Diving Deeper

An Ozark year in poems

 

To ring in the new year, I'd like to share with you this gift of poems.  You can listen to them or download them by clicking the links below.  May your year begin and end in celebrating nature.

Thank you so much for visiting my weblog.  Please continue to browse and enjoy!

Listen - to Sulis (Sara Firman) reading a calendar of poems written about life in the Ozarks and compiled to celebrate the New Year.

Download 'A Year in the Ozarks' - a calendar of poems and photographs.

Please enjoy these gifts for your personal use only.

This work by Sara Firman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Saturn's gifts

The transition between years, is the zodiac time of Capricorn.  The Goat Man is an earthy character linked in mythology with Pan and Nature.  Associated with Father Time Saturn and Janus the two-faced Roman god, this is a suitable time for looking back and forward.

I've been on retreat over the holidays, alone in my forest, except for some delightful animal companions.  Interestingly enough, tough old Saturn is also associated with Father Christmas, and in this guise he has been showing me the gifts of endings and new beginnings.

Josephine Wall's beautiful image above of a flower-decked girl with flowing water hair riding a mythic creature - half goat, half fish - under a rainbow and across a verdant land towards the rising sun, provides me with a clue to transforming my Saturnine ambivalence.

'Capricorn’s form ... derives from ancient Babylonian mythology, in which Ea, the Sea-Goat and Lord of Wisdom, emerges from his home in the sea to bring civilization and knowledge to mankind', says Josephine on the website showing her mystical art.

Today, it is two years since an official divorce decree ended an important period in my life.  But that ending was only the beginning of a long period of turning in to discover what in me might have unwittingly chosen this particular challenge, possibly the most painful in my life so far. 

I've been fortunate to have had much help in this process.  I have come to see that we have very individual ways of unconsciously drawing to ourselves what we uniquely need to grow - both sorrow and joy.  The more consciousness we can bring to the lessons that come from that, the more effective is the learning.  Or so I hope.

Much of my help has come through exploring psychological astrology, guided by my partner and teacher Joe Landwehr.  His astropoetic approach challenges his students to develop a very personal relationship to the archetypes expressed through astrology's magnificently comprehensive structure.

Every year over the Christmas holidays, the transiting Sun conjuncts (coincides with) my natal Saturn. which is located in my fifth house - I'll call it the 'house of following my bliss' (theoretically, that is).  Perhaps this explains in part why this period is not a cheerful time for me.  Instead, it's one in which all the Saturnine limitations I have creatively set for myself come to light.  Usually, I want to be alone.

Once I worked over the holidays (as manager of a hotel spa), which I enjoyed in the way responsible Saturn does.  This is the first time I've been able to give myself permission to be alone (responsible only for a reflective bevy of cats and dogs), and not try to please my baffled loved ones by reluctantly sharing in the festivities.

So, unsurprisingly, I found myself pulling Liz Greene's book Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil off Joe's bookshelf in the winter-bound cabin.   What she has to say about the relationship (in aspect) between the planets Pluto and Saturn, which have defining significance in my natal chart, seems very relevant to my topic here. 

Whether or not you have any background in astrology, the associations below may still speak to you.  I find it helpful to translate my own insights (astrological and otherwise) into poetry or story and shall probably do this for the Saturn-Pluto dynamic that has now revealed itself for integration in my psyche. 

Pluto and Saturn can be hard task-masters.  They are both wise old men, whose darker faces can look like the Devil.  They lead us into the darkness, the winters of our discontent, the underworld.  Perhaps, if I were to really befriend them, they'd turn into Father Christmas riding through the night and down the chimney.  Or a mythical steed like the one in Josephine's image.

Liz Greene says (I paraphrase):

Pluto can relate to the experience of growth through the destructive side of emotion, often involving enforced separation or loss.  When this Plutonic inner death is combined with a Saturnine inclination to identification with form and subsequent disillusionment, there is an opportunity for greater self-knowledge and consequent freedom.

Something in the individual drives her to (or brings) experiences that tear away everything she desires and force her into self-examination until she is able to stand outside the world of emotional attachment.  The magical or fated quality of collective experiences may also be apparent in the circumstances.

All this, helps me take a leap beyond blaming myself (or anyone else) for the painful experience I have been through with the loss of my marriage and all that I had invested in that.  Such were the structures I gave my creativity to, and then became utterly identified with.  I can at last accept the hard lessons, and be truly grateful for the deepening of self-understanding they brought and still bring.

Earlier this month, transiting Pluto was conjunct my natal Saturn, an effect which seemed to force my resistance to change to the surface in a most uncomfortable but effective way.  Perhaps, the difference was that this time I was able to see the internal struggle and not place it outside of myself.  What self-imposed Saturnine structures and attachments will I keep, what will I let burn in Pluto's fire?

I don't think it matters if you use astrology, art, or any other tool to make shifts like this.  But seeking a way through the quagmire of emotional turmoil surrounding change that does not try to avoid it by rising above (spiritual bypassing), walking around (denial), or throwing out (projecting blame) is worth the struggle.

The poems below were all written two years ago, except for the first which reflects some of the fated quality I found in my past marriage.  In them you may see both Pluto (loss) and Saturn (attachment).  Several other angry and cathartic poems explored this even more strongly.  Expressing these feelings helped.

If you too are facing emotional pain, I can recommend writing it out again and again, over whatever time it takes, allowing change to happen, until eventually the healing will come.  I have  learned from experience that, if you do this, you must also be willing to give others (including those involved in your pain) your acceptance in doing the same.  Any artform - painting or dance - would do.

After death comes rebirth; after chaos comes freedom; after pain comes love; and so it goes round.  It is clear to me that I loved my ex-husband and that we could only travel so far together.  I hope that we brought many more gifts than that of pain to each other's lives.  (A short while after posting this, I was able to arrive at a place of gratitude reflected in the very last poem.)

Red elements

Pysche and eros
the two worlds
of logic and seduction
- miracle mixes

Sitting on a night
not light enough
the gusting wind catches us
- castoffs

Red elements
touch
across the lake
- connection

What will it take?
imagination
and intuition
- perfect

Mirage

You
the mirage
of horizons
I get closer
you fade
Shimmered water
it blinds me
I fell out
of daylight
and hope to
stop falling

Belonging

the train slides
beside water
brown as stale coffee
flecked
with sour foam
backyard to Georgian grandeur
grim
rubble of modern living
sun breaking
through grey curtains
scribbled
with winter trees
landscape
the color of newsprint
gouged
by yellow-clawed monsters
it will give way
to flattened green
sea lapping
a crowded island
collapsing in on twisted wings
no more
smothered nightmares
only a dream
of a river flowing
clear
as light over shiny cobbles
and a steep rise
of trees and rock
thousands of miles
from belonging

Broken promise

All night in glass and white
the stem of my heart
broke like our wedding.

And flat champagne
seeped from the corners
of my unblinking eyes.

Your cruelty like a knife
cut through crumbled cake
- was there nothing of substance?

The precipice

It sickened me to think
of you

living in a house of pain
and me

carrying that pain in my heart
and she

living dangerously in all that.

I would hate her if I did not

already know
how she led the way over

the precipice.

When my heart aches

I will press a handful of soil to it
and remember

I thanked you (6 Jan. 2010)

Watching small birds enjoying
the suet feeders in the snow
reminds me of you.

Suspended from trees with pulleys -
out of reach but accessible.

The many fires I've made
in the past two years
remind me of you.

Kindling in buckets, split logs in a canvas bag,
coaxing the warmth out of wood.

The hot tub smoking and steaming
on a starry night in the forest
reminds me of you. 

Mixing fire and water in a way that offers
good healing, yang and yin.

I've learned that I am alert and artistic
but didn't claim these skills
when you were there.

Beginning at last to remind myself of
what I loved - not what hurt so deeply - I thanked you.

               

Remembering Mau Blossom

Often the best of gifts is friendship.  Today, I'm remembering with love, Mau Blossom (July 9, 1935 to December 25, 2007).  I feel very blessed to have known her as both my friend and counselor, and what I learned through that continues to influence and support me.  Here is a poem I wrote (18 Jan. 2008) for her memorial gathering not long after she showed us all how to die a good death.  Her memorial notice began 'I will not live an unlived life'.  She didn't.

Our elder Mau by Sulis

'I must tell you that mine
is not the conventional view',
said the woman who teased
rules apart like old wool
knitting a  brighter jacket
from the multicolored yarn.

I miss her wise crone voice
on the phone, 'Hello dear,'
patiently listening to my
repeating detention lines
waiting for me to find my
own path through the woods.

She'd been everywhere,
galloped across her life
the wild woman I wanted
to be and she knew it
wasn't easy for anyone
to ride that wind alone.

Not afraid of dark or light,
for her, spoken words were
curtains drawn to reveal or
conceal the truth treasures
of hearts she intended to
make fearless as her own.

Seeing the fire in me had
gone out, she blew softly
on the dampened embers
but no flame rose though
all around me the forest
burned with hidden pain.

So she took me to the last
outpost, pointed the way
trusting that I would walk
those implausible tracks
armed with her teaching
that was silent and true.

Cougar mother she paced
the fine line of true courage
set up the wild drum beat
and kept faith to its rhythm
calling her kittens to play
across wide-ranging lands.

Midwife to life and death
she birthed her own spirit
with each new encounter
beating a trail to the last
glade where we gathered
around her in absolute awe.

The last sacrifice was hers
through strength and pain
and she fought for us all
to keep the fires burning
to keep the waters flowing
to keep love in our hearts.

I love you Mau, Sara

Water dreams

Soul speaks through our unconscious and through our dreams.  Dreams of water may be particularly potent.

Last summer at an astrology conference I had the pleasure of meeting one of my partner Joe Landwehr's friends, author and professor of Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Greg Bogart.  We attended a workshop he presented there on dreamwork and astrology which was refreshingly interactive and open-ended, as dreams themselves are.

This year Greg published a book called Dreamwork and Self-Healing: Unfolding the Symbols of the Unconscious (Greg Bogart, Karnac Books). I am currently enjoying the insights it adds to my own attempts to dive deeper into dream life.  I find it interesting that, until I began aquatic bodywork, dreams were rarely accessible to me.  Since then, my remembered dreams have brought strong messages.

The Desert House: a story

      
'That tamarisk', the realtor said, pointing at the feathery green-grey tree generously shading the north side of the house, 'is probably home to a king snake'.  A harmless snake, I knew it would slither out to scout for less-friendly members of its species each evening.  A  king snake was a good omen.  Also called 'salt cedar' that tree would drop a mess of needles and kill any plant under it, the woman derisively informed me.  'Take it out straightaway'.  I knew to be wary of her.

Just as the guardian king snake hides in the debris around the tree, there are layers to sift through before truth and purpose are revealed.  The friend who lived nearby in the high-class gated community where he re-posed for a while to make millions had been victim to that.  As summer came harshly in, he had dug up the trees on his newly acquired plot and shifted them to spots more preferable to him - slowly and shamefully they died.  Then squirrels arrived and dug up his ground cover, as if in subtle vengeance. 

In the picturesque seaside town on the southern Californian coast where I had been living, awkward yuppies strolled restlessly up and down in front of the chic restaurants and boutiques and homes they owned only at weekends.  Pacific Coast Highway lived up to its grand name - cutting beach-goers off from the sand, giving sightseers fast passage.  Local newspapers wrote sad articles about the planned suicides of dispirited bohemians who had hung on, and brash mansions encroaching on unruly cottages. 

The little oasis my new husband had rented for decades had been sold to developers; and we were out.  A  cheery contractor told us the owners intended to rip out its heart, chop down the trees, and add the expected generic features.  Our visitors had always commented with delight on the zany cracked tiling, the brilliant stained glass set into wonky windows, the friendly plants creeping through the vent panels, the bejeweled spider's webs.  They didn’t notice the absence of a dishwasher; but the new arrivals would.

So we were taking a look at a place the agent called 'way out there'; Cost-co and nouvelle cuisine were a half-hour away.  You reached the ranchito either by rounding the mountains at the base of which date palm oases drank up the water that crept through an active fault line; or by the long waves of a road that crossed Sky Valley, as broad as its name.  On the corner of Happy Valley Drive, a low-slung brick house with a wide wooden porch nestled behind brave desert plants. 

The place seemed to offer an oasis for any desertion of the soul.  This desert defied its outward appearance with its underground supply of water; just as even the saddest or baddest of us have deep-running souls waiting to be drawn upwards.  In the front yard was a huge rock pool fed by natural hot water from an artesian well drilled almost 500 feet into the floor of an ancient ocean.  I had the odd experience, standing in the spacious hallway at the center of that desert house, of ley-lines converging.



How easy to imagine peaceful nights closing in over the ring of mountains, candles around the pool, hours of whispered thoughts for bright stars that died long ago.  Human stars, I learned, had stayed there to escape from false adulation.  But the owner was a spiky cactus holding prospective buyers off.  A film set-designer, his breakfast bowls were patiently placed, and never filled in the weeks we went back to view; a paintbox and paper with bright splodges were laid out pretentiously on an artist's desk.  

Back in the coastal city, a well-meaning society lady invited me to join her women's book club at the latest grand hotel.  We gathered in a room of mirrors to stretch in lackadaisical yoga under the sweet approval of a young woman and then rocked along with a black African-American dancer.   I realized that my spirit would dry up in such a place.  The desert needed no mirrors in order to show me myself.   The expansively empty talk that lifted me up and dropped me down like a gullible girl might fade there.

To see life in the desert you must look long and diligently - the tracks of snakes, the camouflages. In the rundown office of the buyer's agent, I went through the form for house-buying.  Sheryl was voluble with local blah.  Changing her tune to match our hopes, she was sure we’d be a great success, sure the waters were wonderful, sure of everything and proof of nothing.  Too many mistakes on those forms for me  - my partner thought she’d called me, admiringly, 'Miss Eagle Eye'; I heard 'Miss Pickie'. 

Sheryl and Joan, the seller's agent, were dealing with a touchy owner.  They were nice only up to a point, the point with the money.  Money was behind all those expansively empty words I heard.  When it didn’t come tumbling out of the glittering pinball machine at the pull of the lever, they were off to the next station.  I didn't want to be mistaken for a pinball machine.  The local native American Indians were gambling on it, drawing the crowds to their gaudy casinos along the highway to the desert. 

The house was not for us, though I still think of it.  Of how certain places stand on geological power points that I can feel, and others may not.

(Adapted from an essay by Sulis/ Sara Firman, written November 2001.)  

For more on snake medicine see Snakes (two poems by Sulis).

Celebrating my Centaur

Today my partner Joe Landwehr turns 60 and I am blessed to be celebrating that with him.  Here are just a few of the poems his presence in my life has inspired.  I should add that Joe is a brilliant poet and that one day we hope to create an anthology together.  Scroll down to see more about him on his own websites.  Happy Birthday.  Love you Joe!

(The image above was created by Joe's friend Michael McClure for Joe's first online astrology correpondence course - Eye of the Centaur - it has since evolved into Astropoetics.)

Diamond

I celebrate the
diamond you are
the sun heart
light on my shadow
a moment to live
magnificently
through sad music
and death talk
your love sings
of star change
rocking me to sleep

Esoteric romance

Tangled up
birds of a feather
you begin an
enduring love affair
inspired and conspired
your expectations
an avalanche of innovation

Fire fish

A year to play
the wild tapestry
and feel change glow
in a virtual landscape
of star blossoms
cascading like fire fish
over chocolate toast
all day.

I thank you, Joe

I thank you ...
for holding a wide open space for me
and letting the words tumble into that
making a chain across so many miles.

I thank you ...
for calling me in with pure longing
not wrapped or bound or disguised
so that I could feel its fearlessness.

I thank you ...
for letting me unfurl in this soft place
trusting my capabilities so that I can
range across landscapes unexplored.

I thank you ...
for welcoming me to your dream life
and expecting something wonderful
to rise out of those wildest of waters.

I thank you ...
for sharing your home and your body
such that I could nurture love again
fresh and light and simply beautiful.

I thank you ...
for all that is yet to come in sharing
and all that cannot be I release gently
into the great unknown of our futures.

Joe's websites

Ancient Tower Press publishes books that help you find the keys to unlock your own ancient tower, so that you can approach the Sacred Mystery of your Being with intuitive grace, creativity and vision. Joe Landwehr, author and publisher.

The Astropoetic School of Soul-Discovery, directed by Joe Landwehr, is oriented toward individuals – from any walk of life – who wish to employ astrology as an intimately personal language of self-discovery with which to more consciously approach their own soul’s journey.

White Eagle frees the waters

 

I met Chief White Eagle in December 2003 while visiting Hot Springs, Arkansas, apparently to buy some furniture for a small spa retreat I owned at that time in  Missouri. I had been in the Ozark bioregion that spans both states for eighteen months at that time. The ancient landscape enchanted me; yet the violence of the pioneering days and the Civil War was evident everywhere.  A crystal clear tributary of the North Fork of the White River, Spring Creek, ran through the land I settled on and continued on down into Arkansas.  The region boasts one of the largest concentrations of springs in the world.  There are no hot springs in Missouri but there is one in Arkansas, a sacred site to indigenous peoples.

'In a place like no other on earth was a Valley of the Rainbows.  The healing waters, crystal stones, abundance of food and herbal medicines were available to all that needed them.  The elders foretold of a time when these springs would be controlled so they could not flow, their vapors could no longer be seen.  War, greed and power would replace peace.  A white eagle would be sent to build a nest at the foot of the mountain giving birth to a new time when the waters would flow freely.' 

This legend about Hot Springs  was being brought to life by Chief White Eagle of the Neches Cherokee Nation.  He had made it his mission to establish a welcoming center for all peoples who sought peace and harmony there.  After its heyday as a spa resort in the late 1800s, the historic town faded; its waters were captured below its streets and its springs were capped.  The water resources became the property of the Federal Government, their use constricted by the usual bureaucracy.  Although you could drink the waters from special fountains around the town and bathe in them in some of the grander hotels or at a rather rundown health spa (a new one has been established since), their healing power was no longer free flowing. 

The Chief's mission was to develop his Cherokee Longhouse as a place where all people, thoughts, ideas, and cultures could come together. No matter what our beliefs and where we come from, he said, we are all on this earth to love and respect each other and our natural resources.   His center was in a prime location across from the Convention Center, one block from main street.  This had led to some friction with city developers who'd rather see a Starbucks on the site. The center aimed to offer native ceremonies and healing practices, along with classes and demonstrations in silver smithing, flintknapping, and use of herbs.

The Longhouse building was in process of renovation and it looked like they had run out of funds. The dusty window display had attracted me but it was closed on a previous visit.  This time, the wizened old cowboy looking after the shop did his best to make us feel welcome and we hung around until the Chief appeared. Despite obvious tiredness and many hidden problems, he invited us to share a friendship pipe with him and to receive a special crystal healing.  He said they had encountered some difficulties regards support from the community.  Then he showed me a small grotto of natural rock and crystal in the basement of the tribal center where he was beginning to dig through to the river under main street, to free the waters. 

I didn't like to ask him what he would do if and when the waters rushed through.  Progress seemed slow and the goal unlikely but I appreciated his passionate mission.  While standing in the spiraling stairway that led down into the ground, I experienced a moment of deja vu with Chief White Eagle.  My ancestors for sure came from Scotland he said and I agreed, though I do not know this to be so.   White Eagle said he wanted to bestow me with the name Kelly Rose.  If he was a snake-oil salesman, he was a likable one.  We contributed to his rent due that day and enjoyed a hot tub soak in eucalyptus by way of return.  I regret that I've not yet gone back to see how he got on.

Soon after, while researching this encounter, I came across the history of Chief Bowles and began to follow some intriguing connections.  My English mother's maiden name is Bowles.  The Cherokee Chief was born in North Carolina in the year 1756, the son of a Scotch-Irish trader by the name of Bowles and a Cherokee mother. He was described as a magnificent man with English features; light eyes, red hair, and somewhat freckled. The Bowl was thirty-two, when he became Chief of the town Running Water in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He and his people later moved to the valley of St Francis in southeast Missouri. In 1811 there was a violent earthquake which they took as a sign that Great Spirit was warning them to move to Arkansas.

Around 1820, Chief Bowles moved to Texas.  The twelve associated native tribes there had been promised a million acres by then Texas President Sam Houston. Succeeding President Lamar wished to reclaim this land and a battle ensued between the Texas Cavalry and Cherokees. On July 16 1839 Chief Bowles signaled retreat. Wounded in the leg, he started to walk from the battle field, but was shot in the back. The old chief sat facing the company of militia and the captain placed a pistol to his head and killed him. The Chief's body was left where it lay, unburied.  Chief Sequoyah led the survivors to San Fernando, Mexico where they remained for a century.

In 1967, hurricane Beulah changed the the course of the Rio Grande river, creating a 200 acre island in the middle of the river. The United States said the land belonged to Mexico and the Mexican government sold it to Chief Little Bird on Shoulder, a direct descendant of Chief Bowles.  Little Bird on Shoulder established the Cherokee Nation-Neches Tribal Headquarters there on Los Indios island. Chief White Eagle was designated to open tribal centers in the United States beginning in Hot Springs, Arkansas.   For seven years before I met him, the Chief had been attempting to establish  that building in downtown Hot Springs National Park to be used as a cultural and trade center.

My own journeys through Texas, Missouri (where I had chosen to settle), and Arkansas (which had magic for me), began to take on a strange significance.  I wondered if the lingering connection I had had with Scotland since I was a student at Edinburgh and the strange rootlessness I felt until I arrived in Spring Creek valley deep in the Ozarks, were expressive of my ancestral legacy.  Perhaps my ex-husband's Choctaw heritage (this tribe was among the associated twelve in Texas) was linked into this too; and we were playing out those histories of peace and war.  A few years later, I dreamt about the death of a red-bearded man who has associations for me with Chief Bowles.

'Chief White Eagle said that Hot Springs is one of the most sacred places on earth. Indigenous people referred to it as 'The Valley of the Vapors.' There are 52 hot springs with 52 different temperatures with 52 different algae creating 52 colors of the water which correspond to the 52 systems in the body. Each spring heals a different system. He said before the white man that Native people came from as far away as the Mayans all the way to Alaska to bath in the springs. There was one agreement among all the tribes:  no weapons, tribal animosity or bad vibes allowed in the Valley of the Vapors...' [from the travel diary of a peace group from Jamaica that happened upon the Longhouse the same year that I did].

I do not know where this story will take me next, since like the tribes I feel I have lost my roots once more. I do feel that I have been called to the watery but hidden place that is the Ozarks to explore the magic and mystery of water as healer and creative force, and to do what I can to inspire recognition of its value.  The Ozark bioregion formed 3 billion years ago when much of the land was covered by water - it has an old wisdom about it.  Said Chief White Eagle: 'We are all gifts and we have been gifted to each other. It is not so much what we are called, but that we answer our call.'  Winter is the time of the White Eagles on the rivers here and I am looking for them.

For another Arkansas story by Sara, see Beauty and Harmony on Vision Spa Retreat