I have a shamanic streak which shows in this poem. I mean something I think is important writing that.
I believe there is a temperament that leads to art, spirituality, and also perhaps extremes of character which under sad circumstances leads to certain forms of insanity. On one extreme end of all this may reside the people who tend to various manifestations of the paranormal, on the other extreme end are the people who are so creatively mad that they may burn themselves up creating great art or music or something.
These people are also candidates for relationships with spirit power and lives dedicated to God in one way or another. A high percentage of these people when lost, at sea in themselves and the world also end up alcoholic. The First Nation peoples have a high degree of alcoholism mainly because they bred for shamans as well as warriors as a people in general. That was still going on among them when they encountered European trade liquor and simultaneously had their culture destroyed. That's of course just an opinion.
Asking Permission
I point my arrow
Of power straight at the place
Where my heart marks you,
Where I mean to change your life
With the magic rites I learned
From crows and foxes.
I would start the chant only
With your permission.
******************************
So here is another aspect of the same sort of vision.
Lines Of Hope
I feel the lines
In me, in the world, in you,
Lines of health and love.
Sometimes I see them rise out
Of you and weave a new world.
Sometimes they gather sweet notes
Into chords that sound like hope.
I climb chords of hope
Out into the sky away
From my old caged life.
Contraction
1 week ago
I tend to subscribe to this idea of a lineage of souls too. I think the experiences put upon us growing up is the decider on which way we slide on the scale. The images in Lines of Hope are strong and get the reader thinking!
ReplyDeletecrow
ReplyDeletelet me also wear
such deliberate disguises
rat's coat
crowskin
crossed staves
in a field
behaving as the wind behaves
Eliot
I am the wind, or are you? This morning laying in bed, i was already so contained with energy, wanting to get it out. Then you write this and it just blows me away. I AM THE WIND, gone already.
ReplyDelete,a grateful member of Alanon.:),
Just trying...to write down here...
Lorenzo, thanks for your comment.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure I understand what you mean by a lineage of souls.
This idea (I like the sound of it) goes two ways for me. I am my own lineage, life after life. You touch me spiritually and I enter your lineage. This touch is not mundane but world altering. Only a few people will touch me this way in my life.
Ghost, it is a fine thing you do to invite Eliot to my house like this. And the intense but far away sun in the heart of your borrowed crow now shines in the dusty back rooms of my collection of spells and chants.
ReplyDeleteJozien, sweetie. I am happy to find you are a survivor. You didn't cause it, can't control it, can't cure it :)
ReplyDeleteI was driven into Alanon in 1993 perhaps with more desperation than I entered AA in 1983. For ten years I was a steady member of the program until for a couple years my story just stopped changing. That has not been true in AA at all. It turned out I needed Alanon to complete my step work. That took the first four years to do. Before Alanon I had no idea how to do a certain ninth step and that was a sufficient block. I could not say I had done all twelve steps even one time.
I find this post so moving in many ways. The temperament that leads to creativity ... I have always had this fear inside that pushes my own creativity away. I am watching my brother now, who is a poet and incredibly creative, drink his life away. He is seeking help, but denies his drinking. There is a maddness in him right now that I understand so well. And the words that he writes, his poems, have never been so beautiful. I am afraid he will burn himself up.
ReplyDeleteChristopher, I really appreciate all the honesty in your writing.
"Lines of Hope" gives me hope. The idea of "chords of hope" is so reassuring...and the idea of climbing them...to leave the "old caged life behind". So well said. Words to live by.
Faith that is the situation that drives some of us to enter the Alanon tradition. In Lorenzo's sense, I think, it is a lineage handed down from the early wives of alcoholics who eventually grew tired of the role of caterers to their sober husbands and realized there was a place for a society of their own. It is my experience in AA and Alanon that convinces me that I can claim lineage with and from fellow travelers on the planet, for these souls have changed my world.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts about artistic/creative temperaments. I enjoyed your poems too, the last two lines of Asking Permission really struck me.
ReplyDeleteby the way, i like the background color that you changed to..... interesting theory about alcoholics....
ReplyDeleteCrafty, I don't mean my thought to be definitive about creative people. I believe that I have picked out one strain of creativity, and that strain is connected to madness, spirituality, alcoholism and other addictions, and the kind of intense work that can spend a person's soul, or in other words, that a person can get so involved that they spend themselves more than they can renew. There are other creative types I believe, but I belong here. This also does not exhaust all the types of people who can be alcoholic. It in fact only describes a minority, just that I believe the First Nation peoples have a higher population in this group.
ReplyDeleteGhost, thanks for noticing the blog change. What I started to do was get more contrast for my links. One thing led to another.