghalib for helping me with the form of this poem, which is a ghazal.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-81560621390199661862013-01-20T09:51:00.000-08:002013-02-18T08:26:43.044-08:00<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-36218273042759619372013-01-10T12:46:00.000-08:002013-01-10T12:46:20.383-08:00Settlers' RockThis is where it began. On a stone placed between a parking lot and a pile of rocks thrown toward the land by the Atlantic Ocean. There are names on a bronze plaque screwed into the rock, blue-green with patina, salt-scoured. Tiny, almost invisible insects dive bomb me as I stand before it, trying to read the names with my dim vision. I keep my mouth closed so I don't swallow one. They throw themselves at my face as if I'm a threat to their existence. <br />
<br />
<br />
According to the plaque, these people were the first settlers on Block Island. They bought the land from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who had bought it from the Dutch I think, or maybe from a trader who was massacred by the Indians, I’m not sure, or if it really matters. The point is, before that there were no deeds of ownership and squabbles over property lines. All the names on the rock belong to men—righteously Biblical Simons and Samuels. Of course, there were men on the island before them--women and children, too. The indigenous people called themselves Manisees and were connected to the Narragansett tribe on the mainland. Within a hundred years most of them would be gone, wiped out by disease, slavery, and loss of spirit at the death of their culture. This was only 450 years ago. Not long at all when you compare it to the life of a stone, millions of years old. I still feel their presence when I walk the island. I don’t know if the sadness is mine or theirs. I wish I could ask them about the “great dreaming,” as the Gaelic seanchai called it, of this island--what the land itself dreams, passed down through stories over generations in a way that links humans to the hoop of life beyond ourselves. <br />
<br />
We do have stories from the settlers. Someone wrote them down at one point, and now we tell each other, or tourists visiting the island, about what happened when to whom as best we know. As the story goes, these settlers listed on the rock, threw their cows overboard to see if they would make it to shore when they reached this northern tip of the island. They did, and their owners followed, hauling their possessions ashore. I’ve heard some people laugh at this story, but I don’t find any humor in it, just the cruelty of a people deluding themselves they had dominion over all creatures on earth in order to take what they wanted without consequences. <br />
<br />
There is a dead gull, greasy and ragged in the rocks where I sit, next to Settlers' Rock. I lean around to get a look at the back side of The Rock. It is rough, uncarved. Invisible insects leap at my throat. I put my ear up to it and ask, silently, stone, tell me your story. I feel a pulse against my face, as if the ore inside the rock’s veins swelled like blood vessels, but I’m not sure it’s not the beating of my own heart.<br />
<br />
Two old people get out of a white van, stiff-kneed, walk toward The Rock to read it. The man's eyes take me in then move quickly away. A pair of miniature glasses hangs around his belt loop. "These are the original settlers," he says to his wife. "Yup," she says. I want to hand them a magnifying glass so they could see the grains of the stone up close. His wife mutters "1661," gruff and ominous. I notice there is bird shit on the stone's back. I see wild, white streaks of paint, primitive graffiti, thank the vandal gulls,wonder if the town crew cleans the shit off the front for the tourists.<br />
<br />
Finally, I see the expected cigarette butts, crammed between rocks close to the ocean. I wonder if they were all smoked by one person. A dozen at least, or if they blew into a crack after being discarded somewhere else. A patch of deflated sea purslane, succulent in summer, has caught the butts, starting to die now that the nights are cold, though the ocean keeps its heat much longer. I used to swim all the way through October, even at night, and some days in November. What happened to make me think the water is too cold?<br />
<br />
A Jeep pulls up next to me, circles. Someone says hello to me, then drives away before I have to answer. I look toward the North Light and see the clouds have shifted to let the sun through. Gulls wheel around the tower and disappear on the far side of the dunes. The stories I've been told aren't enough for me anymore.<br />
<br />
I want the earth's stories. What hums beneath the pavement and car motors. The old people have reappeared to my right, sitting together on a boulder. Her chin is in her hand, looking down at the ocean. He shifts and says something to her I can't hear. Their white hair glows in the gray light. If I am quiet enough, maybe I'll be able to hear them. Feet toward the ocean, rocks rumble as one as a wave breaks and fills spaces between the rocks I can’t see, shaking the ground, that I realize then, isn’t solid at all.<br />
<br />
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-76117341105881102412012-12-21T07:17:00.000-08:002012-12-21T07:17:12.189-08:00Awaken the Dreamers--a poem for the solstice
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">Awaken the
Dreamers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">One blue heron
late in December<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">dreaming the sun
down. One egret<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">walking into
deeper water, rippling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">the gray pearl
of the pond<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">lit by a low sun
moving across the marsh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">on the even
breaths<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">of these two
birds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">I remembered the
way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">my grandmother
said <i>calmfortable</i>,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">the sound thick
and slow as the Ohio<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">rolling through
Marietta; photos<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">of a great flood
one spring, young folks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">paddling canoes
down streets<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">rolling back to
the river. Maybe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">we can cross on
that one, long syllable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">into our own
stillness, be calm,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">be generous with
our words,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">roll them in our
mouths<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">back to the
source of the river<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">where the
invisible rejoices<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">to come into
this world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">Fill them again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">with the sound
of rolling water<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">and the wind
that ruffles the feathers of the heron<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">deep in a dream
of its own, watching tides<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">come and go with
the moon as the earth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">turns, longing
for a way to say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="Standard" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Palatino","serif";">how
beautiful.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6110810309319303640.post-16189300781417024632012-12-19T06:21:00.002-08:002012-12-19T06:21:40.449-08:00Wild Hearts Know to Break is to Open...
<br />
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">That
Which There Are No Words For</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">All
afternoon on the oyster farm, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">a great
egret watched me work, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">hoisting
bags of oysters out of the shallow water </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">on to the
dock to sort.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">It was
dark of the moon, tide lower</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">than I'd
ever seen it, exposing rocks,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">a pile of
culch I'd dumped at the edge of the marsh,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">mud
speckled with dead slipper shells, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">crabs that
could be hibernating.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">Oysters,
sealed tight, holding their</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">mouthful
of saltwater in deep cups</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">polished
smooth inside by flesh</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">passed
through my gloved fingers, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">sorting
for market.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">I wasn't
thinking about thresholds, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">how often
we cross without knowing, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">doors
opening and closing</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">without a
creak or click</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">as the
latch catches and we wonder </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">what side
we are on now.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">My body
had taken over: </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">bend,
hoist, dump, sort--</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">back into
the old bag to grow </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">another
winter underwater,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">or into a
wider mesh </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">strung on
a line close to shore </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">for
market.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">I broke
apart those that had fused, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">pulled the
beards off muscles</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">and tossed
them overboard, rescued small crabs </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">who clung
or froze,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">imagining
maybe then I couldn't see them. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">Minnows
thrashed in my palms</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">opening
above the water, pure light <br />and muscle. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">I watched
their hearts explode</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">when they
hit the water.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">I wasn't
thinking about thresholds,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">I was
pushing oyster bags on my hands and knees</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">through
six inches of water because the tide was so low </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">I couldn't
use the boat, sucked down </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">when I
tried to stand, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">forced to
crawl, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">cursing
and laughing as the egret </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">who had
not moved in hours </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">took a few
elegant steps, rippling </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">the calm.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">Sitting
up, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">kneeling
in my waders,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">waist-deep
in mud,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">I closed
my eyes, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">not
because I knew what was coming,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">but to see
in the dark as well.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">The white
feathers of the egret so fine and smooth.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">The marsh,
in mid-December, golden. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">It was the
day before our darkness</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">made
itself known, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">that which
we'd say about after,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">there were
no words for--</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">Crow call
in the east answered by one at my back.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">Prepare to
be emptied.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">Why is the
death of innocence the only way </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">to know we
are loved?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino, serif;">Jen
Lighty, Dec. 16, 2012</span></div>
whitewavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14758251907952271459noreply@blogger.com2