Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Reality


Just a comment on how we can not change our parents. Maddening as that is, we just can't, we will never have what we deserve. Period. The best hope is the next generation. Your mother/father will never be that parent that you deserve. They are too tied up in their own webs of narcissism/depression whatever it is. We can not change it, but we can embrace the suffering and find transcendence there. And, we can dedicate song to them via the Universe. ;-)-



"32 Flavors" by Ani DiFranco


squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
and I'm beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you're going to get hungry
and eat most of the words you just said

both my parents taught me about good will
and I have done well by their names
just the kindness I've lavished on strangers
is more than I can explain
still there's many who've turned out their porch lights
just so I would think they were not home
and hid in the dark of their windows
til I'd passed and left them alone

and god help you if you are an ugly girl
course too pretty is also your doom
cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
and god help you if you are a
Phoenix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying back

I'm not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do
I'm not saying that I'm a saint
I just don't want to live that way
no, I will never be a saint
but I will always say

squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I'm beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you're starving
and eating all of the words you said

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Thought for Times of Struggle and Pain

“To lose one’s soul is to lose the capacity to suffer consciously which breaks the relationship to the unconscious.” - Carl Jung


Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Grand Reckoning

Saw you in a picture, 
phone to your ever listening, 
ever sweet, ever conniving ear.
I remember the way your bones 
held up your clothes,
and how I wiped blood from your arm 
when you smashed it in a tack box.
I remember telling you your son was raping me too.
I remember painting fences purple,
yearning to "fix" everything, especially him.
You KNEW, and you KNOW what he did,
and YES, it does matter,
you are sneaky, and you KNOW.
You are his mother, my grandmother, and you fed me to him.
How is it that you can possibly have anything to say now?
How is it that your mouth can move after being so full of lies?
I think I would like you to feel that slicing pain,
right
where 
I
felt
it. 
I'd like someone you love to use something you love against you.
Your precious labradors, perhaps?
I'd like your body to remember all that I have had to feel,
because of what you did,
and what you did not do.
Your hair is nowhere near as red as the rage in my head.
I showed you my pain,
my fear,
you saw my tremblings,
my terror,
and yet,
n o t h i n g. 
How do you look at yourself?
At him?
A choice was made: honor the child, or indulge the child rapist.
The latter you chose,
and now you sit, 
chatting on your cordless phones,
crossing your anorexic legs,
beckoning to your gaggle of young girls to fetch this and that,
knowing what you know,
that you are the mother of a rapist,
that you brought into this world and nurtured a man who nearly took me out of this world.
And when I was seven, the age of reason they say,
and I told you what he was doing,
did you ever hurt for me?
Was there not a wince,
a blinking,
a battling back of tears?
There was a shush, a hush, a gush of self serving "Shhhh..."
Don't use that word, Sarah, you said.
Your Daddy loves you, you said, how could you say such a thing, you said.
I choked on my own tears as you watched, "Just be happy" you said.
You slipped into your denial dress and asked me to zip it up.
You asked me to carry your shame, your guilt, your denial.
I took it all, I absorbed it all. 
I held his too. 
Not now.
Your worst fear has arrived.
I tell. I speak. I say the words. I tell the truth you worked so diligently to hide inside of me. 
Yes, that's right, you absolute horror of a woman.
I TELL.
People KNOW.
You are exposed.
Tell me not to use the word RAPIST now.
RAPIST.
Welcome to the truth.
This is what you have feared.
Interesting that you never feared him tearing my hymen open.
But you sure fear anyone knowing that you allowed this,
that you handed me off to him despite my begging,
that you allowed him to take me against my will,
that you told me to shower when you saw the blood and then,
just like that,
pretended there was never any blood, what was I talking about?
Well, Rapist Mother,
I am a MOTHER now too.
And I know what I know.
No father can love his daughter and rape her.
No Grandmother can love her granddaughter and allow this.
And in the dead of night as you lay in your little bed,
praying to your God,
obsessing in your head,
trying to run from the truth,
may you feel that slicing, 
that burning, that tearing,
of TRUTH
entering you, 
for the first time.



Thursday, February 5, 2009

Transitions



My second born son is beginning his Kindergarten journey this July. In this month of love, I am enveloped in a sort of contemplative vortex. I am full of emotion. I have given him roots together, with his father, and his wings. Now he gets to use both. It's beautiful. It's excrucitingly beautiful to come from where I have, and to see my seedlings blossom and flower. I am folding myself into this experience, into Mary Oliver, into a meditative and innerly place. I'm in transition after 8 solid years of staying at home with my two boys. 

Mary Oliver: 

Wild Geese

- 1986 You do not have to be good.  
You do not have to walk on your knees           
 for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.            
You only have to let the soft animal of your body            love what it loves.            
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.            Meanwhile the world goes on.  
          Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain           
 are moving across the landscapes,            over the prairies and the deep trees,           
 the mountains and the rivers.            Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,  
         are heading home again.            Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,        
    the world offers itself to your imagination,           
 calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --           
 over and over announcing your place            in the family of things. 

Something Mama Wrote in Her Sleep
Baby boy drapes over me,
a ribbon through my hair
Legs hanging down,
Cheek to my cheek,
Heart to my Heart.