In Celebration of My Uterus

La grande babylone
chevauchant une bête avec sept têtes et dix cornes

Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
They said you were immeasurably empty
but you are not.
They said you were sick unto dying
but they were wrong.
You are singing like a school girl.
You are not torn.


Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
and of the soul of the woman I am
and of the central creature and its delight
I sing for you. I dare to live.
Hello, spirit. Hello, cup.
Fasten, cover. Cover that does contain.
Hello to the soil of the fields.
Welcome, roots.


Each cell has a life.
There is enough here to please a nation.
It is enough that the populace own these goods.
Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,
“It is good this year that we may plant again
and think forward to a harvest.
A blight had been forecast and has been cast out.”
Many women are singing together of this:
one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia,
one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,
one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,
one is dying but remembering a breakfast,
one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,
one is wiping the ass of her child,
one is staring out the window of a train
in the middle of Wyoming and one is
anywhere and some are everywhere and all
seem to be singing, although some can not
sing a note.


Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
let me carry a ten-foot scarf,
let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,
let me carry bowls for the offering
(if that is my part).
Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,
let me examine the angular distance of meteors,
let me suck on the stems of flowers
(if that is my part).
Let me make certain tribal figures
(if that is my part).
For this thing the body needs
let me sing
for the supper,
for the kissing,
for the correct
yes.

Anne Sexton

 

Mary, Undoer of Knots

Holy Mary, Mother of God and ours, with your maternal heart,
untie the knots that upset our lives. We ask you to receive
into your hands (here mention your prayer request) and
deliver us from the chains and confusion that restrain us.

Blessed Virgin Mary, through your grace, your intercession
and by your example, deliver us from evil, and untie the
knots that keep us from being united to God. So that free
of all confusion and error, we may find him in all things,
keep him in our hearts, and serve him always in our
brothers and sisters. Mother of Good Counsel pray for us.

Amen.

Are You Crazy?

 Of course, no one ever withholds information because they are ashamed of something, or guilty about something, or because they are not sure they can trust a complete stranger with their deepest darkest secrets and the skeletons in their family closet. And all parents are completely aware that their trouble setting limits and saying no is feeding into their children's temper tantrums. And we all know that people who are guilty of child abuse just love to tell everyone they know about it, especially someone who is legally obligated to turn them in to child protective services! Why, everyone is just chomping at the bit to have their children taken away from them. ~ David M. Allen, M.D.


 

With Warmth, life will Thrive

Eric Bana
Romulus, my Father
 

A light bulb sways in the black of night, and the Father attempts to teach his son about life. He is holding a handful of still and lifeless wasps. As the warmth of the light passes over them, they stir, and he brings the insects back to life in front of the amazed eyes of the Son. The lesson is simple: with warmth, life will thrive........

                                                I cross the rivers of Hades
                                           in sleep:
                                                       Cocytus, Phlegethon, Acheron, and Styx,
                                                                by-passing the blisses of Letho.
     

 

                 Pluto is waiting
    black-eyed and curious.

 

  Few people come down this far, he comments.
   He is dark and powerful, as I expected,
     but he looks wan of skin and somewhat strained.

 

  Why have you come? The plumbing is very bad here.
   It is. The cavern walls are streaming
     with tears and flashing with slime
    and the usual assortment
      of creeping red-eyed monsters are
   mewling about, obviously not housebroken.

 

     but I am no longer afraid. This is urgent.
    I come to learn of evil, I tell him.

 

   I might be called evil because I looked down here before.
  So, replies Pluto. Then you have come to the right place.

~ A. O. Howell

 

 

 

 

Puss N' Boots

Isabel Marant wine-red suede wedge-heel boots
 

Sometimes when I enter a familiar room or street, I think I see a past self walking toward me. She can’t see me in the future, but I can see her very clearly. She runs past me, worried about being late for an appointment she doesn’t want to go to. She sits at a restaurant table in tears of anger arguing with the wrong lover. She strides toward me in the jeans and wine-red suede boots she wore for a decade, and I can remember the exact feel of those boots on my feet. She sits in a newspaper boardroom with the sort of powerful men who undermine her confidence the most, trying to persuade them to support a law that women need badly—and fails….

“I used to feel impatient with her: Why was she wasting time? Why was she with this man? At that appointment? Forgetting to say the most important thing? Why wasn’t she wiser, more productive, happier? But, lately, I’ve begun to feel a tenderness, a welling of tears in the back of my throat, when I see her. I think: She’s doing the best she can….

“We are so many selves. It’s not just the long-ago child within us who needs tenderness and inclusion, but the person we were last year, wanted to be yesterday, tried to become in one job or in one winter….

“What brings together these ever-shifting selves of infinite reactions and returning is this: There is always one true inner voice.

“Trust it.”

Gloria Steinem
 

The Unheimliche Remover

American Zombie Gothic



 

 ‘You can drive nature out with a pitchfork but she will always come back.’  ~ Horace

 

In his essay, Freud begins by exploring the etymology of the German word unheimliche, the opposite of heimliche which means ‘homely’ or ‘familiar’. He suggests that the uncanny is the fear we feel when the homely is made strange and frightening to us. Freud then explores some of the plot-devices with which Gothic writers produce this feeling in us – ghosts, dopplegangers, telepathy, curses, apparitions in mirrors, inanimate objects coming to life, events from the past repeated, numbers repeated, symbols and patterns repeated, all of which produce the over-riding sense of “something fateful and unescapable”. Freud suggests that these Gothic plot-devices work on us emotionally because they reconnect us to our pre-modern animist beliefs. The uncanny, he writes, connects us to

the old animistic conception of the universe, which was characterized by the idea that the world was peopled by the spirits of human beings, and by the narcissistic over-estimation of subjective mental processes (such as the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts…the carefully proportioned distribution of magical powers)…It would seem as though each one of us has been through a phase of individual development corresponding to that animistic stage of primitive man, that none of us has traversed it without preserving certain traces which can be re-activated.
 

Text source: Philosophy For Life - official website of author Jules Evans 

The Muse in Arms: Valfreya

art by judy willoughby

Absolution

The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.

Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
And loss of things desired; all those things must pass.
We are the happy legion, for we know
Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass.

There was an hour when we were loath to part
From life we longed to share no less than others.
Now, having claimed his heritage of heart,
What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?

~ Siegfried Sassoon

This is Not the Story you Think it Is

For trauma to become complex one needs to experience the trauma at the hands of those who are most perceived to control a social unit (family, community, etc.). It needs to be repeated and woven into the fabric of distorted relationships.

Courtois and Ford give a cursory description of complex trauma on the first page of their book, Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders

…involving traumatic stressors that (1) are repetitive or prolonged; (2) involve direct harm and/or neglect and abandonment by caregivers or ostensibly responsible adults; (3) occur at developmentally vulnerable times in the victim’s life, such as early childhood; and (4) have great potential to compromise severely a child’s development.

Rust Never Sleeps: Margaret Thatcher, nee Roberts

Chimney sweep, Dartford, 1951

Margaret Hilda Thatcher was born on 13 October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, the daughter of Alfred Roberts, a grocer, and his wife, Beatrice.

 

Her father, a Methodist lay preacher and local councillor, had an immense influence on her life and the policies she would adopt.

"Well, of course, I just owe almost everything to my own father. I really do," she said later. "He brought me up to believe all the things that I do believe." [read more]

 

 

 

 

 

 

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice.   Portia The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare      

Dennis & Margaret 4 May 1979  

 

Mark Anderson, head of the primary school Thatcher attended, said: "It is quite an honour to have a former prime minister at your school and be able to say to children: 'This lady sat on the same floor as you and she had gone on to be a significant person in history.' We frequently talk about past pupils and what they have achieved and she is the most significant past pupil we have ever had.

"We have an ethos of respect, expect, aspire, care and be honest. Many of the values she had can be interpreted through that as well." [read more]

 

 

 

 

Lone Daffodil, Milwaukee, IL May 2009

Image source soul-amp

 

 Tributes have been paid to the former prime minister Baroness Thatcher who has died at the age of 87.

Perhaps her most visible legacy in Wales was the virtual disappearance of the coal mines and the birth of a new economy of service industries and technology.

 

It could be argued that Wales' coal industry was already in decline when Thatcher came to power. But for good or ill, she presided over the most dramatic transformation of the Welsh economy since the industrial revolution. Her time in office saw the demise of an industry and, some would say, a way of life.

It can be easy to forget that other aspects of Welsh life got a leg-up from the Thatcher government.

[read more]

 

 

Cutting Loss

 

Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting

Gangs of New York

 

 

John Bowlby's "Four Stages of Grief" Model

John Bowlby (1907-1990) was a noted British psychiatrist and psychologist, particularly known for his work with children. Out of this work he developed the now famous "attachment theory" that is taught in many academic programs on psychology. He also contributed to the body of work on bereavement, through his work with dying children and their parents.

• Shock & Numbness- the stunned reaction to loss, including difficulty in concentration, impaired judgement and an inability to function normally. This phase may last for a few hours or several weeks.
  
  
• Yearning & Searching- this stage involves a wide range of feelings, including guilt and anger, yearning for the loved one, and painful questions about the meaning of life and loss. There is a tendency to withdraw from others to allow this internal process to continue unhindered. This may last for months.
  
  
• Disorientation & Disorganization- a phase marked by depression and is usually a time when the loss becomes a reality, while the current state of living seems unreal.
  
  
• Reorganization & Resolution- an emergence out of the depression of the third stage, with increased energy and self-confidence and the ability to feel joy again.
• 
  

 

William Poole was antebellum New York City's most feared gang leader. Nicknamed 'Bill the Butcher', he was the iron fist of the nativist forces, battering men to jelly for voting Democrat or being of foreign birth.

Idiot Compassion: Don't Misinterpret

Don’t impose the wrong notion of what harmony is, what compassion is, what patience is, what generosity is. Don’t misinterpret what these things really are. There is compassion and there is idiot compassion; there is patience and there is idiot patience; there is generosity and there is idiot generosity.  ~ Pema Chodron


Quote snitched from Metta Refuge

 

Werewolf Moon: a quality of mercy

Full Moon, San Francisco

Climbing under

a barbed wire fence

by the railroad ties

climbing over

the old stone wall

I am bound for the riverside

well I go to the river

to soothe my mind

ponder over

the crazy days of my life

just sit and watch the river flow

find a place

on the riverbank

where the green rushes grow

see the wind

in the willow tree

in branches hanging low

well I go to the river

to soothe my mind

to ponder over

the crazy days in my life

watch the river flow

ease my mind & soul

where I go

well I will go to the river

from time to time

wander over

these crazy days in my mind

watch the river flow

where the willow branches grow

by the cool rolling waters

moving gracefully and slow

child it's lovely

let the river take it all away

the made pace, the hurry

the troubles, the worries

just let the river take them all way

flow away

~ lyrics Where I Go by Natalie Merchant

ALT 94: Goldfields Highway

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,

I am the wave of the ocean,

I am the murmur of the billows -

I am the ox of the seven combats,

I am the vulture upon the rocks,

I am a beam of the sun,

I am the fairest of plants,

I am the wild boar in valour,

I am the salmon in the water,

I am a lake in the plain,

I am a world of knowledge,

I am the point of the lance of battle,

I am the God who created the fire in the head

 

~ Amairgen

Conchology

“Embroidery combined the humility of needlework with rich stitchery. It connoted opulence and obedience. It ensured that women spent long hours at home, retired in private, yet it made a public statement about the household’s position and economic standing” ~ Rozsika Parker

 

 

 

 

Locked For Good

Robert Service's hut, Dawson, Yukon
 

 

 

 

Prophecy

I shall lie hidden in a hut

In the middle of an alder wood,

With the back door blind and bolted shut,

And the front door locked for good.

 

I shall lie folded like a saint,

Lapped in a scented linen sheet,

On a bedspread striped with bright-blue paint,

Narrow and cold and neat.

 

The midnight will be glassy black

Behind the panes, with wind about

To set his mouth against a crack

And blow the candle out.

 

- Elinor Wylie, 1923

 

 

a profusion of forest starwort (chickweed)
 

The Grand Strzelecki Track

South Gippsland, Victoria

Australia

 

 

 

 

 

Angels and Earthly Creatures

Saunders Case Moth (melatus elongatus)
 

Escape

When foxes eat the last gold grape,
And the last white antelope is killed,
I shall stop fighting and escape
Into a little house I'll build.

But first I'll shrink to fairy size,
With a whisper no one understands,
Making blind moons of all your eyes,
And muddy roads of all your hands.

And you may grope for me in vain
In hollows under the mangrove root,
Or where, in apple-scented rain,
The silver wasp-nests hang like fruit.

Elinor Morton Wylie 1885-1928