Nouvelle 55: Nelson's Mandala

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Nelson's mandala "synch-ro-ni-zing"

It never once occurred to me to write a Nouvelle 55 for my 55th birthday. But it did to my brother Nelson who wrote this one for my birthday post today. It is based on this complex and radiant mandala he designed for me in April. When he created it he meditated on the name of my blog, and flights of imagination caught him. I see me at the center. I see the overlapping worlds that touch me. I see crosses . . . perhaps the religion of my past. I see XOXO - the symbols of hugs and kisses which commenters and I use for one another. I see memories, stories, all that has made me who I am. I see the worlds of others around the country and world whose lives have come into mine through blogging. I see vibrancy and life, and most of all color.

Nelson is the oldest of eight kids, I'm the youngest. We didn't bump into each other much at home, since he went off to college before I began kindergarten. He did have a part in naming me. He was sweet on a certain girl, so when Dad asked what they should name me if I was a girl, Nelson said her name, "How about Ruth Anne?"

It wasn't until 1995, the year I turned 40 (the age of my parents when I was born) that our friendship began. When Dad died of cancer six weeks after his diagnosis, Nelson and I were given the task of designing the funeral program for him. The family had to take special care arranging the funeral of a minister who had conducted countless funerals in our little town. While Nelson and I sat with our heads together at the dining table over the typewriter designing the printed program for the service, gradually, and unrelated to our task, out trickled traces of our own stories, revealing similar feelings about growing up in our home. It hadn't always been easy.

Since then, we've grown to be close friends. We talk about the mysteries of the soul, and we're both deeply optimistic about that. "Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward." Do you know which Nelson said that?

The haiku-esque stanzas of Nelson's poem are like layered stairs of time, bearing our separate-yet-interconnected steps toward spiritual freedom.

These gifts live and move.

Nouvelle 55: Eight Twenty-two

An age ago
Sophia undraped Ruth,
baby number eight.

   Soon number one
   teased out smiles and, later,
   steps from her stances.

      Then he hid in ivied halls;
      when he emerged
      she dropped petals for his bride.

         That couple drove
         into the sunrise
         and Ruthie blossomed.

            Presently
            she soars under stars,
            inspiring him onward and upward.


            Mandala and Poem © Nelson Hart, 2011

Nelson's Note: Ruth describes Nouvelle 55 as a flash fiction or poem in 55 words based upon a work of art. Nelson describes mandala as a symbol of the relationship between the larger world and our inner world; the image accepts life's tension and ambivalence. Carl Jung believed them to arise out of “the unconscious self." For information on mandalas in the Indian subcontinent, see this.

Ruth’s note: Sophia is a feminine aspect of God in the Gnostic tradition. Some say She fell from grace and created the material world, still expressing the light of God. She’s the deep mystery of wisdom (and the wisdom of mystery?). Lately when I pray, I pray to her. I don’t think Nelson knew that when he wrote his poem.

Us 8 kids in 1961 (?)
bookended by Ruthie and Nelson, 

with Ginnie (Boots) 3rd from right;
I loved my matching dress and sweater set,
and velvet shoes

Nelson and Peg's wedding in 1964; I was junior bridesmaid;

our brother Bennett who passed away in 1996 stands next to Nelson;
and our Dad is next to Bennett

Dad married Nelson and Peg in his Baptist church

 my college graduation in 2001 when I was 44,
with Ginnie (Boots) and Nelson,
a sister and brother of the soul as well as the blood

Nelson and me at our great-niece Katy's wedding in May 2011

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Birth mandala, baby poem, and a wee announcement

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I wrote a poem for my friend, the Renaissance woman Dutchbaby, at her request for the occasion of a baby shower for a friend. Dutchbaby introduced me to the idea of birth mandalas, which take Carl Jung's concept of mandalas representing the Self, to the next level: an image for a mother to focus her imagination on the emerging identity of her baby. That's one of Jung's mandalas at the right, which I happened upon after writing the poem, with its image of paisley.

Dutchbaby colored a mandala, below (from online mandala coloring pages), in PhotoShop for her expecting friend, who has Swedish heritage. From it I feel my own connection with Sweden through Grandma Olive. The blue and yellow remind me of tole painting on a pitcher or a barn's peak, or in Carl Larsson's kitchen. Dutchbaby paired my poem with her mandala as a gift to the mom-to-be Saturday. (Bless this baby, oh universe.)

Dutchbaby did not know when she requested the poem that we have our own baby on the way. I am going to be a gramma! And so I offer this poem not only to a friend's friend, but also for my daughter Lesley, and the little poppy seed growing inside her to the great size of a kidney bean at this moment, with webbed feet, a bulging head, and joints in her/his knees. Imagine.

Don and I are over the moon, and no amount of exclamatory punctuation is enough for what I feel, so I used just the one, but picture exclam-infinity. (Bless this baby, oh universe.) How about this photo of them with my nephew's baby, Evangeline? (Bless Eva, too.)

The multi-bonus is that Lesley & Brian are moving to Michigan where he begins a teaching job in the fall (exclam-infinity). We will be close by when baby enters the world (due in January), no need for booking flights at just the right time to NYC. Just hop in the car and drive an hour and a half.

Our son Peter (right, with his sister on her 30th birthday this year) just moved to L.A. to join his band Lord Huron (all the band members are from Michigan). Such is life, the child who lived close moves far away, and the one who lived far away moves close. But we are incredibly excited for Peter and feel, well . . . expectant about this change for him.

Dutchbaby's mandala and my poem are below.

A note about koans (in the poem title): When Dutchbaby told me that the expectant mom said the baby was "sitting like Buddha" in her belly, I decided to shape the poem in koan-like questions. (The image of a sitting Buddha also made me think of paisley.) A koan is a question a Zen sage asks a pupil that does not have an answer from the reasoning mind. A famous koan is: What is the sound of one hand clapping? "The master is not looking for a specific answer but for evidence that the disciple has grasped the state of mind expressed by the kōan itself." More on koans here. Samples of koans at The Gateless Gate. If you listen carefully to the podcast of the poem, you can hear the birds that chirp incessantly outside my office window. Does a bird's song answer the heart's questions?

Koan-like Questions of a Mother to her Unborn Child

Is there something quieter than sleep?

      My whispers circle you like jasmine vine, the way

      my arms want to, when my palm will cup your head,

      my thumb in the shallow petal of your temple.

      Terrace.

Where is the pocket in the nightshirt of early morning?

      You didn’t notice just now that I turned over in bed, rolling

      first onto my right side, then onto my left.

      Leaves everywhere on blue-white cotton.

What shape are you?

      In my teardrop body you sleep, sucking your thumb —

      puzzle piece in the circle of your mouth.

      Paisley baby, paisley thumb,

      paisley me, paisley breast. Lace.

What is grace?

      I pull myself up, like a camel, into a sitting position,

      lean left, push off, grunt, rise, stand, and low into the sway

      of this me, your cradle, creaking at my hips.

      Caravanserai.

Do you remember it, that hymn from the old church

through the window as we slowly climbed the stair?

      Holding the bedpost, carved like an altar,

      my eyes closed, up from the organ

      in my chest the music — unnamed song

      through the vibrating reed of my watery throat.

      Repeat.

      Stained glass moon. Bosphorus.

Can you see me in the dark?

      My hand rests on the olive of your shoulder,

      or is that a heel? Hush, keep sleeping, don’t worry

      about positions. You are touching everything

      in any case.

      Mountain magnolia blossom.

Listen to a podcast of this poem here. (You can hear the birds outside my office window if you listen carefully.)

Poem notes: 

Caravanserai: the fortress-like hostelries for sojourners on the Silk Road.

Bosphorus: the body of water between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul; 'bosphorus' means 'throat' in Turkish; Lesley went to school on the European side, crossing the Bosphorus every morning and evening from and to our home on the Asian side.

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Nouvelle 55: Four Directions - The Star

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"Four Directions" by stained glass artist Stratoz

My friend Stratoz invited me to write a Nouvelle 55 based upon one of his stunning stained glass pieces. This poem is the result. I feel drawn to connect Stratoz' piece with art by Marc Chagall and Carl Jung (who found in mandalas representations of the Self), two people whose souls exploded in creativity, as bright and wild as Stratoz' "Four Directions." This piece is a square mandala, when most manadalas are a circle (some with a square inside). Read Stratoz' post about the healing ways of mandalas here.

The story of Israel — of Jews, of Arabs— of the great conflicts that never end, was made more poignant for me this morning when I read that the large Arab population in the Galilee region of Israel is predominantly Druze. Some believe that the Druze people descended from the Tribe of Zebulun, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Oh that the tribes of the world could be joined as skillfully as Stratoz melds the living colors of his stained glass, and as Chagall did his stained glass, and as Jung did the colors of the unbreakable self.

The Star

prompted by Stratoz' "Four Directions"

Break the mirror.
Four-square hands
reunite in sacred sand.

Gather saturation,
arrowed imagination

east-ended by the sea
a sky-blue Galilee

in the colors of this dream.
Gate my red
leaf-paint the green

Bright my heart—
     good this art
circling the sacred soul apart.

Pull into light, my star—
Self, borne into near
and far

Lithograph, by Marc Chagall

"The Tribe of Zebulun"

from The Twelve Maquettes
Of Stained Glass Windows
For Jerusalem, 1964

found here

The Red Cross, Carl Jung's illustration from The Red Book

Nouvelle 55 is a flash fiction written in exactly 55 words, based on a piece of art. 

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