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| Joshua Tree Watercolor |
Masks
When
the outer world foists its fist of volcanic change upon the personal soul, I
pause to ponder: where in me do I hold this energy; how in me have I repressed
its existence; who am I, if I can fully accept my relationship with this beast
slouching towards Bethlehem?
My specific wondering is
about masks. I'm watching a parade of spontaneous masks surface in our
collective consciousness. I have struggled with my own relationship with masks,
with my personas, with the personas of others in my life. I went to sleep
contemplating the new urge to produce masks, and then this morning, Orion Magazine sent me words on The Power of Masks.
I
remember a moment when I was 3 or 4 years old, sitting cross-legged in a longhouse, out on the west coast of Vancouver Island, by Hot Springs Cove, during a
ceremony called a potlatch. Single dancers would perform in the center, wearing
masks and body dressings. I sat in the shadow of a totem pole with the raven
towering above my head. There are many fractured glimpses swarming me now, as I
reach back for the story, but all I really need is the link to my first
encounter with many people wearing masks.
And, here I am again,
watching a dance of masks, only instead of the dance being at the end of a
three-day journey, it comes from an unleashed toss game of pick-up-sticks and
chance.
The Orion article gives
me a container of meaning to remind my cellular memory of my lineage, of all of
our lineage, with spirit and with ceremony. My wish is for the act of wearing a
mask in today's world is one where we summon a conduit with our elders, as we
pace out a new path of safety and abundance.
The Power of Masks: Then
and Now
“Mask dances brought the spirit world into being, created a powerful conduit to the afterworld, and summoned safety and abundance and a life free of disease. Every religion in existence has its very foundations in these rituals.”
B. Littleton, Dark Ages 2.0. April 6, 2020
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Make it Matter
Time for
reflection,
Time for
listening,
Time for letting
go, receiving, musing,
Time for
gentleness,
For seeking in
new places,
For appreciating
those of old.
This tide will turn.
This is wisdom-making:
Drawing a thin line
in the sand, an absolute boundary of what cannot be,
to then see how
quickly it doesn't really matter.
To identify your
worst fears,
and then have
them arrive, unannounced, in full flurry,
But, instead of
complete collapse,
you find yourself
on the other side,
still breathing
still standing
still longing
still knowing the
next, unforeseeable uncertainty is still coming.
Turn to that dark
corner pocket, full of those
"I will never: do that, go there, say those
words, feel those fears."
and let them fly,
free and freely.
Release the
don'ts and won’ts and wants.
Start from right
now with one beating atom.
See where she
wants to flow, and follow.
Invite the next
one to join you at the table.
Sew them together
after they bury you with unexpected love.
The worst may yet
still be waiting.
Tell your gut to
expect a miracle!
You may be
surprised when they stand up and applaud your foresight,
your preparation
you once called despair,
but is now
alchemically churned into knowledge,
into a secure way
to breath.
Give up what you
think is control.
Let go of holding
the darkness back:
swim
breaststrokes in the night sea.
Stay longer than
expected in those grottos forbidden to explore.
Talk to those
pernicious friends of anxiety and doubt, flying frayed ends
of whips and
flagellation.
Listen to their
grunts and sighs; let them inside you, guide you,
ride them as ancient
waves and those old, young lovers,
as they roar you
into liminal edges of unformed, foamy wet, new self.
It is time
to be thorough;
It’s time to live
your own deep-fathomed life,
For this is what
you’ve been waiting for
During all those
times of no, not now, no.
It is now,
As the ‘center
will not hold’ forever more.
Take guidance
from Yeats, and Jeffers, and Oliver, and all those prophets
That brought you
here into this aleph.
If you have to:
clean house, end relationships, kill the old cat;
Sell the car,
rent the house, move to an island.
It doesn’t matter
It doesn’t matter
Until you meet
yourself on the path
Until you meet
yourself on the path where no one else has ever been,
And when you pick
your bones and gnaw the left foot calluses for food,
And ancient
patterns of having to Know completely dissolve
while honored for their protective
service,
for keeping alive
this little girl once left on a logging road
for screaming too
loudly in resistance to what was not right and sane,
for what was
awful and unkind, and polluted
for what was
brutal in loss of that particular petal in a child’s heart,
then soul slides
sideways and sighs you inward
toward the first, and lingering womb-dream.
Listening, and
finding the last wave of low tide means
the next one will soon cover over what
is now raw and exposed.
The tide will
turn.
Be thorough this
time.
Meet yourself to
make it matter.
It’s the only
love to do.
By Brenda Littleton, 2020
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The artwork, Joshua Tree Watercolor is an original piece 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.
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