literature – Page 2 – St GEORGIA & Boo

the woman within

I had two watershed experiences when I was in my early twenties, experiences that went against everything I had been taught about my body up to then. While at a women’s weeklong gathering and at night at the fire near the hot springs, I saw a naked woman of about thirty-five; her breasts were emptied out by childbearing her belly strained from birthing children. I was very young and I remember feeling sorry for the assaults on her fair and thin skin.

Some one was playing.. and she began to dance, her hair, her breasts, her skin, her limbs all moving in different directions. How beautiful she was, how vital. Her grace was heartbreaking. … that night I saw it. I saw what I had been taught to ignore, the power of a womans body when it is animated from the inside.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

begin here, with your daughters and sons, mothers fight the ever-growing war against this illusion of sculpting our bodies as though we were not born perfectly into this world. Teach your daughters to love themselves from the inside out. Teach your sons that we are perfect in all our flaws, that really the flaws are an illusion in its self. That our bodies are going to grow and change as we do, that never throughout our lives will we stay the same nor should we feel we have to. It is in our child baring years that we feel this most. It is in these years that loving ourselves and the body we wear needs our greatest admiration, for how perfectly they are able to stretch and define themselves around new life, sometimes leaving us with deep blue and purple scars that remain as reminders of how we once carried another within ourselves. Let us rid ourselves of this belief that we are meant to conceptually fit some unattainable idea of ourselves, before and after we carry our children. Let us change the minds of our teenage daughters and ease them of the heavy burdens they believe their bodies to be. Let us teach our sons to look deeper, that the real beauty of a woman lies deep within her layers, that they will never find what they are looking for if they are only ever to look at her from the outside.

the interior castle

the calling

There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget.

This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Step around the poisonous vipers that slither at our feet, attempting to throw you off your course. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incarnations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Slip away. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home.

Listen. Softly, the One you love is calling. Listen. At first you will only hear traces of his voice. Love letters he drops for you in hiding places. In the sound of your baby laughing, in your boyfriend telling you a dream, in a book about loving kindness, in the sun dripping down below the horizon and a peacock’s tail of purple and orange clouds unfolding behind it, in the nameless sorrow that fills your heart when you wake in the night and remember that the world has gone to war and you are powerless to break up the fight. Let the idle chatter between friends drop down to what matters. Listen. Later his voice will come closer. A whisper you’re almost sure is meant for you fading in and out of a cacophony of thoughts, clearer in the silent space between them. Listen. His call is flute music, far away, coming closer.

Be brave a walk through this country of your own wild heart. Be gentle and know that you know nothing. Be mindful and remember that every moment can be a prayer. Melting butter, scrambling eggs, lifting fork to mouth, praising God. Typing your daughters first short story, praising God. Losing your temper and your dignity with someone you love, praising God. Balancing ecstasy with clear thinking, self-control with self-abandon. Be still. Listen. Keep walking.

What a spectacular kingdom you have entered! Befriending the guards and taming the lions at the gates. Sliding through a crack in the doorway on your prayer rug. Crossing the moat between this world and that , walking on water if you have to, because this is your rightful place. That is your Beloved reclining in the innermost chamber, waiting for you, offering wine from a bottle with your crest on the label. Explore. Rest if you have to, but don’t go to sleep. Head straight for his arms.

And when you have dismissed the serpents of vanity and greed, conquered the lizards of self-importance, and lulled the monkey mind to sleep, your steps will be lighter. When you have given up everything to make a friend a cup of tea and tend her broken heart, stood up against the violation of innocent children and their fathers and mothers, made conscious choices to live simply and honor the earth, your steps will be lighter. When you have grown still on purpose while everything around you is asking for your chaos, you will find the doors between every room of this interior castle thrown open, the path home to your true love unobstructed after all.

No one else controls access to this perfect place. Give yourself your own unconditional permission to go there. Absolve yourself of missing the mark again and again. Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation. Waste no time. Enter the center of your soul.

-Mirabai Starr, The Interior Castle

young body. old soul.

Her feet bare more of that of ninety years,

They are more weathered than any explanation can offer

They are feet that have walked this earth many many times,

I know this to be true.

She is remembering rather than learning,

Her purpose is strong like a ferocious wind,

She is going to move through this life at tremendous speed, I’m not sure we will be able to keep up, that is alright.

She will touch people, move them, to pay attention like she has done since the day she was born, this is her gift.

She was born with old feet, and blessed with an old soul.

I have lots of things to teach you now..

I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night.

It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.

Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.

It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity.It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die.

It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended.

There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”

-Jack Kerouac

women who run with the wolves

Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, the-river- beneath-the-river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting…or any activity which requires intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between- worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude… much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us, for it breaks physical laws and rational laws as we know them.’

I’ll tell you right now, the doors to the world of the Wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door; if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much that you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.

The Self must have freedom to move, to speak, to be angry and to create. This self is durable, resilient, and possesses high intuition. It is a self which is knowledgable in the spiritual dealings of death and birth.

…there is in many women a ‘hungry’ one inside. But rather than hungry to be a certain size, shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit the stereotype; women are hungry for basic regard from the culture surrounding them. The ‘hungry’ one inside is longing to be treated respectfully, to be accepted and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

There is a fire that burns within us, no woman is excluded from this. At times it lies dormant, waiting for long drawn out periods, with great patience, for right timing to ignite it to its full force. Women know this to be true. Some are closer to it than others. For some it burns as a quiet tinder,others a ravishing burn or a ferocious flame. The closer we come to ourselves, often after long treks down broken roads and undesired outcomes, we become tired of the search and finally surrender to all that we are in our mysterious ways, we decide to return home. With surrender, comes tremendous acceptance of ourselves despite what the world is saying. We let go of everything and in doing so find everything. We discover that we are essentially all that we ever needed, and it isn’t necessary to better, or move or change ourselves, all that is ever really necessary is to unfold from the inside out. And as Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, in Women Who Run With the Wolves,’Entering the terrain of wisdom occurs at any age. We sometimes step, sometimes stumble, and other times we are pulled into the territory of the Crone when the need for a deeper, larger understanding of our most meaningful path can no longer be denied—when the gifts hidden in our challenges must be brought forth.’

and I know that..

And I know I am deathless.

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenters compass.

..I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,

I see that the elementary laws never apologize. I recon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all.

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much the wise,

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,

Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,

One of the great nation, the nation of many nations- the smallest the same and the largest the same,

All goes onward and outward….and nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

My faith is to the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths.

Enclosing all worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,

Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years ..

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

draw near, women and hear..

draw near, women and hear...

draw near, women and hear..

draw near, women, and hear what I have to say. Turn your curiosity for once towards useful objects, and consider the advantages which nature gave you and society ravished away. Come and learn how you were born the companion of man and became his slave; how you grew to like the condition and think it natural; and finally how the long habituation of slavery so degraded you that you preferred its sapping but convenient vices to the more difficult virtues of freedom and repute. If the picture I shall paint leaves you in command of yourselves, if you can contemplate it without emotion, then go back to your futile pastimes; ‘there is no remedy, the vices have become the custom’

-Choderlos de Laclos, ‘On the education of Women’, 1783

As I sit around a table of daughters, passionately involved in meaningful discussion on girls and women and their place within the world of today; I can feel a fire burning deep within their souls, almost a rage not just of how little we seemed to have learnt but how generations of women themselves seem to have come to a passive acceptance of this role we are told to play and that the young adult girls of their age are too being molded by the mothers and fathers who tell them no different. These daughters I speak of set themselves apart. They do this proudly, and by no means to condemn, or to be better, or be above their peers but merely to make a difference. They have decided to walk in another direction. You will not find these daughters engrossed in social media sifting though images of girls depicting themselves sexually, in awe of how they too can look like this and have the freedom to share it with the world. No, these daughters are not admiring or being inspired to follow this new generation of girls; instead they find it all the more reason to fight, to stand up and be seen for their intelligence, humility, bravery,compassion and strength even when faced with demoralization from their sisters and male counterparts, because they dare to be different, because they dare to say this is by no means alright. They are choosing to be the voice that speaks and if necessary shouts and says; Girls what are you doing? And who are you doing it for? These daughters are reading the likes of Simone de Bouvier, and Virgina Woolf they are angered and equally saddened by despite the fact that so much time has passed, we seemed to have learnt so little. That these women too, carried this very same message and somehow it failed to be heard. They are as astounded as I, for the incomprehension that women are still seen in so many ways weaker, inferior, less intelligent and less capable, too emotional and most appallingly as objects to be moulded and designed purely for our male companions. It is like the world is being deliberately obtuse. I recently came across a piece of writing that was screaming for the attention of women.. for women to wake up and pay attention.

‘… Why, ladies? Why must we continue to whittle ourselves down? Who is it for? What is it for? You can walk through a certain aisle at the pharmacy or at the grocery store and see the language of diminishment all over the packaging for weight loss aids of all kinds.”Shrink your waist.” “Lose inches off your thighs.””Slim down.””Get skinny”

How about”Grow your mind.” “Increase your confidence and productivity.” “Beef up your knowledge.” “Enlarge your scope of asskicking.”

That’s a valid message for women and girls: Grow, expand, branch out, open up,get bigger,wider, faster, stronger, better, smarter. Go up not down. Get strong, not skinny.

You are not here to get smaller. You are not here to have a thin waist and thighs. You are not here to disappear. You’re here to change the world! Change the world then! Forget about “losing a few pounds”. Think about what you could be gaining instead.”

-words from clearthatmindofcant

takings from, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

takings from, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

takings from, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

I exist as I am, that is enough

If no other in the world be aware, I sit content

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

Whoever degrades another degrades me…

and whatever is done or said,

returns at last to me,

And whatever I do or say I also return.

The pleasures of heaven are with me,

and the pains of hell are will me,

The first I graft and increase upon myself..

the latter I translate into a new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,

And I say it is great to be a woman as to be a man.

And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,

No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

i dont mind dirt under my nails

you are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering

-Hemingway

i dont mind dirt under my nails

You are so brave and quiet, I forget you are suffering

-Hemingway

For a rustic effect wrap your pots in coconut basket liners and tie with brown string. You can buy basket liners from nursery and hardware stores. If you cut them down the middle and open each piece up they will wrap easily around the pots, then secure with the string and trim off any excess. They look really nice when all placed in an area together like on a window sill or book shelf. A little winter indoor garden. For easy watering just place all the pots in the kitchen sink basket liners and all.

words

if there is a place where i ask the questions, it is here, with dirt under my nails and new life resting in my hands. It is here that I hear the sound of my own voice, where life speaks volumes in it’s all alluring silence. It is here where my creativity begins and always ends with a pen and notebook in hand.

mothers

mothers.

dear girls

dear girls.

dear girls

“I will teach my daughter not to wear her skin like a druken apology. I will teach her ‘make a home out of your body live in yourself, do not let people turn you into a regret, do not justify yourself. If you are a disaster it is not forever, if you are a disaster you are the most beautiful one I have ever seen. Do not deconstruct from the inside out, you belong here, you belong here, not because you are lovely, but because you are more than that”

-Azra Tabassum, Your hands are threads, your body is a canvas

and..

“_you can’t make homes out of human beings someone should have already told you that.

and if he wants to leave

then let him leave

you are terrifying

and strange and beautiful

something not everyone knows how to love.”

-Warsan Shire