it was me, just over a year ago

My Soul Retrieval met with positive results in that my soul part returned to me. Pain causes the soul to leave typically, and I think this was the case with me. The shaman said when he found this part, I was in a state of “pure desolation.” I am guessing it was when I had a bipolar breakdown. I am guessing it was feeling my confidence go away with her. Pain is more intangible than love; it is hard to see in someone. I think art and poetry is one way to make it textured, to show it like a photograph in one flashbulb moment. It is the way to hold your heart in your hand and show it like a cut on your finger.

I need to ask her, my soul part, why she left. I have made some promises to her never to let her be hurt again … we won’t be again ever (not like this) … we will be guarded with the shield of art and love. I feel prolific again. I write again as a whole person — expressing our pain and our love. Now we have to remember one another, get to know one another again like roommates. My energy and happiness has returned now. There is so much on the horizon and it is surrounded — little love soldiers waiting for my heart.

soul retrieval no. 1

Today is my first Soul Retrieval session …

Today may be the day I first meet my sweet Mades.

Today he may find the missing orb of my lost soul.

He will find my soul cowering in a riverbank perhaps,

a dusty pantry.

He will ask her to return to me.

She will say yes or she will say no.

Mades and Me

After a spiritual guide experience today (a beautiful, breezy, sunny day), I was driving home and felt an immediate, slam-on-my brakes moment to enter the West Main cemetery. I parked on a dirt path near the “back” of the cemetery and walked the hills in my not-so-functional-for-hills high heels. I walked around thinking that there was an orb somewhere (likely not in this cemetery) that was my soul, the missing little circle I have been desperately trying to fill. So many missteps were made because of this, only further complicated by my emotional condition. So much was unnecessary in setting me back this far, but it did.

But as I wandered in the cemetery looking for nothing in particular, looking only at the old tombstones, wanting to bring something for the tiny graves that looked to be never given a second glance by anyone. One of these tiny graves said “Moses” … but I first thought it read: “Mades” (MA-Des). Then I knew I had finally found the name of my typewriter, my partner in emotion and so many word crimes of truth.

After coming home, I walked in the door and fell asleep on the pad on my bedroom floor. I had 2 dreams — one that I told someone everything I had to tell. The other about a little girl I dream a lot about (she’s about 3) calling me mommy half crying, half laughing. I always thought it was my pesky and getting peskier biological baby clock, but now I think it is that orb of my soul. We pass in these Jungian hallways, missing one another by being pulled around corners by arms and hands neither of us want anymore. I will call her Mades as well. Anhedonia is still in the wings smiling smugly, but now I am not alone. I will name my daughter Mades … it is beautiful. And now it is also profoundly meaningful … the first step toward our lullaby.

for my mother …

My apartment is a mess with paper from collaging. It looks snowy and the cats like to roll in it.

I had forgotten this hidden paper joy.

our panic: no. 1

Like the motivation I conjured up with Gina’s Charlie Chaplan anecdote a few nights ago, I have now conjured up truly feeling hopeful and productive. This is an homage to Aaron and I

… and that panic.

Our sleeves will also tell our secrets. And soon it will be quiet.

returning to the visual

This collage is called “Sad Girl Wanting to Hold Her Heart.” This now a couple years old. The text is from a book I found in a free bin at the library. I made it right after Aaron left for Seattle.

Sometimes I feel poetry is so strong it is almost maddening. The impulse then becomes cutting out pictures and creating an image with a different look at narrative. I have 3 collages in the works right now and hope for there to be more. I am finding this another way to express things, things there sometimes seems to be no words for, or not complete words, or words that haven’t come to me yet.

The collaboration poems would be an exception to this, writing with Aaron being yet another expression, something gathered into my heart like a rose behind the ear. This is something I look forward to, letting words float in my mind, waiting for him, not writing down the words I anticipate to be in our poems.

One of my hundreds of favorite Dickinson poems (#1732) goes thus:

My life closed twice before its close — / It yet remains to see / If immortality unveil / A third event to me // So huge, so hopeless to conceive / as these that twice befell. / Parting is all we know of heaven, / And all we need of hell.

After reflecting further on Confessional Poets, after teaching this movement of American literary history, I came to the fascinating conclusion that Dickinson (or at least to me …) is the first confessional poet. I plan on revisiting her letters with Thomas Higginson. Good preparation for the collaboration.

september / december

This is Portland, Oregon.

Yes, it’s true … September or December.

A new era.

Yes, A-man, tell the family!

Powell’s, drizzle, kindred spirit, poetry … what could be better?

Nothing …

The Machine of Our Pores

It feels so good to be collaborating again with someone so close in heart and mind with me in poems. Aaron and I have been writing some great poems. I have been the secretary on this fruitful journey … typing his words onto the Remington as he says them. As he says them all those miles and grass blades away from me and the keys. I cannot wait on it all to happen. The machines of our pores turning and opening us up to let out what we need to finally let go. Letting in what we finally need to let in.

strange days

This is my favorite Ernst painting (thanks for the book, Marianne!). For some reason during these strange days … this painting has been so real these days… invading dreams,

becoming nightmares when I can actually sleep.

Things get far more strange and beautiful in a sense on little sleep.

Peoples’ voices are stronger.

While so much is numb.

“Remember to breathe” says Aaron in his northwestern neighborhood.

We breathe now. Both of us, conscious of it completely.

That, too, is an odd beauty like this bird-bride.

Against my own best interest tonight, I read more Fernando Pessoa writing as Bernardo Soares in the The Book of Disquiet:

The carts in the street purr slow, distinct sounds in seeming accord with my drowsiness. It’s lunchtime but I’ve stayed in the office. It’s a warm day, a bit overcast. And the sounds, for some reason, which might be drowsiness, are exactly like the day.

Sometimes it is hard to know what to do with oneself.

Even if you know the answer to all you have wondered about.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Be sure to read a poem a day!

Go to www.poets.org for more NPM info.