Bonfirebird

 -

-

Bonfirebird

We circle ‘round

a bonfire at midnight.

The fire is warm, and dangerous.

We can’t turn our faces

away from its seductions

yet only get so close.

Next gray morning it feels safe

to poke the nest of ash and char

with a cold black stick,

looking for the truth of fire

in what is left behind.

But, O Soul, don’t hide

your face and wait like that; turn

over the crimson ember-eggs

of desire buried in ash; pile on

dried spikenard and fig,

almond and cherry; smell

as they crackle to life; feel

how voluptuously

your flame-wings rise up!

May 2012

Art notes

Top: Costume Design for The Firebird, by Leon Bakst

Bottom: Cover of the book The Firebird, by Konstantin Somov

-
-

Alone

-

-

When I feel most alone, no matter

if life and love remain all around,

when body and mind are too much,

I need to leave the bread at the table,

go out and walk the orchard or the lake,
find the star, the moon, or the last loaf of sun.

Nothing there, nothing
between me and the Scotch pine,

nothing between me and loss,
no bridge across the distance,

only the dissolving heart, alive, the way

the sun sinks slowly, without a body, everywhere,

and try not to be afraid.

-

-

Memory: Seduction

-

I was already convinced this was the sky I wanted to sleep under, having met him that autumn on the mountain, walking back from the library to the house where my roommates were studying. My eyes had been down, my Clarks scrambling the gravel of the drive. I had been thinking about Hopi Indians who lived in the valley, and the paper I was writing. We do that, attach pen to paper after reading, sure that we know. That’s when he, the sky, pulled my gaze up like a hand and he was a Hopi dancer wearing indigo who’d just tossed his white feathers over his shoulder. He stomped his foot and said, Look: The sky was covered with a cloud of stardust.

Weeks later grounds keeper Bob dropped me off in a wilderness forest in the dark indigo of night miles away from our small campus. That term I was the only student taking the professors up on the offer of extra credit for a solo campout. With a flashlight Bob helped me find a tree, and in a couple of minutes I heard his truck drive away. I mummified in a sleeping bag under a low pine bow. I shivered with fright and human loneliness. I listened to sounds I knew nothing of. How far I was from being a daughter of the earth, lying there on top of the ground.

The night passed slowly. I never once heard the Hopi dancer stomp his foot. In truth, I hid from him under the arm of the Ponderosa pine.

In the morning light, I saw where I had slept. A forest red with pine needles, and fifty feet away, a lookout to the valley, which I hadn’t seen in the darkness. I pulled on my sweatshirt, dug into my pack for a jar of instant coffee, bottle of water, tin coffee pot, mug, and matches. I picked up sticks and walked to the edge of the valley. I built a fire in the dirt.

Before me, across the valley was Mt. Shasta, and what do you know, I saw where the Hopi dancer had tossed his white feathers, and I thought, where is he now. Asleep. Naked. Me forgotten.

Creative Commons photo of Mt. Shasta shared by renedrivers

-

-

I was the cornstalk!

-
-

My name is Ruth, and this is my testimonial.

After exposing my fears to you yesterday, you gathered around me like midwives around a woman in labor. My presentation this morning was short, more like 15 minutes than the allotted 5. (They told me to take all the time I needed.) It was not an important presentation in the grand scheme. It was an update, just informational, not meant to be inspirational or profound. But it weighed on me, and so I told you about it. Here are the things I have to say to you:

I was the cornstalk. What I mean is, I visualized the stillness of the broom corn in yesterday's photo as I went in and hung up my coat and laid out my handouts. I didn't take coffee or fruit until after I was done. (I got to present first, isn't that great! I got it over with and then could relax.) Being the cornstalk, I was still and didn't rush. This is the most important lesson I learned from the broom corn: DON'T RUSH. 

What strikes me now, and did as I left the meeting, walked to my car with my box of handouts, buckled my seatbelt and drove across campus to my office, is that this here blog world is real and precious. I went from an anxious, jittery woman yesterday (and many days previously) to a Zen cat, like my Bishop in the photo here. See how she observes and takes in the world. She squirms around in leaves. She stalks her prey and takes her sweet time. She lies under the broom corn and lets me take her picture. You all helped me get there, you commenters and well wishers. I took up the fibers of your offerings and wrapped myself in them, like a mantle.

I was relaxed. I made them laugh. I covered everything (without notes!). And here's the other thing I thought of about the people in the audience I was to address, while getting ready this morning at home: Like them, love them, believe in them. I did, and I think they felt it. I know I did.

Thank you. I feel incredibly moved at how I was transformed, with your help. I will not forget this the next time I am afraid or anxious.
-
-

What am I afraid of?

-
-

When Bonnie at Original Art Studio asked in her interview what I am afraid of, I recall telling her that I am not afraid of anything. But I realize that is not really true, though I thought it was at the time. I try to be honest with myself, you, and most of all with Bonnie. (She's a psychotherapist.)

I have to get up in front of people and give a presentation in the morning. It's all of five minutes, no multimedia. Just a short explanation of the new curriculum in my department to the university's advisors who are interested. But I'd much rather stand, silent, like a tree or a corn stalk. From how wordy I am at this blog you might think I would like to talk in front of people. Well I do like talking to one person at a time, and listening to them talk back. So what makes me nervous about getting up there and holding fifty people captive, with their wide eyes and expectant faces? It's like flying on a plane. I get nervous about being up there in the air without anything beneath me except, well, air, and the hard ground far below. I'm not afraid of dying, not a bit. I think I'm being honest about that. It's not that I am ready to die. I want to live long enough to hold my future grandbabies and look into their eyes within minutes or hours of their entry into the light of the world. I want to hear what they have to tell me just then, so soon out of the core, before we and all the world around them make them unlearn it. I do want to live long enough for that. But fear of the plane crashing is not about being afraid of death. Sometimes I'm afraid of the plane going down because of the few minutes I would be conscious of what's coming. I am afraid of fear. When I watch a scary movie, I love the suspense. But I refuse to watch them, because I am afraid of the fear I spent most of my life feeling, a constant bogey man hovering behind me, every second of my life when I was alone in the dark, until just a very few years ago, when my spiritual journey helped me to release the concept of demons into the ether. The fear of standing and speaking in front of a large audience, the fear of the plane crashing, the fear of invisible demons . . . these are all fears of something that isn't quite real, of something mysterious, something I can't know. Will my plane go down? Are there ghosts sitting in the darkness watching me? Will my brain freeze and gibberish stutter out of my mouth in the morning? I don't know. I can't know. But if I take hold of the fear of fear and accept that all these things are possible, and ask, What's the worst that can happen? . . . there is a good amount of relief.

Isn't this broom corn peaceful, just standing there, under clouds that arrange themselves like white foamy waves on the surface of a deep, mysterious and sometimes turbulent sea?

-
-