Crocosmia

     New moons and the Winter Solstice are magnificent nights for introspection.  A couple of years ago in preparation for a Yule party, I put on “To Venus and Back” and ran a hot purification bath.  My aim was to let go of negativities of the day and of the year; to let them wash down the drain.  As I tried to relax and let these unwanted energies flow out, I started to think and to worry.

     “Where are these going?  I’m putting unwanted energies into the water and the earth.  Where does this go?  How could I release all this negative energy and just let it float around?  I should hold on to it so that it doesn’t affect anyone else.  I should keep this.  I want to keep my worries and my little pockets of anger and hold on to them so they won’t hurt or bother anyone else.  I’ll keep my secrets and fears here within me.” 

     I lay under the hot lavender water for a long time.  As I tried to think of a place to situate these pains I was holding on to, I began to feel I was floating in a small wooden boat on a vast ocean.

     My boat was the vessel for my consciousness…my spirit.  It was also filled with trash.  Fears of the past, guilt, shame, and anger took the form of plastic water bottles, tissues, old chip bags, milk jugs.  I worried that the trash would fall out and litter the beautiful water.  Each time the boat rocked with a wave I held tight to the garbage.  I realized the ocean was everything… the collective spirit of everything that ever was or will be.  I would not ruin it so I chose to forever float in my little trash pile.

     Then a voice came saying, “Throw something out.”

     I didn’t want to.  Then it came again, “Throw something out.”  The waves rocked my boat.  “Get rid of something.  Don’t you want to throw it out?”  I did want to.  I wanted to stretch out in my clean boat and to not worry about things falling out.  So I picked up a plastic bottle and threw it overboard.  I saw it arch up against the sky.  It fell straight down into the waves and to my amazement, a big chubby shining goldfish the size of my arm jumped out of the water.  “Throw out something else,” sounded the voice again.  I threw more and more trash and each time the pieces turned into big goldfish the color of polished coins.  I unloaded everything until I was alone in my boat with my legs stretched out, the golden sun on my face.  “Let go of your anger.  Let go of your fears and your worries and you will be transformed.”

previously published in THE BALEFIRE magazine, Samhain 2011

The magic flute will protect you,

Support you in the greatest misfortune.

With it you can act omnipotently.

You can transform human passion.

The sad will become joyful,

Love will captivate the stone-hearted.

                           Die Zauberflote, Emanuel Schikaneder

“No human can condemn another to hell because we are already there.  Others can put us into a deeper hell, true.  But only if we allow this to happen…Our personal dream can also become an ongoing nightmare where we suffer and live in a state of fear.  But we don’t need to dream a nightmare.  It is possible to enjoy a pleasant dream.”     

                            The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz

I flew to the lake of fire and found a flute.

                           This Afternoon, Daun Fields

One day Iris realized the choices she made every day were forming her life and this was not the life she imagined for herself.  Why didn’t her parents tell her this was true?  What was the job they thought they should do?  Feed her and give her a bed, make sure she went to school and came in the house at night.  Locked the doors behind.

Iris rode the bus on a Monday thinking of the untrue-ness of her life.  There was nothing special about her days.  Why?  She was the girl who lived; the chosen one of two sisters to stay and carry out a life in this weird world.  Outside the greasy bus window a church sign read, “Labyrinth today, all welcome.”  A strong deja vu came over her…she dreamed of sitting on this bus when she was little.  In the dream there was a feather, a flute, and a black handled knife in her hands.  The bus stopped and the wrinkle in time was ironed out.  

The birds on her street were noisier than usual, squawking and fluttering above her in the big sugar maples.  She bent down and picked up a tiny black feather from a crack in the sidewalk.  It felt…warm.  When she got home, she felt an urge to take off all her clothes.  Why did she not walk around naked more often?  She felt very calm and still all of a sudden.  Her body became warm and her arms felt soft and round when she touched them.  Something was moving her.  I will tell you it was not a ghost, a thing, or a devil.  I will tell the truth and say it was an inspiration and a fire.  It was not necessarily welcomed because she had things to do.  She had money to make and she had to sit and think about work and worry about her family.  She thought she had no time for this, but time melted away.

Iris placed on the coffee table the bird feather.  She went to the kitchen and found a black handled knife in the drawer.  She lit some old incense and it reminded her of when she used to sit and laugh with her friends.  Where were they?  

She stood over the table with the knife in her hands, pointing the blade at the feather.  She closed her eyes and saw one black feather on the left wing of a little white bird.  The bird flitted and flew away from her house.  She kept her eye on the bird, which rose higher and higher, and Iris realized she was also rising higher and higher…

She looked down and noticed the rooftops of her neighborhood.  She was sitting on a kind of forked branch that had symbols burned into it that she did not recognize. She suddenly felt exhilarated as the wind whipped her hair, stinging her face.  She began to sing a song she’d never heard:

In the golden sea and sky up high,

In musty caves and knotted pines, 

the mysteries of life abide!

Quiet down you noisy birds,

and hear the soundless words.

Take up the sword that sheds no blood

and cut the fears of childhood!

Be not afraid of secrets spilled

for they lead to love

and will fulfilled!

Down below she saw the bird perched in a willow tree by a lake.  She gently touched down on the sloping bank and realized the lake was boiling.  A child’s small wooden boat glided by, stopping in front of her.  In the boat was a tiny silver flute.    She picked it up and played a long note.  The sound was like her mother reading to her when she was little.  It also sang “Ahhhhhh” just like the sound she made when taking off her shoes at the end of the day.  Iris thought about the countless worries that occupied so much of her time.  They seemed like little jokes.  She laughed, and the bird laughed.  The lake and the sky laughed.

“The little boat has been sailing the lake of fire since the beginning of time waiting for you.  The flute is yours,” the bird said.  ”Now do what you will with it.  Open your eyes.”

Iris opened her eyes to see her living room ceiling.  She felt unable to move her body for a moment, but gradually began to sit up.  It was dark outside.  She smelled lilacs and cut grass through her open window.  

I have traded off my spirit for money.  When I got that cash it didn’t look like I thought…so I put myself in the cool damp dark whenever I could.  Collecting dollars at all hours and wearing out pillowcases instead of the pen.

What is the rate of exchange?  Does it change or stay the same?  

Bigger house

Plastic Lawn Furniture Set

Add Monogramming

More records

Better kitchen knives, faster computer, touch screen phone, unlimited texting, more room.

I sit in front of a mirror with three hundred dollar bills beside me.  I reach for the money and my knuckles tap the glass.

Decided what I was doing wasn’t big enough

Was not my real thoughts

Was in the past

Decided I’d be real scared, then not scared one day, tonight.

Remembered what I could take and what I wanted to take.

Remembered what I wanted:  It was bigger.  

WHEN I LET IT IN I WAS UNITED.

A banshee’s scream, Aphrodite’s moan, a silver note,

Now sound the same to me.

One day I realized I was the raccoon my Aunt Robin raised, the conch on the seashore, the corn in the field, and the creek that ran behind the house.  One day I realized I was everything and everything was me.  How free did I feel?  How free do you think?

My friend the old doctor, before he died, said “Our DNA is made up of compounds that make up everything else.  Electricity animates us.  I am not afraid of dying, I am curious to find out where I’m going from here.”  

I was electrocuted by a fence when I was younger.  I stood and squeezed the hot fence with both little hands, looking at the green summer grass and the white bee hives in the field, thinking, what will happen to me?  I inhaled the scent of horses and hollered.  Granny kicked me off the fence and I ran, shooting little lightning bolts from my fingertips.  Thus began the endless summer of The Sister of the Fireflies.

I beheld my body-lovely for the first time-through kindred women:  Kathleen Hanna, Patti Smith, Rachel, Tori, Joni, Exene, Kiri; all of them singers like me.

This freed an inner voice, a will previously hidden from me:  I am strong, I deserve, I will behold and learn.  My body is my own and it is not a source of worry anymore.  I will allow myself to search for what I deeply want:  secrets of shadows and of light, and secrets that will do some explaining.

I felt the physical-ness of magic for the first time in shed snake skins found in the forest and robins’ nests full of blue eggs.  I have heard women say childbirth is the only way they have felt a connection with the divine.  I became connected with nature and the unexplained when I started to write and perform music.  This is my main magic.  There is power in the balance of words and silence.  I make sense of this balance in music.  In the company of people I talk too much or I am too quiet; I walk with my fish’s tail and music is the ocean.

I see to take in the world, I use my hands to create and receive my pleasures, I talk to get by, I sing to tell the truth.  It’s the only way I’ve found I can’t fool myself.

Jesus was my hand holder and the one to which I sang. The Devil was my doubt and my curvy body.  I promised many thangs to get me away from those sins.  Paid a high price in self hate but I just loved to sing and pray.  Sometimes guilty to this day.

We all got a hard time.  We all cried.  I started to listen to my own voice and I got stronger.  Always knew who was in there anyway, just started listening.  I got quiet and I learned new words.

The vows of childhood are spring flowers.  Allow them to fade away and be forgotten to make room for the oak and the willow.