Lovers' touches linger in dried alter petals and fading poem-ink.
Their photos point to another time; their echoes live in Joni songs.
Like David Whyte’s line, they've turned sideways into the light.
It is brilliant here, at times.
Their photos point to another time; their echoes live in Joni songs.
Like David Whyte’s line, they've turned sideways into the light.
It is brilliant here, at times.
The Road to King Clone |
Active,
income-bearing projects have ended. My suits are buried. My heels now flat. Material things like vacation condos, income properties and motorhomes are gone.
Family farms are paved; the plow a museum relic. The beach is a public park.
My
own home is far from being complete: the ceiling peels, the carpet stains, the
kitchen wants to be open and white. I sleep in a garage of northern windows, eastern French doors and ragged
drywall. Expensive rugs keep the peace. Much of what is supposed to be there, is not. The makings of containment don’t live here anymore. I actually wonder if they ever did.
Yet,
my Ego is contentedly receding, as James Hillman professes happens at the threshold
of sixty, and in this recession, She takes with her most of the constellated patterns
that no longer serve me.
And, in place of this space, an illuminated foam of Soul roams in; the continuing high tide now occupies and
resides, as the owner of the next thirty years. Along with Soul, I have these animals. Desert-bred Arabians, an ancient lot, used to warm camel’s milk and eating
dates, live on the edge with me, as do other cats and dog, all refugees from desert trauma, who found their way
to my side.
Their souls are now free here, too.I have them.
And,
I have my art, my creative heart.
It is mine; it is me.
No one can take it; it is not up for question or debate.
Like the horses, it breathes, it pounds the ground
when in want and in need of attention.
It may not be loved by the others outside of me,
but I am loved by it,
I am courted by their dreams to be seen.
I share when I have to,
or when I believe there is a hope-link to being seen and understood.
It is mine; it is me.
No one can take it; it is not up for question or debate.
Like the horses, it breathes, it pounds the ground
when in want and in need of attention.
It may not be loved by the others outside of me,
but I am loved by it,
I am courted by their dreams to be seen.
I share when I have to,
or when I believe there is a hope-link to being seen and understood.
I
don’t have much left in my life these days:
It is brilliant here, at times.
It suits me just fine.
It is brilliant here, at times.
It suits me just fine.
Brenda Littleton, 2018
- - -
You Can Eat Off of My Horse Stall Mats
Circe Leaving Her Greek Island |
You
can eat off of my horse stall mats. The grocery bags stowed in a ice chest are
alphabetized by store names. Two hundred and forty papers written for my
dissertation are reorganized by themes, and crossed referenced by the dates I
wrote them. Thirty-two cookbooks once boxed in the shed are scattered on my
bedroom floor, waiting to be called into duty. Some of them are my
grandmother's and inspired eating during the Great Depression, the pandemic ofpolio, and rationing in WWII. My once diet of no bread, no sugar, no flesh, no
animal product, has switched in a heartbeat to sourdough scones, mac n cheese,
tuna casseroles, rice pudding and toast with cinnamon sugar on top. I meditate,
eat, write, clean, eat, write, meditate, and clean some more.
I no longer walk the dogs in my Mesa neighborhood, but instead I
search for those spindly, dirt yak paths that lead close to hills and rock
croppings. I feel very David Whyte-ish as I move among my own moors with Border
Collie and Sheep Dog with me, Jack and Sugar-Butt Lu. I wear my Haida touque, a
loud, squash-colored neck scarf, hoodie and boots, with my face mask attached
to my left ear, just in case I run into specula. The wind is up as a stiff
leash. With each step, I wonder about all the weird, odd, torrential upheavals
I've lived through, and realize each one takes me further and farther out
there, to where I get a whiff of some long distant lecture about how personal
phenomenology is always cued and ready, with the ability for us to catch-up
with our event horizon. In other words, our unconscious goes before us, and
within our intentionality, we somehow unwittingly find ourselves having
arrived, right up to the edge of our existence. Some quantum cosmologists call
this edge-point a Black Hole. I call it my Monday Morning Walk. I walk further
and try to remember was it Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, or Merleau-Ponty, who
gave us this edict of how our unconscious goes before us and as we catch up, we
then live life. I collapse into a snort-laugh, and I immediately worry if I'm
shedding specula on the yak path, to then grok how my moment of homing like the
pigeon to track that thought is just another one of concentric circles
emanating from me trying to find my way. Cleaning the surface helps. Digging
into this event horizon, unfinished and chthonic, is the larger version of
dumping all of those cookbooks onto my floor.
Click here for more info |
The poem, "What to Remember When You Begin" circles
overhead, as I walk in my best David Whyte-ish way: "What you can plan is
too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans
enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep. To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To remember the other world
in this world is to live in your true inheritance. You are not a troubled guest
on this Earth. You were invited from another and a greater night than the one
from which you have just emerged" -David Whyte.
Time for some of that rice pudding. The wind has had its way
with me, and I have an appetite for what I have forbidden myself.
Brenda Littleton, March 2020
Dark Ages 2.0
Dark Ages 2.0
- - -
The artwork, The Road to King Clone and Circe Leaving Her Greek Island are original pieces by Brenda Littleton. Writer, poet, professor, literacy of place, Jungian archetypal psychology, equine psychology, alchemy, dream-tending, community, meaning-making, working with gold, silver threads and silk. Born the backside of Vancouver Island; renewed on the black beach of Santorni; risen from ashes in Aguanga; tenderly unfolded in Topanga, busting wide high with inner sky in Joshua Tree.