Mary, Mary, Mary

“...many times late at night I was 

to see Ultima returning from the 

llano where she gathered the herbs 

that can be harvested only in the 

light of the full moon by the careful 

hands of a curandera.”-Antonio in Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya

A friend, Mary Symer, first introduced me to the poetry of Mary Oliver.  She patiently hand -copied a number of Oliver's poems and others into a small chapbook, written on spirit papers. Also known as ghost money or Joss papers, this paper is primarily used/burned as an offering to ancestors in China and Vietnam. Artists like it for aesthetic reasons and so this booklet I have treasured, a perfect going away gift for my departure from New Mexico and return to the eastern seaboard in 1996, (near to Oliver's current home) seems to hold within it's pages so much. Both life, death and like the moon's phases, a reflecting light one can hold in hand.  

It would be many years later after I received this booklet of poems before I discovered that Ms. Oliver and I both come from the same part of Ohio.  Although we grew up in different eras- she had already moved to New York before I was born- I like knowing we stepped through the same surroundings and shared landscapes. Easily, I love her words, her way with words.  She writes about all that I hold dear about the nature of nature with such depth and meaning.  For instance, most of us tend to speak of moonlight in timeworn ways, a modern condition I imagine brought on by our paled experience of the night sky in urban areas.  Not so Mary Oliver. In her book of poems, Twelve Moons, she writes about full moons in so many sacred ways: of the Pink Moon, the Wolf Moon, the Flower Moon.  On it's thin pages, a richness of wording for each of the full moons of the year, Ice in February, Strawberry in June. This book contains the wonderment of a fawn too new; a story of two turtles embracing; a mother bear under a snow moon giving birth, "she nibbled them with teeth like white tusks; she curled down beside them like a horizon." And there is a fish climbing from the sea as moonlight blazes black rocks.   

The moon in any phase that we see in the evening sky, is a massive reflector, bouncing the light of the sun back to us.  Isn’t there something so beautiful in this night- light shining upon us as a metaphor of receiving and giving back light?  Consider the moon, this planet of our familiar, as a daily reminder of our human and more-than- human* cycles, our own phases of radiance and veiled expressions. Of course the entirety of the moon is always there but we usually see just the portion that is sunlit. Often it appears to our eyes that the rest of the moon has been curiously carved away and made invisible. My personal favorite phase of the moon is the thin crescent two days after the new moon when it appears to be a silvery sliver among the stars.   It is perhaps most enchanting when on rare occasions it sits on it’s side - a cradle in the heavens, a smile in the sky.  This is the moon that the Virgin of Guadalupe stands upon: the horned moon.  She is Mary of the evening, her mantle covered with stars, her feet planted firmly along the curve of the moon, held up by an angel.  And so tonight , as we approach the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year,  I take pause as I write these words to look out and see if I might find the rising moon peeking pink over the mountain crest. And I stop to thank these three wise Marys for guiding my way through the darkness of the llano, the "funnel of the night," with your words of light. 

Cold Moon-Hannah's Children

They will come in their own time, 

Probably in the black

Funnel of the night,

And probably in secret-

No one will see

Their marvelous coming

But the goats,

And Maple the pony.

Now, on the evening 

Of the last counted day,

We latch the stable door.

As the white moon rises

She settles to her knees.

Her curious yellow eyes--

Old as the stones

Of Greece, of the mountains

That were born with the world-

Look at us in friendship,

And then look away,

Inward.  Inward

To the sacred groves.

-From Twelve Moons by Mary Oliver

 See this smiling cresecent moon on the evening of January 13-14, 2013

* and thank you David Abram for the borrowed term: more-than-human

The Path to Creativity V: With Ears for Seeing

Late June in the bosque, among the trees, I hear before I see anything, lots of birds chattering in the Cottonwoods.  Some high pitched squawking mixed with more melodic birdsongs gets me smiling as I walk in with my bike; it's such a unique chorus today.  When we look or search for something it is often hard to find, like misplaced car-keys, so I know I need to be patient, get quiet, find a roost and wait for what is entering my ears to become visible to my eyes. Hummingbirds abound and in short time I recognize the outline of a hawk-type beak on a bird in a tree, back-lit from the still early morning sun.   Binoculars to my faculty of sight, details of this rather fuzzy brown shape become a bit clearer - it has distinct vertical markings on the side of its face and neck- very occupied pecking at something in the cavity of a broken tree limb.  I hear myself asking, "What are you?"  And then, settling into my heartspace again, thinking, "oh, just enjoy the view."

A man on his bike pauses and I point out the bird as it flies off.  He says it is a Kestrel, a male Kestrel, then the female arrives into view and they both land on the same limb. 

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

     but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, "Stay awhile."

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,

"and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine."

-Mary Oliver

After the kindly man named Michael shows up to synchronistically answer my question, "What are you?," the pair glide wide through the treetops. Flickering through the green leaves, they show off flits of chevron-banded feathers on their pointy swept-back wings. (I read they can have a two foot wing span and can see ultraviolet light; they are small falcons once called by other names.) While relishing this rarity before me, the two Kestrels are joined by a third and with a flourish like the fan in the hand of a flamenco dancer, a fourth one appears! I am so grateful to catch sight of their flights of joy. Just as Coleman Barks says about Mary Oliver's poems, "I ascent to every line,"  I ascent with each glimpsed wing.

Touched by this majesty while epic fires are blazing through forests north in Colorado, hundreds of homes destroyed, I wonder about all the wildlife. How many birds and other animals have been lost  as hotspots continue to burn throughout the southwestern states, six fires in Utah, many in Arizona as well as here in New Mexico? The devastation is surreal, global warming sure feels real, each day this week, temperatures are in the triple digits. 

Today is the last day the park systems will be open to the public here, a cautionary step probably for the rest of the summer of 2012. This very area, where I watch Kestrels, burned on both sides of the Rio Grande river in 2003. Amidst the loss around us, all the uncertainty in the world, I am so thankful the Kestrels, by any name, grace me with their aerial display.

To hear Mary Oliver reading:

and with Coleman Barks:

The Path to Creativity IV: Learning by Heart

Great secrets still lie hidden, much I know and of much I have an intimation.-Goethe

At a neighbors yard sale I purchased a pair of binoculars for four dollars. The next morning I brought them to one of my favorite places along the Rio Grande River-bird watching!  On the way I stopped to use my new seeing device to spy on a tiny bird high up in the branches of a leaf-barren tree.  At first I thought this small silhouette might be a hummingbird, but once my vision was enlarged, I could discern it was a rounder bird with what looked to be a long narrow beak and a yellowish-green spot on its back.  A little marvel, I recorded this feathered form as best I could in my visual memory-bank and continued on the bike path to the rivers edge.  Once inside the canopy of a thinly wooded area I came to a second stop and looked up just in time to see a large raptor, maybe a hawk or an owl, too quick a glimpse to be sure. But as my magnifying lenses came into focus, I was startled as my eyes met with the bird's wide set eyes and the space between us condensed.   Some kind of ancient wisdom there, no way to comprehend or describe that moment of contact with divinity; a lesson on wings.

As this bird of prey took off from its perch, to my delight, a vivid scarlet-red bird took its place on a nearby branch. I did not know its name either, it's color said everything radiant, every name resplendent. It took my heart like a poem by Mary Oliver or the Sufi Master, Hafiz:

"What excitement will renew your body

When we all begin to see that

His heart resides in Everything?"

Take time to entrain your heart to the pace of nature is the tender advice of author Stephen Harrod Buhner. "When you go into Nature, you let the field of your heart lead, moving to those things that for some reason attract you.  You may feel one day the need to walk in mountains, or when walking in a forest be drawn to a particular stand of trees.  To notice these things you must, as Thoreau commented, let yourself ' see with the unworn sides of your eye.'  It is in peripheral vision that these things are seen, in peripheral thoughts that their signals come.  Pointed vision is the domain of the linear mind."

Did these birds show themselves to me because they caught my peripheral thoughts in the breeze that day?  What do we mean when we say, "to learn by heart"? That is different than to commit something to memory in our minds, isn't it? Can we be brought to our knees in a fleeting moment? Can I hold this, learn this, entrain this heart to a scarlet- feathered friend? What wonders of the natural world we miss when we sit in cars on freeways?

A few days later on another trip into binocular vision, I was drawn to a bleached-bone colored shape on the other side of the river.  Again, I was startled to meet with the eyes of a being as this light figure shape-shifted into a coyote. Sitting with complete composure, at one with Nature, he/she gazed back at me, as I peered at it through the thickness of the glasses.  My mind recollected my dear departed dog, the one who looked a little like a coyote. Just then, out of the thicket of trees and dark brush behind the coyote moved into view, a small pup, all soft fur and ivory-white. This dear young one came up  to its mother or father, checking in, circling around as I watched transfixed. Then, all too briefly, though what a gift, they disappeared into the woods.

My friend Karen told me the bird I saw with the long narrow beak might be a yellow-rumped warbler, and the red one, a summer tanager. I do love their names, though I love the experiences themselves more.  The binoculars have brought me closer to Nature, oh yes, entraining my eyes to learn by way of the heart to be in that place of unlanguaged wonder.

The Beehive in a Tree

Last night, as I was sleeping,

I dreamt-marvelous error!-

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

-Antonio Machado

About a year ago my friend Si took me on a walk in my neighborhood to see a beehive in a tree.  He led us to a spot under the tree and then told me to look up. It was one of those jaw dropping moments; like a bee sting. It was a stunning thing to witness this magnificent organic sculpture hanging way up high in an old blackened craggy elm. Strange and mysterious.

He told me that on rare occasions a honeybee colony will build comb in the open air if they do not find a more suitable place-like the hollow of a tree- quick enough after they swarm.  When that happens they will not last the winter, (that was a hard thing to hear) this temporary home would not sustain the hive and they would die.  All through the summer and into the fall I would make frequent visits and look up from my place on the ground to this curious form above.  Once it got really cold, I could no longer discern any bee-bodies moving in and out of the hive. In the spring I visited it again and again but there was not any evidence of life moving around the honeycomb. I  became intent on getting it down.  But the question was: how?

Enter Shelia, tree pruner, bee keeper and flying arborist. Something of a Peterpan with a purpose, she flew up this tree and scaled it with seeming ease.  I’ve never seen anything quite comparable, a performance both high-wire circus act and rock climbing ballet in a tree.  By the time she rose up into the branches, I realized too late, I should have brought a video camera. But sometimes it is better not to try and capture the moment but let our memory serve us and hold the event.  She simply took my breath away.  Once she was close enough to cut through the branch the hive hung from, (oh how great my anticipation) the coveted treasure was at hand.  As it was lowered down into my open arms, I felt a palpable excitement to receive this golden home, great gift from the worker bees.

It is without a doubt, a work of art; a captivating object of utter beauty. Eight combs are attached to the limb, each one carefully constructed of translucent wax. The hive is almost completely cleaned out, except for a very few delicate little bee wings peeking out of cells in the interior, no bees remain. No honey, or capped cells evidenced on any part of the eight hanging combs.  It is immaculate except for a noticeable dark brown dusting across each of these rather tongue-shaped forms, clearly used, a few random leaves stuck in places where the combs fused with the tree.  It is a thing of exquisite perfection.  Each and every hexagon shaped cell boggles the mind, delights the eye and leaves substantial yet incomprehensible proof of the wonder of our animate universe.

Of course we will never know what happened to the colony of bees, whether they endured the winter by abandoning their wax nest to build another home in a more protected location.  But I like to think they did; I like to think they found a more sustainable place nearby and that maybe they are the very bees sucking nectar from the flowers in our garden this spring and making sweet honey to survive another year.

For more Antonio Machado

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship.  But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.  Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves.  No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.  ~John Muir

Growing Your Roots

What Path Shall I Follow in Life? 

This question forms the basis of one of the primary chapters in Caroline Myss’s book, Invisible Acts of Power. 

We shall consider this question in terms of your own creative expression.   Myss says, “...each of us is meant to treat our life as a journey, and at each step on that journey, we are meant to notice what is around us and act on opportunities that present themselves.”  I believe the personal creative process is much the same.  We are meant to form a creative path by following our intuition and letting it guide us as we make artistic decisions in a painting or a poem.  As Myss states, “[i]f we ignore everything around us, if we cover over our senses with a cloud of indifference, we’ll miss the coincidences and synchronicities that signal where we are to go and what we are to do [next].” 

Growing your roots is the first step in the process, Myss connects this act  to our first chakra and we might consider before starting to paint or write, doing just that. Try imagining rooting down in to the earth, sending energetic cords into the terra-firma like the axis mundi. 

As defined in Wikipedia: The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, columna cerului, center of the world), in religion or mythology, is the world center and/ or the connection between Heaven and Earth. It expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The image is both feminine (an umbilical providing nourishment) and masculine (a phallus) .

So the first step in developing intuition for your creative process might be making this connection clear in your consciousness. Much like the developing fetus is connected by an umbilical cord to its mother to grow and be nourished during gestation, we as artists need to be continually fed.

The Nature of Insight

It is interesting to note that Isaac Newton made his greatest  breakthrough when he was forced to spend a year in virtual isolation, at his mother’s house.  I wonder if there is a connection to being in his mother’s home, able to be nourished and safe, that led to the right set of circumstances for him to intuit the information that formed the basis of his famous work, Principia- said to be the most important book published in modern European history?  Is it possible that the umbilical cord of Newtons’ connection to his birth mother was such that it continued to nourish him, ground him, and therefore help to bring insight to his work as an adult? The nature of insight may come in various forms, through dreams or through an inner knowing, you may hear the solution to a problem or see something that sparks an idea, you may simply understand a solution to a question through a hunch.  We are continually living in the realm of mystery. To encourage our creative expression requires the belief that the path we are on will lead us to the right insights for completion. Our perfect palette for poetry or painting is always available to be intuited no matter our ability to comprehend all that is.

Staying Grounded

To go into the ”wilderness of your intuition” as Alan Alda says, requires stepping out of the known into the unknown place. How to stay grounded when we are in the unfamiliar may seem like a puzzle.  In fact it may seem like the opposite of all that is required to be open to our intuition. Myss makes clear, that developing our self-esteem is the primary way that one’s intuitive instincts thrive. Because following ones intuition requires that a choice is made and a fork in the road is taken.

The moment that you choose for consciousness, the closer you are to the path of your own satiated creative expression. Think about all your favorite artists and note how their confidence as an image maker shines through their work. As much as we know about Van Gogh’s suffering in the world, we can see in his oeuvre an absolute groundedness, a surety in every brushstroke of his magnificent paintings.

a video we love: www. johnframesculpture.com/the-tale

an interview with John Frame: www.vimeo.com/24706483

 www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/living-bridges-in-india-have-grown-for-500-years-pics.html