Diving Deeper

Mnemosyne's Pool of Reflection

 One symbol, perhaps above all others, holds a crucial significance for everyone in search of wholeness: the well.  From the terrestrial world it leads down into darkness, to the treasure of pure feminine consciousness - we are each blessed with our own well. 

From Sitting by the Well (recordings of Jungian analyst Marion Woodman)

 

After listening to the first disc in this wonderful collection, which offers a guided meditation to visit one's own well, I was reminded of a story I wrote long ago.  Below is an extract in which my own imagined well of remembrance is described.  It's part of a creative memoir inspired by my love of water.  More extracts to come.

*****

'The Long Delirious Burning Blue' by Sharon Blackie. Book Review.

 'You can't put the past behind you

til you've stood up to it and faced it down'.

I met the author of this book some years ago now when she came to visit the small spa-retreat I once ran in the Missouri Ozarks.  She found us by some marvel of serendipity and she and I have remained friends ever since.  Not long after, Sharon returned to Scotland and found her own haven. 

Her first novel, The Long Delirious Burning Blue, was published in 2008 by Two Ravens Press - a successful  independent publisher of contemporary British and international literature - established by Sharon and her husband David in 2006.  It is based on a working croft in the Outer Hebrides.

It took me a while to read this brilliant book, somehow sensing that  I needed to face down my own past first, or at least begin.  I think there are many soulful selkie sisters to whom this burning blue book might speak strongly.  Reading it in spring when Persephone comes back from her underworld sojourn has been perfect timing for me.

At the end you'll find links to Two Ravens website and more information about the book and its author.  Highly recommended.

The language of water

if I am a fish

why this climbing of mountains?

let me dive deeper

S.F.

 

'Water consciousness for personal and planetary wellbeing' is the tagline for my weblog on spa culture - Vision Spa Retreat: Reflections on Spa, Soul, and the Role of Water.  In all my writings there, water plays a central role.  Here is a quote from the opening page:

Water as an indicator of health and also a tool for health, is central to the spa-retreat offering. Water, as a metaphor, provides many insights into human behavior and human potential, as the Taoists knew well. Water and humans need to be free and to have depth and clarity to thrive. SF.  A new vision

And this:

Let's extend our perception of water as a utility for drinking and washing to water as a vital medium for life, transformation, creativity, and healing.  Not only can it enhance our sense of wellbeing, it can also expand our inner and outer awareness, and inspire life-affirming action. SF.  A message about water

'Water connects us with the world around us and with our aquatic origins.'  This insight is one of many that informs my writing on another weblog devoted to Aquapoetics: Creative Aquatic Bodywork describing the practice that transformed my perception and appreciation of water:

Water is also associated with the creative unconscious, the depths of human psyche, in many mythologies.... Together we float beyond conscious everyday reality and back again: between these two places is the spirit pool, a portal to dreamtime. SF.  Water blessing

And this:

My practice focuses on guiding the body into a state of resonance with the surrounding water which in turn seems to harmonize the internal fluid system.   In this state, there is a sense of recognition and reconnection that indicates to me just how important and how little understood is our relationship with water. SF. Liquid in motion

I invite you to explore both the above websites.  Meanwhile, on this third site, I dive deeper into my personal stories around water and life.  I've collected here some of the posts to date that related specifically to water - both poetry and other writings. Short extracts are provided; click on the links for more.   

Let me know your response or share your own thoughts on water.

The interspersed photos were taken by me at Missouri Botanical Garden in 2009 on my 50th birthday.

 

A cat flirt (Valentine)

For me, love is defined by cats.  It's an imprint received - before I could talk - from two Siamese and a black.  The first phrases I uttered were long shrieks while running my hands up a cat's tail, which apparently they didn't mind.  Many cats have put up gracefully with my adoration since then.

Continuing a recent theme on this blog, I've collected together some of my writings about these wild-at-heart felines.  I won a prize at school for a story about cats, and not long ago a real writer I admire deeply wrote me 'cats are your natural great subject'.   Blushes aside, as it is Valentines Day, I'm going to indulge myself thoroughly.  

PS The title of this blog post can be found in the poem 'Sudden delight'.  The photographs included here are another kind of poetic expression celebrating my beloved current cat companion Marigold Gemini Moon aka Logwalker.  (Images and poetry copyright Sara Firman.)

Cats have always been able to get through to me

(extract from an unpublished autobiographical memoir):

Just before I drifted into a slump of self-chastisement, however, a cat walked in, announcing its arrival with an upbeat meow.  It paused for a moment surveying the room and me, holding my eye with its golden gaze.  Cats have always been able to get through to me, to restore my affectionate nature and joie de vivre.  Sadly, I had not been reliable enough lately to be adopted by a cat.  I got the distinct feeling that this one had come to show me the lie of the land.  Sandy brown and muscular with an expressive tail that he held high as he walked, my companion was both dignified and matter-of-fact in his demeanor.  Pulling on some light clothing, while the cat wandered about inspecting the room for changes, I was ready to step outside.

We went through the breezeway and out of a door at the opposite end to where I had entered the night before.  Pushing the swing door, I wondered briefly how the cat had come in, but that cat, I soon found out,  could do things it was not helpful to question.  Sweeping around to the left from where I stood on the verandah was a distant mountain range and  I saw snow on one of those peaks.  The verandah encircled the house apparently and its roof of tin, festooned with passionfruit vine, had a long curve to it that held off the strong sun.  Steps led down to a sandy fringe where the cat now stood looking quizzically up at me.   As I came down the stairs, he trotted off along a sandy path to the right through a grove of feather-leaved, sweet-scented acacia trees.  The path was lined with rocks so full of color and fossil-like markings that I was momentarily distracted, but the cat called me on. ... 



Two haiku

reckless winter
spilt milk on the rocky bluffs:
who will lap it up?

                            three cats cross a log
                            striped shadows and black patches
                            wood, water and rock

Sudden delight

Sudden delight:
As when a black shadow
right-angles my oblivious path
blurts into that steadfast daze
and becomes a cat flirt
for no obvious reason.

Sudden delight:
As when a cutglass remark
shifts perspective and gasps
with a thousand rainbows
over a thing not lost
on a shared experience.

Sudden delight:
As when a green glistening
turns into a forest beetle
ornamented purple and bronze
whose life has ended
but remains as a jewel.

 

More cat flirts ...

The remaining offerings can be found in full on previous blog posts by following the 'Read more' links.


 Viriditas

That gleam on green
whose swift pause
is a glimpsed mood
half-hidden at the edge
of a foliated dream
sending its soft mewl
a rippled renaissance
through furred leaf
whiskered and burred
is the verdant one
sleek feral queen
masked in oak

Read more


The bobcat and the peony

An imprint flashed
its thoughts of light
between leaves of trees
and there
she was.

Read more


A labyrinth of promises kept

Carrying our Prayers into night air
The moon comes over the dark hill
Fireflies light our way to the Circle
A shaft of Moonlight falls across it
Ah! Coming to rest on the Spirit Cat

Read more

 

Fire pinks

Ma ... ur ... ma ... ur ... ur
my call echoes
sad
desperation
along
the high trail

She's out here
hunting
instinct

Read more

Esther is hiding

In the cornered shadow
at the deep end of a shelf
the shocked white china
teapot blinks.

Read more

An escape (short story)

In the confusion, I slip my cat past the sign that says 'No Animals'.  She sleeps, as always, wrapped around my neck, then tries out Bill's bed for a while.  Some time in the long night I say 'The thing is, Bill ...', trying to process my anguish.  'The worse that can happen ...,' he replies, 'just try to sleep'.  And I go back to my impossible sleep.  After breakfast, Treasure picks up on my fear and hides under the bed.  There's a sign there that says, 'Yes, we do clean under here!'.  One can only laugh, and be grateful for small mercies.

Read more

Dreaming up the land

She'd been abandoned to certain death when I found her under an oak tree at nearby little Big Spring.  It was a mossy spot where children attending the old schoolhouse (since destroyed) had once kept their lunchboxes cool in spring waters.  Being Pink's guardian gave expression to a maternal broodiness growing in me, her playful innocence made me sing.  I spent hours under trees coaxing her down, catching her as she launched her trusting self into my arms.   Watching her learn about, and long for, the wild deepened my own experience of it. 

Read more

Coming up:  Pink - a cat ballad

 

14 Febuary 2009:  Red cardinal valentines

14 February 2010: An astropoetic valentine

See also: On the wing (poems about birds)

An encounter with golden seal

 


First encounters with plants about which we know nothing - not the name or the human use - can be opportunities to let them speak for themselves.  Later, we can do our research perhaps; but first comes the magic of beginner's mind, which can sometimes match existing knowledge and sometimes hint at more.  Here is the story of my first encounter with Golden Seal.  Spot the water connection.

[I was on a herb walk led by Sasha Daucus of the Golden Light Center.  I cannot reveal the place since this plant is rare in such abundance as we found it.  But I can tell you that walks with Sasha in the Ozarks bioregion are a treat!]

........................................................................................................................................................

I'm squatting on a flat grey rock behind the wooden outhouse part way up a wooded slope and under a canopy of trees. The rest of the herb group have gone to find their own spots around the log cabin that perches on a rocky bluff just the other side of the outhouse.

I wanted to stop here and find out why the plant that calls to me today has chosen this place.  It's an herb that has been over-collected in the wild and our guide told us that she has rarely seen a patch this size, though it is still nothing compared to how it used to be. 

Winter colors: the spirit of place

In the world of home interiors, natural tones, are often boring neutrals.  Yet the natural world is never boring or neutral.  Even in winter, colors abound.  One winter, when I lived in a cabin beside an Ozark creek, I decided to enliven my white-walled living space.  I didn't anticipate that, not only would it end up being an interior I felt more at home in, but that the change would also blurr the boundary between my indoor world and the outdoors. 

When I scanned the color-wheel for paints, I thought I was selecting on the basis of the ceramic floor tiles, the artwork and fabrics that were already in the space.  I wanted colors that would bring out the less visible, accentuate the least obvious.  Many of the paintings in the room were seascapes and the fabrics and furnishings came from exotic countries - none of it was typical of the rural Ozarks.

The colors I chose had names like Veiled Violet, Heart of Palm, Complimentary Cream, and then a combination of all of these merged on one wall in a textured faux finish (one of my ex-husband's skills).   Admiring the results, I noticed that these names could be 'localized' as Stone Violet, Sycamore Skin, and Switch Grass.  The glass doors overlooking the creek, reflected this subtly changing color palette.

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).

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

Dreaming up the land

They say that living beside running water, brings on powerful and sometimes dangerous dreams.  This was my dreamscape.  My childhood fantasy, after seeing the film Ring of Bright Water, was to be a writer and live in a cottage by the sea with otters nearby.  In the summer of 2002, I was visiting friends in the Missouri Ozarks after a year of being a water gypsy.  I had been wandering from watering hole to watering hole, with my then-husband, looking for somewhere to settle. For four days, staying in our friends' dome-house deep in trees, I experienced the most spectacular thunder-and-lightening storms.  When the rain stopped, I reluctantly agreed to look at property in the unimagined domain of heartland America.

Landscapes of Transition

 

This morning, I awoke with the story below in my mind.  As I rummaged among my old computer files to find it, I wondered if my remembering was connected with some time alert.  It was.  Yesterday's anniversary of Rabin's assassination in Tel Aviv.  I try to pay attention to such synchronicities, and so I am posting this today with a prayer for the transition of death.  May we all  face it and treat it with honor and grace.