A Pretty Song

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song,
And I say to my heart: rave on.

by Mary Oliver
Thirst

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Pam sent me this word for the day:  Theurgy, meaning “the working of a divine or supernatural agency in human affairs.”  This image of the gorgeous Orion Nebula captures for me the wild, unknowable nature of the divine and how it can reveal itself in our lives.  Within this “cavern roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming,” is something more – the inescapable need to accept what is beyond my grasp, my control or understanding.  I love and hate that. Mostly I love it, because it leaves open the doors for what I cannot predict or manage on my own and for support from the unknown.

Theurgy also means “divine working,” meaning (from Wikipedia) “the practice of rituals, sometimes seen as magical in nature, performed with the intention of invoking the action or evoking the presence of one or more gods, especially with the goal of uniting with the divine, achieving henosis, and perfecting oneself.”

In Toronto, a Tibetan lama is saying a puja for our daughter.  He has given us a chant to say for her:  Om banja guru path ma siddhi hung.”  In Virginia, our telepathic friend is checking on her in her dreams.  In Kauai, our astrologer is helping us understand this terrible darkness and where to look for light.  Here at home I am burning a candle, bowing down, breathing, smelling the last of the lilacs and waiting for the irises.

Today, my words from the universe from TUT were, “Beyond your greatest fear, Paula, lies your greatest gift.”  My greatest fear has happened.  So perhaps now, my greatest gift is coming.  What could that be?  Something clothed in love, in forgiveness, in understanding, in compassion, in hope.  Tucked at the bottom of that same email was this:  “And your greatest gift, Paula, is the example you become.”

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In any one moment

there is closing,

holding the center,

sheltering its

tender heart.

In any one moment

there is opening,

unfurling, one

soft breath after

another, revealing

you, revealing me.

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I wait for the irises all year.  Same with the peonies.  There is something so extravagant, so sensuous about both that it is nearly impossible to do anything during their brief time but admire, investigate with my camera and savor.  You can’t really pick the irises.  They wilt qiickly, folding wetly inward on themselves.  The peonies are better, but also lose heart soon, dropping reams of petals, their heavy heads falling.

So I spend time outside every morning, when the dew fall is heavy, looking at them through my lens, lying in the wet grass to catch a different angle, another way of seeing.  Last year, I was shocked by the sexuality of the irises – their mouths opening like labia, the lift of their petals echoing what Georgia O’Keefe must have seen (I can feel her fierce pleasure) so many years ago.

But now they are pure potential.  Ripening, preparing, gathering themselves for that final concert of color and scent. I like to think that each day, we are also pure potential.  That we have the possibility for greatness:  great invention, or kindness, or pleasure.

This year, my feeling of that potential is fractured by the absence of my daughter.  I am missing  the resonance, depth and delicious enjoyment that she brings to my life.  It is as if the bass notes are faded, and the music of my days feels tinny and thin, painful even.  Having lost both of my parents, I can honestly say that this absence is worse than a death.  In death, there is a resolution, there is finality.  With this, there is none of that hard comfort.  It is only  unrelenting, an airless, suspending unknown.  I never knew that I was this vulnerable to an injury of heart and soul.

And yet perhaps in that unknown lives that pure potential – the possibility for beautiful resolution, for opening, for truth, for love, for harmony.  I pray, I pray.

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My friend Lisa Daigle sent me this poem-gift in response to my post Thank you Universe.  Thank you Lisa!

 Song For the Salmon, by David Whyte

For too many days now I have not written of the sea,
nor the rivers, nor the shifting currents
we find between the islands

For too many nights now I have not imagined the salmon
threading the dark streams of reflected stars,
nor have I dreamt of his longing
nor the lithe swing of his tail toward dawn

I have not given myself to the depth to which he goes,
to the cargoes of crystal water, cold with salt,
nor the enormous plains of ocean swaying beneath the moon.

I have not felt the lifted arms of the ocean
opening its white hands on the seashore,
nor the salted wind, whole and healthy
filling the chest with living air.

I have not heard those waves
fallen out of heaven onto earth,
nor the tumult of sound and the satisfaction
of a thousand miles of ocean
giving up its strength on the sand.

But now I have spoken of that great sea,
the ocean of longing shifts through me,
the blessed inner star of navigation
moves in the dark sky above
and I am ready like the young salmon
to leave his river, blessed with hunger
for a great journey on the drawing tide.

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When I first met my daughter at an orphanage in Kathmandu 14 years ago, her head was cropped short against lice, as were all of the children’s.  When she turned her head I could see that she had a double whorl that looked a lot like the two colliding galaxies above.  For no particular reason, I thought, “Hmmmm, complex.”  I was right.

I was thinking about her, not the overwhelming complexity of what she was bringing with her, the galaxy of her traumatic background, her early profound losses, long years in an orphanage and her fragile sense of herself and her own self-worth.  In the exuberance of mothering, loving, nurturing, we did not focus on the scars.  We saw a valiant, brave, inquisitive, beautiful child.  We talked about her past when it came up, had therapy when it seemed appropriate, but did not dwell on the trauma.

In four billion years, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way will collide.  Astronomers also speak of them as merging or interacting.  They will become one massive thing.  From what I understand, both galaxies are strong and fully formed, so the collision will transform them, but will not destroy them utterly. Apparently the bigger Andromeda will direct the action.

When the unconscious past – in the form of old traumas and losses – rises up and collides with the present, the possibilities for destruction and transformation are both there. When galaxies collide, the starburst results in the birth of numerous “young, hot blue stars.”  However, only the very brightest and largest clusters are capable of surviving the galaxy collision, the numerous smaller clusters are destroyed by rapidly changing gravitational forces.

So we pray that our daughter is one of those bright and strong surviving clusters.  But we are seeking help.  Our Tibetan friend, Phuntsok, is asking a Buddhist priest to cast a “mo;” a divination tool used to determine possible future outcomes.  One of its uses is to help cast out evil spirits or lift an evil spell.  There are 36 possible outcomes with names like “the demon of afflictions,” “the overflowing jeweled vessel,” “the nectar-like medicine,” and “adding butter to the burning flames.”  The one that I am hoping for is “the jeweled banner of victory” and I plan to use “the great fiery weapon” of my love to move in that direction.

But really, it is up to her, this decision to move toward recovery and health, or to stay in the world of Mara.  In Buddhism, Mara represents the “unwholesome impulses, un-skillfulness, the “death” of the spiritual life. Mara is a tempter, distracting humans from practicing the spiritual life by making the mundane alluring or the negative seem positive.”  This reminds me of my favorite fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, The Snow Queen, in which an evil mirror created by trolls shatters, and the splinters are blown around and get into people’s hearts and eyes, making their hearts frozen like blocks of ice and their eyes see only the bad and ugly in people and things.  When a splinter blows into the eye of the little boy, distorting everything he sees and freezing his heart, only the tears of his sister can rinse out the splinter and melt his heart.

So, galaxies, demons, divination, fairy tales, prayers and love.  Mostly love.  Always love.

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Flocculent Spiral

Today I learned that I had been awarded a Connecticut Artist’s Fellowship in Choreography.  A friend suggested that I apply and so I did. The news was wildly unexpected and appreciated.  A blessing and a strong beam of light pointing forward.

I used to depend on on raising money from foundations and corporations along with bookings to support my dance company.  Fundraising was a constant, teetery dance, a bizarre mazurka with changing partners and alliances, all danced on an uneven floor.  It was also a contest of endurance, persistence and grit.  Then the economy tilted even further, shifting away from public funds for smaller, independent artists, moving toward the safer zone of funding big companies and institutions.  I was tired of expending so much energy on the fundraising, and proportionally less time making work, along with the politics, and what could feel like the creation and maintanance of relationships for gain. I am speaking for myself here.  I am sure that is not everyone’s experience. Real friendships did bloom, tender roses in a field of weeds. I still treasure those friendships – all of them rooted in a deep passion for dance and respect for the dancemakers.

So why the galaxy image?  Initially, I thought that this picture was of the Andromeda Galaxy, but it turns out that it is something called a flocculent spiral – a stellar nursery – which “plays a pivotal role in the evolution of galaxies and it is also in the earliest stages of star formation that planetary systems first appear.” I like that because it is about beginnings and what looks like cooperation.

So I am thinking about relationship and inter-dependence and cosmic support and stuff like that.  I am thinking about John Cage, chance and quincunxes (fated events).  And I am feeling how the small events, like receiving this blessing, are part of a bigger phenomenon that holds us all together as we grow, each in our own unique and meandering way.

And I am appreciating.  Thank you universe.

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When someone beloved has fallen into a jumble of delusion, it is almost as if their loss of balance is mine, as if, in my anguish, I am tilting with them, scrambling to decipher this strange new terrain.

Grazing Horses

Sometimes the
green pasture
of the mind
tilts abruptly.
The grazing horses
struggle crazily
for purchase
on the frictionless
nearly vertical
surface. Their
furniture-fine
legs buckle
on the incline,
unhorsed by slant
they weren’t
designed to climb
and can’t.

Kay Ryan  

Say Uncle: Poems

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Pam took this photo this morning of Cho, our Spanish galgo (greyhound).  He is eighteen years old and ready for whatever the day may bring.  The cats, dogs and horses are not especially bothered by the emotional tumult we are currently experiencing.  Not unless, of course, it interferes with mealtimes, petting and walks.

They are content in the moment, tethered to their quiet, peaceable lives.  Lots of sleeping, lots of snuggling, lots of purring, barking, running, depending on what the situation calls for.  There is not a lot of planning, reviewing, or regret.  I like that about them.  Today I am in bed with a nasty spring cold, bracketed by cats, and from time to time, Cho.

They are reminding me about rest, about stillness and the importance of having a warm, friendly body nearby.  And for all of that simplifying and companionability, I am deeply grateful.

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