Erin Sings

There is an uninterrupted expanse of sky on the other side of the uncovered panes of glass in the kitchen where the orb of sun normally blasts in on us totally unfettered. Slashing light across everything and obscuring it from our eyes. Sun so arrogant you hide from it and wonder how does one teach something so big and hot and far away the elements of grace.

This morning the wood blinds had been pulled across the patio door forcing the sun to yearn to enter, probe it’s way through the narrow, subtle spaces between blinds, search for surfaces to lay across and entice us.

I love humbled, dappled sunlight the best.

“Long ago I read in Patricia Monaghan’s wonderful Book of Goddesses and Heroines that the Roman goddess of the winter solstice, Angerona, was shown with a bandaged mouth and a finger to her lips enjoining silence. This cryptic description inspired me to create a ritual which I’ve been practicing ever since. I spend the day of the Winter Solstice (December 21 this year) in silence. I don’t answer the phone, I don’t use my computer, I don’t listen to the radio or watch television. I don’t go shopping or engage in any social activities where talking would be expected. I hide the clocks and avoid using anything that requires electricity. My usual activities for the day include sleeping in, reading and going for a long walk in the nearby park. When dusk falls, early of course since it’s the shortest day of the year, I light candles instead of turning on the lights and usually go to bed early, after a candlelit bath. I’ve been celebrating solstice this way for many years and I love my oasis of peace and serenity in the midst of the chaotic holiday season.”

from Gaian Tarot Artist’s Journal

I often use rituals of silence described exactly like this one to express my reverence. To cleanse.  To seek.  Some fast and perform ceremonies, I relinquish words and wear solitude as a shroud. Usually I feel in need of clarity and plan in advance to spend handfuls of days at a time in a silence dedicated to it.

Last night, however,  I lit candles on an impulse. I didn’t recognize the need for silence for what it was until turning on the electric lights later felt like an assault. When my husband tried to determine what sort of a mood I was in, I couldn’t even find words to explain something as simple as silence.

“It hurts to talk” I kept offering, inadequately.  Each time feeling tired from the effort to explain and the sense of failure to even brush up against what i meant.

The darkness is sacred and I feel an urge to descend into it in a way that makes pulling words out of me to give to others painful. Some moist part of my insides throbs against the point of my sternum  when I am talking and feeling dragged out of something meaningful into a place where it barely exists. As if the world were a tiny, hard space edged with daggers, when I move it presses against me threatening to pierce.

It’s best not to move.

The magic is that when I am still I contain it.  Fighting my way out of darkness with noise and light accomplishes nothing and trampling over mysteries by pretending they are not unfolding only makes a  stolidness in me.  I’d much rather be the mystery, travelling it silently with my wonderment until the light comes on it’s own to thaw and enliven.

This morning I read the above post and realized that while I’d never heard of Angerona before, it was as if she was calling to me as one of her own. This Goddess, Angerona, holds my deepest lesson.  Her counterpart, Sige, too.  More than an invitation to rest and be calm.  They hold their fingers to their lips warning me into silence.

“Let it be the warning finger that makes us consider wisely our words before we speak or share them - not from doubt or lack of self-esteem - but to double check that our choices create a worthy medium to carry the Divine forces we refer to and to balance the perceptions that we can speak of with that great Truth we cannot put into words before we become the voice through which others hear it reflected. We can in this manner guard against “diva-ism”, the self-serving “superstar” compulsion that demands the spotlight and constantly draws attention to the singer rather than the beauty of her song.” from here
 

It also happens that I haven’t written a single piece of poetry-turned-song for ages. Until just the other day.  I never truly know what these songs are about at first. I weave them together by pursuing a sense of something, the way a butterfly navigates by tasting the air.

It occured to me yesterday that the song was about the descent into this dark Solstice and the winter that accompanies that.  I had gotten stuck after the first verses because there was no more winter around me to describe.

Today the sky broke open and swallowed us in gusts of snow.  Some deva must have lent their divinity to my song  since it seems to have invoked the elements of winter in order to finish itself.

sullen soil, so moist it’s lewd
waits for a frozen dignity
and darkened solitude

crisp grass blades break
sun so feeble and weak
grandfather wind groans in the trees

sun so weak we all can’t breathe
so we’ll lie down all day

night so long that it lost
a day in it’s shadow
so we must dance in the moonlight and frost if we’re to dance at all

we worship the secrets
so we can’t really sense
when they bite at our ankles, and it’s as bad as it gets

I will sit as still as stone
Until I am thawed

chambers of snow fall
until I’m entombed
a small, wild flame is a plea to the winds  i’ll survive

they’re so fierce at my doorways
that i’m not certain at all
that their thunderous voices will subside

my prayer is my hand pressed to my lips
I belong to the silence

sullen soil, moist, lewd
prefers frozen stiff dignity
and darkened solitude

crisp grass blades break
sun so feeble and weak
grandfather wind groans in the trees

sun so weak we all can’t breathe
so we’ll lie down all day

open your eyes
blind love
sweet light seeps in
you’ll see
you’ll see now
the shapes in the shadows
sharpen

it seems a little shaky
your eyes shifting around
you shut them to find a familiar sound
but open your eyes
blind love

it seems a little harsh
hurts at first
tired-eyed love
all you had before were ghosts
now grab hold
blind love

words climbing over each other
into meaning, timing, rhyming
stumbling over imagery
sighing or fighting
their way into me

poised for the writing
typing or pen gliding
right hand idling
idling
idle wing
waits for wind to lift it

flight is easy
choked by straining
still more waiting
for the words to come

blank page
blank for ages
words in cages
attack each other for space

crammed, bleeding words
cry and shout
shut up! you let us out
before we’ve worked it out
you let us out
before we’re full grown
then you edit us down
just to
spread us on all this ordinary
you’ve taken all control
we’re bored with commentary
so we’ve withdrawn

talking, talking over takes us
we need your silent spaces
we need you just watching
not all this talking
giving us away

In the picture she sucks in her lips gently and turns her gaze up to the sky, like she’s daydreaming, like she’s tasting a lingering sweetness in her memory.  Or like some small, precious thing just outside the frame has caught her attention and is in the process of making itself a symbol of this present and unbearably profound moment.

She’s wrapped the moment entirely around herself  and he stands with her and listens to marrying words and she hears them too but she is there deeply as herself.

The elegance of the moment is the elegance of the untouched.  No suggestions have been painted on so we all know what to think.  All the colors in the frame show up as themselves to let us know how organically healthy this love is, it shows in her sun colored skin. and how easily she smiles in the next frame.

she wears no jewelry, only draping her body in swaths of silk that the wind blows around flirtatiously.
it looks as though she could have woken up that morning and pulled her hair back softly and slipped the silk on and walked down the vinyard aisle and found herself at her wedding and decided since the moment felt good she might as well get married. the way you might find yourself at an unexpected breakfast that looks so good you just sit down and eat it just as if you had been expecting it all along, it looks that easy.

The only beauty she uses is the beauty already on her. on any other day the same beauty would be there.  she has no need to pronounce it in lipstick shades of ‘look-how-pretty-i-am-pink’.  ‘this is my color’ her skin says. ‘this is my shape’ her body whispers.

how could you marry someone when being anyone other than yourself?  a wedding is no place for fairy tales and illusions.

Construction workers are making a big hole in the middle of the street. There are three layers of tarmac. And then just soft, brown sand. That’s all there is to the ground. It’s anti-climactic as far as mysteries go. The mystery of what the earth looks like under Her skin.  There’s a line of people standing on the sidewalk watching as a bony mechanical arm with a large metal claw, deeply cupped, nudges at the sides of the hole looking like my cat does when she uses her forehead to nudge a door open. I join them and watch as the sand slips down the sides of the hole, pooling at the bottom. The claw scoops it up delicately, which is the mesmerizing part. A clanky, clunky, mechanical arm and claw that moves delicately. I’ve watched the same machine pick up small peices of dug up road one at a time, push them around accurately and arch and swing gracefully. It comes to life as it works. A construction worker perched at the edge of the hole uses hand motions to indicate to the operator where the claw should move. The operator isn’t watching the hand signals very closely and nudges more loose dirt to the bottom as the hand signals man waves for him to stop, but eventually he manages to get it close enough to done and the man with the hand signals jumps over the edge and surfs down the slope of the hole to it’s sandy bottom. Another worker jumps in after him using a shovel to brace himself as his feet slide. The claw’s work is done and the men have descended into the hole like spies in a movie and are now just shoveling the last little bits to uncover whatever the object of their massive hole digging is. The mesmerizing part is over and the crowd of us that lined up to watch disperses. Then the sun leaks out of the sky.

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

-Kaylin Haught

Last fall I felt refined, poised. Standing in the center of my life at ease with it’s parts.  I remember so clearly it’s scent, it’s tiniest detail.  When the winter closed in i spent the dull, dark moments believing spring would make me quick and alive. I remember saying ‘wait until the spring comes, that’s when i bloom’.  I had visions of flowers   in my hair and wearing laughter as i would crystal beads. But that never happened.  there was the relief of  shedding winter layers, a sense of emerging, but it  was not as satisfying as I had imagined it would be. It didn’t unfold me, make magic out of me. Wasn’t I normally a lover of spring, willingly   dripping into summer sensations? The sun on me everywhere, lapping and immodest.  But instead I felt   melted, lethargic and like the world around me in it’s detail would not speak to me clearly, only  casting glare.  Too aggressive, I didn’t want to pay attention and that left me with nothing to notice, the world around me drought-withered, yellowed and sun-bleached.  the heat made me feel as dull, mundane as any grey winter day. the heat got everywhere, into everything and made my horizons hazy. It didn’t occur to me in my anticipation of what had long been my favorite time of year, that my season had changed.  the chaos was uncaused, i felt restless and graceless but for no turmoil.  my life altered over and over again in blissful ways, but I wasn’t inspired.
But now the air is crisp and sweeps over me, leaving me feeling cooled, like a piece of metal taking a shape.  I notice the world preparing to turn in on itself and I want to go along.  And for the first time since last Easter, I want to write something.

Heather and Sati and I sat in the Red Roaster on wortley road.  Me not enjoying my coffee one bit but enjoying the conversation greatly.  I wathced out the window as the north sky darkened and the south sky illuminated, i watched the shadows dance and the light infuse like a soothing tea.  That’s what autumn light does.  None of this high energy penetration. It filters, it wafts like fresh bread scent.  It spoke to me.  It’s been seasons since I heard their voices teaching me their nature, showing me treasures in exchange for my attention.  I am being enchanted.  but not against my will.

“You see, I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how careful you have to be about checking the experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself.  I know what it means to know something…”

I read that in a book of short works by Richard Feynman and it went right into my heart and culled out a sense of how much i like to pretend to myself i know and asked me if i was willing to be more discerning about my relationship to information, to knowing things, to certainty.  The things i want to know aren’t scientific things with scientific procedures involved in understanding them, but the principal of time and checking and experimenting (experiencing) and reserving certainty are the same. and with that bouncing around inside me i went to celebrate Ostara at the Living Center.  Talking to Shantree later he says: ‘i ask my herbalism students, when can you say you know a plant?  when you know it’s name?  when you know how it tastes or what it looks like? when you know it’s chemical properites and what it can be used for?  when do you know it?’  We are talking about entering into a relationship with the thing you want to know, letting time, patience, effort clarify your understanding of it.

the conversations i’ve been having lately seem to be focusing my understanding of things, mostly in myself.  what peace feels like to me, sense of purpose vs. agenda, sense of purpose vs. sense of growth and movement. but, the words to express the clarity live within the womb of  spontaneous conversation only and have yet to spring out from  it .  so the clarity incubates and stirs and kicks and i like the swelling.

Normally ’sacred circle gathering’ type things irritate me. feeling like a forced and superficial version of the kind of connections and sharing that happens spontaneously when like minded people end up in a space together.  but last night i was into it.  often, rituals feel hokey, taken too seriously and still missing some essential thing that gives it meaning or value.  but last night the dramatization of the myth of spring delighted me, energized me.  there was no need of experiencing deeper meaning or insight, it was literal and visual and entertaining.  a woman hunched over, dressed in black representing the crone, winter, calling the four elements to awaken and then handing over the ’seeds’ of hope to another woman depicting spring who danced and sang to the four elements to nourish the seeds to growth.  then, the doorway was filled with the sensual presence of the goddess of spring, her eyes locked intensely with the green man across the room.  the tension between them filled the spaces between everyone in the room.  the began to move, rythmically and slow a sense of polarization between them.  eyes never leaving eyes.  the music speeds up, the beat of a heart, a drum pulsing, pouding, the room swirling, my skin goosebumped and thrilled as her body curled and wound closer to his tall, solid form. dancing a mating dance.  it was captivating and yet playful, there was no need to search for meaning, my body understands that tension, that arousal, that urge to dance intrinsically.  perhaps i was freed from my critical impulse toward ritual by how clearly what i feel to be true about spring was expressed. i vaguely wondered to myself: do i feel something is missing in my relationship because he is unlikely to dance a sacred mating dance with me without rolling his eyes and pointing out how silly it is?  i let the question consider itself as i enjoyed the energy pulsing, beating and throbbing to life around me.  but then i retrieved my small stick from the altar that he had brought me from a forest at my request and i remembered him there asking for the gift on my behalf.  i remembered that even I am  likely to roll my eyes and feel rediculous than i was last night.  I remembered that we have our own make believe world i can play in that suits me far more preciesly with no loss of intensity or energy.  the question settled.

shantree says ‘the linden tree has leaves that taste just like romain lettuce and they grow all over london.  all this free food everywhere and no one knows about it.’  he tells me that as far as he knows Ontario doesn’t have poisonous trees and i imagine myself wandering around london eating leaves and branches and bits of bark, tasting my way through the town.  it excites me and seems rediculous at the same time.

i walk in the warm rain today.  my shoulders ache from winter sleeping.  like spring stretching i urge them to awaken.  in 8 more days i will use them to walk across spain.