Little Green Things: A Poem

Little green things 

heed the call 

that Death eats Life 

and Life sprouts 

from Death 

in a spiral dance 

of joy and sorrow –

for a long cold winter 

will always become 

a bright spring

This little poem has been adapted from something I wrote a number of years ago, but I thought it apt to share on this last official day of winter.

This winter has not seemed particularly long, though there have been some cold days. What it has lacked is rain. Though spring shoots and blooms regardless, and for this I am grateful. Growth and transformation is on its way, with or without the rain. Let’s welcome it.

Wise Words: The Moon Is Yours (Their Progress Is Not Our Progress)

The moon is yours. And it belongs to the U’wa child and to the Hopi Indians, to the Inuit and to the Mexican woman collecting water and to the monks of Tibet. It belongs to every moth that flies towards it, to every dog who barks for it and to every cat on the hackled prowl for it. Untouched, it is a global commons unparalleled, for it belongs to the minds of millions upon millions of people; an emblem of purity, of women, of imagination or of time itself; a beautiful place of thought which can mean a million different things to a million different minds, all on one night. ‘The moon shines bright. In such a night’ as Shakespeare said, it shone for Dido, for Medea, for Troilus and Cressida all alike. But a few hundred overprivileged white males plan probes and moon maps and say the far side of the moon would be the site for an Observatory. Like an exact parallel with ‘progress’ on earth, it uses all the tools of imperialism – from Observatories, maps, enclosures and sheer political force – to colonize a commons. Their progress is not our progress. To lose the moon and be given instead a petrol station, a Hilton hotel, an industrial estate, a quarry and a nuclear waste deposit is not a good swap but a terrible theft; a theft from the very soul of humanity. And we, the millions who have lost something so infinitely precious, are expected to applaud it?

(Jay Griffiths, Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Flamingo: London, 1999, pp. 217–218)

Detail from Memory, by Meinrad Craighead, from her book, The Mother's Songs: Images of God the Mother (1986)

Winterlight

This week I am resting after being away from home for a couple of weeks, so I thought I would show you some of what I saw in that somewhat different place: the winterlight of afternoon, the intimations of spring as the wattle begins to flower, the small beauties of the bush; and the extraordinary book I have been very slowly rereading, trying to let its wisdom soak into my flesh so that I can begin to awaken to the sensuous world once more.

(Apologies for the quality of some of the photos. I didn’t have my camera with me, so all of these images were taken with my phone.)

The efflorescence of the hairpin banksia, Banksia spinulosa

Prickly Moses or juniper wattle, Acacia ulcifolia

Golden wattle, Acacia longifolia, breaking into bloom

Probably a species of boronia

The dried efflorescence and seed pods of the Old Man Banksia, Banksia serrata 

Wise Words: The Way The World Lives (Motion Parallax)

… The forest on the facing slope appears to keep pace with me as I stroll, while all the nearer conifers slide past at their different rates. It’s as though all the trees on that hillside were gliding forward—or is it just the contrast with the nearby woods rushing backward that makes the distant slope seem to stride in the opposite direction?

But wait! What am I saying? None of these trees is actually moving! I alone, among all these upright bodies, am actually locomoting across the ground. All their apparent movements, fast and slow, are merely a consequence of my own physical motion, the illusory effect of my own activity in the midst of what is, in fact, a fairly quiescent and passive topography. “Motion parallax” is the technical term for this dynamism that my own movement seems to induce in the landscape, this apparent roaming of things in relation to myself as I wander.

…

… the trunks move backward in their respective gaits, the farther ones slower and the close ones swifter … and I realize that all this motion is not at all an illusion: it is the way the world lives, the way the world shows itself to itself—for there is NO view from outside! The layered dynamism of all these gliding trajectories has overcome a threshold in my self; my thoughts dissolve into my breathing body and I awaken as this striding form, this sentient flesh utterly immersed in the sensuous.

(David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, Vintage: New York, 2010, pp. 96 and 97–98)

Witchlines: Wedding The Troll-Hag

Here is a second Witchlines tale inspired by The White Bear King Valemon, looking at things from the point of view of the troll-hag who takes Valemon captive. 

Wedding the Troll-Hag

Do you think me ugly? Do you fear my stony gaze, my teeth sharp as knives, my spiderweb hair, my blood-red lips? 

It’s true: I would have him—that handsome bear-king, Valemon. I would pull him into my bone-crushing embrace, bind him to my earthen breast, merge his wild beauty with my own wild monstrousness. I would draw him down deep into my body, to sleep with me as one.

I love the smell of decay. I love munching on bones, and reducing flesh to ashes and dust. I love to bring all life back to its beginning. I simply can’t help it, you see, for it is in my nature to do as Nature does.

Some see the rot, the darkness, the unknown, and they call it ugly, they call it frightening.

I have a hard, stony body, it’s so, hairy with root tendrils and mycelia. I am black and cold and unyielding. Yet if that is all you see you do not see true.

I would have Valemon—yes!—and I will, in time, for there is no avoiding Death. Yet I don’t take without giving first; and after I take I give yet again.

Don’t you see? That young woman would never have found him without me, would never have become a bear-wife, married to the wild; nor would she have lost him either. I drew them together, I pulled them asunder, and then led them both towards me. While I held him close, I ripped her clothes, tore her lily-white skin, half-starved her, and put some dirt under her fingernails. I steered her towards each fateful old crone—flesh of my flesh, knowing of my knowing—and I tested her, with each breath she breathed, each step she stepped, each word she spoke.

Is she kind? I asked. Is she courageous? Is she clever and resourceful? And most importantly of all: Does she love him as much as life itself?

You may think my methods harsh, my ways all too earthy. But if you want soft, you must be prepared to take the hard; if you want light, you’ll have to walk into the darkness. Show me that you can be unyielding, and only then will I yield. 

I am not so cruel as to take all. I am always willing to be generous, for I know that Life must have Valemon and his bear-bride before Death claims them. They have wild gifts that they must bring back to the tamed world; gifts gleaned from contact with my own chthonic realm. I will give them that.

Look again. Am I still hideous? Or do you see a glimmer of beauty in my eye, like the morning sun cresting the horizon? 

If you haven’t seen true yet, then let me reveal all: I am Life just as much as I am Death, for one cannot be without the other. I am the marriage of light and the darkness, night and day, fertile black soil and bleached white bones, plump juicy fruit and the sweet stench of decay. I am mother and lover to the bear-king, and to his bear-bride; and they are just as much me as any other earth-born being.

Know this: the wild must be free to wed itself to the human, and the human must be free to wed itself to the wild. The bear-husband must have his bear-wife, so that wild and human merge, furred, clawed, and kindly wild, else there is no wholeness or beauty.

And in the end, I’ll still have him, for everything is wed to me.

White Bear King Valemon, by Theodor Kittelsen
(Source: Wikimedia)

Wise Words: Progress Is A Four-Letter Word

Cardinal John Henry Newman once said: ‘Progress is a slang term’. For many, it is a four-letter word. Vandana Shiva spits on the shoe of progress and development – including, not surprisingly, the Narmada dam.

‘What is currently called development is essentially maldevelopment, based on the … domination of man over nature and women. The economic “growth” that the masculinist model of progress has sold has been the growth of money and capital based on the destruction of other kinds of wealth such as the wealth produced by nature and women.’

She argues instead that ‘steadiness and stability are not stagnation, and balance with nature’s essential ecological processes is not technological backwardness but technological sophistication.’ ‘Chasing the mirage of unending growth, by spreading resource-destructive technologies, becomes a major source of genocide, the killing of people by the murder of nature is … today the biggest threat to justice and peace.’

(Jay Griffiths, Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Flamingo: London, 1999, p. 198)

Witchlines: The Fire

The third and final tale we have been exploring as part of Witchlines is The White Bear King Valemon—a Norwegian version of the tale more commonly known as East of the Sun, West of the Moon, or sometimes The Bear Husband. This myth is also closely related to the story of Psyche and Eros. 

For this creative task I was called to focus upon one aspect of the story that had drawn my attention, and to tell the tale from the point of view of the bear-wife as an old woman, relating the events to a grandchild.

The Fire

It happened long ago, before I became lined with wrinkles; before I became stooped and grey-haired, like one of the three wise old women who helped me. But in my memory, it happened yesterday, for it is all so clear, and so dear to me. 

I’ve told you before of how I left my father’s house and went willingly with the great white bear, so large and fine, his fur softer than anything I had ever touched. I was a queen riding on his back. 

When we reached the bear’s house, he carried me across the threshold, as has always been the custom in these parts, and he set me down in a large kitchen, with the biggest hearth I had ever seen. Well, I walked thrice around that room, marvelling at the solid wooden table, with platters of bread and cheese upon it; admiring the shiny copper pots and pans that hung from hooks above the fireplace; breathing in the scent of the dried herbs that dangled in bunches from the ceiling. It was the most handsome and well-appointed kitchen I had ever seen. Yet what amazed me most was the fire, for it glowed with a strange warmth I had never noticed in a fire before, as if it was saying ‘Welcome home’—to me!—who had never set foot in that house before. Yet there I was, mistress of it, and I had never felt such belonging.

My bear-husband, kind soul that he was, assured me that I would be content in his house—all I had to do was keep that friendly fire lit. To this I readily agreed, for what is a home without the light, warmth and comfort of a fire? I knew I would keep it well.

That first night, in the darkness of our bedroom, I knew my husband as a man for the first time—and it was the sweetest of sleeps in his strong arms. But in the morning, before the sun rose and illuminated the room, he was gone.

Well, I was quite bereft. Yet when I went into the kitchen, all alone for the day, I was cheered by the sight of the fire, which burned low, but with such a strong ember-glow that it hungrily devoured the kindling I fed it, and grew quickly into a jovial, dancing flame.

Each day I would go out to collect wood from the edge of the forest where my bear-husband roamed, and where orange butterflies flickered through the trees, and I would build a pile of firewood large enough to feed the fire until the darkness came again. In the kitchen I would knead dough to bake bread, and sing love songs to myself; or I would sit and sew or knit, all the while giving fuel to the fire. That fire became the constant companion of my lonesome days, and I came to know all its colours and moods: the flickers of red and gold, and the white-blue heat at its heart.

Each night, as the light in the kitchen began to grow dim, and the fire became ever more amiably golden as it cast its glow about the room, I would present it with the last of the wood I had collected, enticing it into a gentle roar, and then retreat to the darkness of the bedroom to await my husband’s return.

Every night was dark and sweet; and every day was filled with the friendly warmth of the fire. In the morning it would be waiting for me—embers still aglow—somehow alive. It ate up sticks like a wild animal chewing on bones. It danced crazily as it grew, laughing and singing its fire-song.

I loved that fire. Its warmth sustained me, filled me, made my body sing with delight at the love I had found. It was always gentle and welcoming. Yet, with time I noticed the fire taking on a new and wilder light. It would beckon me close, so that its heat would make my skin blush red, and it would whisper strange things to me—of how it could bring me light in the dark; of how it could reveal the unknown. 

Well, after three years of this fireside bliss, I journeyed back to my first home to visit my parents, and you know what my mother gave me, what my father said. Yet I could not help myself—the fire had planted a question-seed in the dark of my breast. I carried the candle stub my mother had given me in my pocket, a tiny receptacle for a tiny flame, almost ready to come to light within me. 

When I returned to my home once more, the fire was there to greet me, as if I had never been away. It danced mischievously, it sang a mysterious song. It shimmered more golden than ever, and lit the hidden place in my heart.

That night, after reuniting with my husband in the darkness, I crept out of the room and into the kitchen where the fire smouldered red and pulsed, like a beating heart. I tenderly roused the fire, watched it birth itself the same and anew. Then I took the candle stub from where I had folded it into my nightgown, and with a piece of tinder I lit that candle, and thanked the fire—that generous, warm, wild friend of my days—and I turned back towards the darkness.

(Source: Wikimedia, by Giovanni Dall'Orto)

Wise Words: The Enveloping Air

Phenomenologically considered—experientially considered—the changing atmosphere is not just one component of the ecological crisis, to be set alongside the poisoning of the waters, the rapid extinction of animals and plants, the collapse of complex ecosystems, and other human-induced horrors. All of these, to be sure, are interconnected facets of an astonishing dissociation—a monumental forgetting of our human inherence in a more-than-human world. Yet our disregard for the very air that we breathe is in some sense the most profound expression of this oblivion. For it is the air that most directly envelops us; the air, in other words, is that element that we are most intimately in. As long as we experience the invisible depths that surround us as empty space, we will be able to deny, or repress, our thorough interdependence with the other animals, the plants, and the living land that sustains us. We may acknowledge, intellectually, our body’s reliance on the plants and animals that we consume as nourishment, yet the civilized mind still feels itself somehow separate, autonomous, independent of the body and of bodily nature in general. Only as we begin to notice and experience, once again, our immersion in the invisible air do we start to recall what it is to be fully a part of this world.

(David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, Vintage Books: New York, 1996, p. 260)

Witchlines: Bird-Woman’s Foot

This next tale for Witchlines, in relation to The Frog Princess, is inspired by a clay temple model from Old Europe, which has a bird’s head above the body of the structure, and a leg and human foot below. In this strange object is a mixture of ideas and symbolism: of the Neolithic Goddess in her guise of Bird-Woman; of the sacred work of women (weaving, bread-making, pottery), which took place in Old European temples; of the structure and meaning of the temples themselves—the womb-like sanctuary of transformation, the microcosm of the Goddess’s body; of the bird-like Baba Yaga, whose house stands on chicken legs … This is the story that grew from this intriguing vessel. 

Temple model found at Aszód north of Budapest, placed in the grave of a young girl, 49th–47th centuries B.C.
(Image from The Civilisation of the Goddess, by Marija Gimbutas, p. 84) 

Bird-Woman’s Foot

Once, in an old, old land, there was a village. In that village, in the centre of the many houses, was a building—a temple—and inside the temple, which was painted with spirals in red and white, was an oven with a round dome. Inside the oven bread was baking, round domes of dough rising and fattening, like babies in a womb. Beside the oven, which radiated its generous warmth into the room, sat three women: one old, one in the prime of life, and one just barely out of girlhood. They were all very wise, in their three different ways. The oldest woman sat at a loom, weaving, her hands moving rhythmically; the middle woman brushed flour from her hands as she checked the bread did not burn; and the young woman was dreaming, and singing out her dream as she sat on a low stool in the dimmest corner of the room.

Inside the dream-song she sang was a tale the three women knew well, for it had been told, mother to daughter, forever; and inside the tale was a beginning.

*

In the beginning, Bird-Woman flew everywhere. There was nothing her wings did not touch, did not bless with their flight; there was no place that was not her. Then, one clawed foot touched the ground, followed by the other, sinking into sweet smelling soil. Here, she said, is earth. Standing now, she flapped her massive wings, and raised her regal head, and the winds unfurled and clouds gathered. Here is sky. She looked down at her round belly, and felt an egg forming inside. Here is water, womb and dream. 

With her fierce and gentle heart, Bird-Woman loved what had been born from herself, and what was yet to be born, and she spread her wings wide in protection of all that is, was, and will be. Then she sang.

And in her song was the force that created life from death and death from life, and time spiralled out and danced.

*

Inside the temple, where the three women did their sacred work, opposite the domed oven, was an altar, on which sat a small temple. A model made of clay, it had a rounded, hollow body with a proudly uplifted bird’s head; below the body was a leg, a column, on a wide-soled foot. A temple within a temple—Bird-Woman inside herself, in the village, in the old, old land, that was inside her.

The foot was the foot that had first touched earth. The head was the head that had first made sky. And the body was the womb from which all things were born.

Each woman knew, from the tale of the beginning, and from the temple model, that we are connected to the earth by our soles, and our souls. Like Bird-Woman’s foot, like tree root, like snake belly, we touch the ground; we raise our heads and see the sky; and in our bellies we carry our dreams. By our life-making, our movement, our dreaming, and our deaths, and by the mingling of earth, sky, water and dream, we are made whole. Life-energy travels from earth through sole into body out to sky, and from sky into body through sole into earth.

From the altar, Bird-Woman, with her earth-bound foot, watched the women doing the work of creation. The old woman paused her weaving to admire the fine cloth she had made. The middle woman took the golden-brown loaves from the oven and looked at the food she had created. And the young woman kept singing out her dream, knowing that Bird-Woman’s wings were still spread wide in protection of all that is, was, and will be.