Moon Eyes

Seven minutes: My eyes have changed from gaudy kaleidoscopes to half-moons

that witness the world as a dream.

There is an angel in my hair

who guides my fore-thought, my wisdom,

my knowledge of body and the pearls

that rest within it.

Enigma angels offer questions

and warn me of

my Pharisee tendencies,

my judgmental stance,

my narrow focus at the hem of

the Jehovah angel, who has sternly restricted my breath.

Have no fear for there are flowers, and the devil with the pitchfork

is small like a gnat.  Mama Angel love me, make me feel loved and blessed.

Make my moon eyes trigger the flowers.

Nanchuti Myth: When Old Woman of the River Got Tired

A long time ago, Old Woman of the River got very tired.  She was tired of always rushing her children down the river, all the fish and all the silt, tree branches and pieces of gold.  She decided to stop.  Her water froze, the froth of the rapids became little white stars hanging in the air, sun sparks stopped twinkling,  and there was only quiet in the forest.  The birds stopped flying because they thought the sound of the pounding river was what held their wings in the air.  Bear sat heavily on the ground confused.  All the weeds and bushes leaned over straining to listen for the mother’s voice.  Never had such silence fell upon the forest.  Old Woman of the River fell asleep in the quiet day.  One by one the fish vanished.  Each spark held by the air and water snapped out.  Bear’s body slowly dissolved into sunlight.  Birds put their heads under their wings because even the sun began to dim.  Hanla’chu sat on her hill and watched the world disappearing.  She cupped her hands and made a huge cry over the land. “Wake up, Old Woman of the River!”  A startled woodpecker cried out, flew from her tree, and vanished.  Hanla’chu saw this happen.  She stomped on the ground and caused an earthquake.  The mountains rumbled.  Panther, who still prowled the forest, growled.  “Wake up, Old Woman of the River!” Hanla-chu yelled.  Old Woman kept sleeping, but she turned over and the water of the river rolled with her.   One by one the stars where beginning to shine in the sky.  Night was coming forever.     A wind rushed over the sleeping body of Old Woman.  “Wake up, Old Woman of the River!” Hanla-chu  yelled.  Hanla-chu took in a deep breath of dark night.  She filled her lungs and blew it out with as much force as she could.   Deep in her dreams, Old Woman felt cold and began to shiver.  One eye opened and she saw it was night.  She called for the birds to make the morning but there were no birds to hear her.  Old Woman slowly rose and saw what her sleeping had done.  “But I was so tired,” she said, and waved her hand.  The river began to move again, but there were no fish or pieces of gold or life of any sort within its banks.  Panther let out a loud angry growl for he saw that the Earth was dying, and he knew that he too must die.  Hanla’chu also cried and her body began to break apart.  It became fish and bird and the sparkle of the sun on water.  Her head began to burn and slowly lifted to the sky.  Her skin became plants and deer and from her breasts all the birds of the forest were reborn.  Old Woman of the River thanked Hanla-chu.  She flowed on and on forever after this.  And no matter how tired she gets, she keeps flowing to the ocean.

Breaking Rules, Breaking Through Feeling

   I’m breaking the rules.  With Intuitive Painting, or the Zero Point Painting, sharing work is discouraged because the practice is more about process than product.  My teachers say that comments, either positive or negative, may have an impact on what wants to arise from within.  If someone says they like an image, it might stop the painter from modifying it.  Up to this point, though, I don’t feel for me that’s the case. Now with writing . . . watch out!   But I’m freer with painting.  What is powerful for me is to watch my own judgments and feelings about the work.  There’s a tide that I experience as I paint.  I may loathe an object, be disturbed by another, fret over my ability to paint something inside me that wants birth.  Michelle Cassou says we need to stay with our discomfort.

It’s a powerful lesson because that discomfort does transform if I let it be.  I’ve done this enough to know that images or “mistakes” I absolutely hate when they first appear end up what I treasure most.

Being connected with the brush means being connected with myself.  As I worked yesterday,  I was obsessing over her face.  I still do not like the nose.  I wanted both eyes bright, but no matter what I did the right stayed dark.  During the last-minute of class I applied the coat on the two lighter triangles and now, at least at this moment, I don’t want the eye the same shade as the other .

My teacher observed my spending a lot of time dabbing the paper with my brush.   See the line from where the Mama Angel is emerging?  She suggested I make strokes, feeling the paint, feeling the movement.  This line was the first stroke I did.  Speaking of tides, I immediately felt my bottled emotions come up.   As I drew the Jehovah Angel in the left corner, I started having an anxiety attack.  More emotions, and they emerged through moving my hand, the color of paint, and because I was beginning to breathe.

I’m working on a novel I put away years ago about the nature of Hell, which I really should pluralized . . . literal ones on Earth, the fantasy hell my characters fashion for the afterlife, demons, redemption, angels.  Hell was very a literal place for my quasi-Southern Baptist parents, and I worry that my more traditional friends make judgments about the state of my soul.  In the past this has kept me quiet about my less than fundamentalist beliefs.

So, being seen, being judged, the dis-ease of being worried about, a track record of  feeling I don’t express myself well when I speak and am confronted, and BAM! Panic, anxiety, a wonderful demon Jehovah God is born, but one whose heart shows my real feelings about the Divine.  The source of Love who we have made into our own vindictive, angry, jealous projections.  Here’s a judgment: the panic is actually a good thing because it shows my need to feel.  I have a very hard time crying.  The tears almost came as I painted.  They’re all suppressed as I write once again.  But that’s the path I need to open in me.  To allow feelings to blossom, to be okay with being afraid of their power because that is where I am. Stay with the discomfort, eh?

There’s the fairy angel, the enigma angel, and the Mama Angel, the last to appear.  The flowers in her hair came late as well.  I worked on her for about three hours, and when time was up I groaned because I was in a place where I was feeling and alive.  She is not done.  I’ll take her back next month.

Jesus With Shades

 My faith has been my shadow all of my life.   I find it hard to reach my heart sometimes . . . a lot of the time.  Faith for me has been a debate.  I’m a Christian in the Annie Lamott school of faith.  I simply love Jesus.  God, however, I’m not so sure about.  Never felt too cozy with him.  Doctor Bob at Central Baptist in Anaheim had a lot to do with this, I’m sure. 

 I loved Bible stories in Sunday school and the songs we sang.  I loved the alliteration of “I’ve got the faith that baffled the best of the Buddhist, down in my heart, down in my heart . ..”  I didn’t know what a Buddhist was, but all those bs made me giddy.  Then occasionally Mom would take me to church, and I’d listen about hell and how I was probably going there because how could I believe enough, be good enough, and what was this thing about Jesus in my heart? I’d pray so much and never  felt that rush of assurance or peace I heard people talking about, despite crazy Dr. Bob.

 I was a worrier by nature, came by it honestly from two Virgo parents.   Since my dad yelled a lot, somehow I think I got him, God, and maybe Fred Flintstone (who reminded me of my dad) all mixed up together.   I do have to give Mom credit.  When I was really little . . . four? . . . she stormed out of the adult Sunday school after listening to how voting for Kennedy was a bad thing because he was Catholic.  She voted for Nixon anyway, but she didn’t like being told what to do by a church. I’ve wondered why she let me continue going there.

I never knew there was another kind of religion until I was much older,  a kinder Christianity.   I knew there were Jews because my mom’s cousin Juanita married one.  Mom was  impressed by his manners because when he came to visit once, he made his bed.  And we were practically Catholic.  My dad was a retired cop from Detroit.  Every three months the retired cops who moved to California and Arizona would meet in Garden Grove for the Sunshiner’s Club.  This can’t be true, but it seems as though we were the only non-Catholics in the bunch. 

 When the Sunshiners got together, and during the heyday there might have been sixty retired cops and their wives who came, after the meeting . . . I’m not sure what they did for official business during the meeting . . . the real business came down.  Lots of poker and drinking.  We lived in Anaheim, so the party always ended at our house.  I was a “late” child, a surprise.  My dad had a vasectomy, and then my mom found out she was pregnant two weeks later.  He was almost fifty when I was born.  I loved the police parties because I was spoiled rotten at them in the middle of the smoking and drinking and cussing and the quieter talk of the women in the living room.  Everyone smoked except my Mom.  I sat on laps and took sips of beer. 

  My parent’s best friends were the McCauleys, an Irish/Italian couple, and the Buyaks, Polish and Mexican.  My dad had been a sergeant, Mr. Buyak, a patrolman, and Mr. McCauley, a lieutenant.  We rarely ate meat on Fridays because we shared meals so often with them.  As mediocre Baptist (and never official ones), we didn’t do grace. But when they came over, they did.   “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen. May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”  I heard this prayer more than any other  while I grew up. 

 There were lots of shadows here, as well.  I last saw Mr. and Mrs. McCauley, whom I called Aunt Jean and Uncle Gerald when I was sipping from beer cans,  a week after Bill and I married.  We were in southern California  . . . my honeymoon to Mom’s house.   Mrs. McCauley was dying.  Always a small woman, she had shrunk to the size of a child, trying to breathe. The walls in their house were yellow from tobacco.  A true believer in Purgatory, she was terrified to face what she thought was before her.

March 24, 2012 Great Awakening

I fly in dreams, blue sky painting

my feathers. I drift like a primitive

tale over the shallows.

My harsh voice shows I’m crazed,

and my eyes hold the shadows

my fierce ancestors left.

I swallow and devour, a nightmare.

And a blessing wading in the glory of marshes

and in the great awakening of my flight.

Fully fed, a terrible angel.

But so smooth is my exhortation

blue wings in flight,

 Hallelujahs in the air.

Herons

There were times I would walk on the dock at Innisfree and look out at the great bowl of Clear Lake.  The water would slap at the dock, the tules would sway between the pillars, a wind ruffle small waves.  I would hear life everywhere.  Bullfrogs in the rushes, ducks chattering as they bobbed up and down, grebes farther, their miniature necks shaped like the Loch Ness Monster until they would dive down and shake their butts like cartoon birds.  And once in a blue moon, I would see a heron wading in the tules near the boathouse, a small rickety apartment made from a wooden fishing boat.  The birds looking like sorcerers in gray and coal blue feathers.

My Pomo friends have told me stories of beings that live in and near the lake.  The Squishy, a creature they could hear rise from the lake when they were children, the Bird Man that appeared to their nephews outside their bedroom when they lived in Clearlake.   When the boys described him, the family knew who they were talking about.

My herons would always surprise me, and sometimes, I’d see them more than once while they were hanging out for a week or two. And what a joy to see them cast off from the ground, a different creature even then, more pterodactyl than bird.  At times, I have seen them fly low near Rodman’s Slew as I drove along the cutoff.

I have decided I haven’t had enough mornings like this.  So much of life gets stuck in the day-to-day of work and of “reality,” Amazon rainforest producing more carbon than oxygen, quagmires around the world, the moral sickness of so many politicians.  We all need healing, from trauma, from traumas generations past, from the grinding down of our souls with media and the white noise of the 21^st century.  A glimpse of a heron is a miracle to me.