biting back

Biting Back

By Patricia Smith

Children do not grow up

As much as they grow away.

My son’s eyes are stones, flat, brown, fireless,

with no visible openings in or out.

His voice, when he cares to try it on,

hovers one-note in that killing place

where even the blues fidget.

Tight syllables, half spoken, half spat,

greet me with the warmth

of glint-tipped arrows. The air around him

hurts my chest, grows too cold to nourish,

and he stares past me to the open door of his room,

anxious for my patented stumbled restreat.

My fingers used to brush bit of the world

From his kinked hair,

but he moved beyond that mother shine

to whispered “fucks” on the telephone,

to the sweet mysteries of scalloped buttons

dotting the maps of young girls,

to the warped, frustrating truths of algebra,

to anything but me. Ancient, annoying apparatus,

I have unfortunately retained the ability to warm meat,

to open cans, to clean clothing

that has yellowed and stiffened.

I spit money when squeezed,

don’t try to dance in front of his friends,

and know that rap music cannot be stopped.

For these brief flashes of cool, I am tolerated in spurts.

At night I lay in my husband’s arms

and he tells me that these are things that happen,

that the world will tilt again

and our son will return, unannounced, as he was-

goofy and clinging, clever with words, stupefied by rockets.

And I dream on that.

One summer after camp, twelve inches taller than the

summer before,

my child grinned and said,

“Maybe a tree bit me.”

We laughed,

not knowing that was to be his last uttered innocence.

Only months later, eyes would narrow and doors would slam.

Now he is scowl, facial hair, knots of muscle. He is

Pimp, homey, pistol. He is man smell, grimy fingers,

red eyes, rolling dice. He is street, smoke, cocked cannon.

And I sit on his bare mattress after he’s left for school,

wonder at the simple jumble of this motherless world,

look for clues that some gumpopping teenage girl

now wears my face. Full of breastmilk and finger songs,

I stumble the street staring at other children,

gulping my dose of their giggles,

and cursing the trees for their teeth.

------------------------------------------------

Today my son turned fourteen. Last week, after a particularly hard weekend between the two of us, I opened a poetry anthology to this poem, and knew it to be a gift from Brigid to me, marking my son’s birth. What a year of changes it has been! Sometimes when my son calls me, I don’t recognize his voice. It continues to change, the tone and timber moving at warp speed towards full manhood. I blinked and suddenly he is taller than me. I blinked again, and his dad is suddenly shorter than him. The sweaty child smell I termed “monkeyhead” has wafted away, replaced by the essential aroma of any pro-ball locker room.

I sat on the spectator bench next to my childhood sweetheart today, watching our son (by a series of fortunate events, he is my son’s “biodad”) play basketball. It disturbed me, the stones of his eyes, the intense flat focus devoid of joy and innocence. Jay laughed as I exclaimed “Jeez, can’t he smile occasionally!” He reassured me that it was all totally normal, that what I was seeing was our son’s “game face”. I almost cried thinking on that, the very fact he’s grown old enough now for a “game face”. My son is growing away from me, he’s definitely felt the teeth of the trees. I’m grateful that there still are small moments when world still tilts back, and that I can occasionaly glimpse the boy who was mad for Bugs Bunny and “cozying” with his mother in this tall familiar stranger. How bittersweet the birthday of an adolescent is!

letting go

As Brigid approaches, I take the poetry books off the bookshelves and strew them around the house. The house altar gets its fair share, and there’s a stack of books in arm’s reach from every vantage point in the living room. On my bedside table I keep my current favorites. As Reya points out, poetry IS that place between forge and well, the exhale and the inhale, giving word to the exquisite and horrifying beauty that is life. At my office, I always have a stack of poetry books next to my chair, with Mary Oliver and Rumi being the constants. Sometimes, the best therapeutic intervention is a poem.

For the past year or so, I’ve found myself returning again and again to Mary Oliver’s Blackwater Woods. Yesterday, I returned for another visit.

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

As a therapist, I’ve noted that most of my clients have trouble with at least one of the three things. Some can’t love what is mortal, some can’t hold on to it when things get rough, and some can’t let it go, even when it’s become a stone around the neck, taking them down. For me, it’s the letting go that’s been so problematic, that I’m still in process of learning.

Yesterday, I got to wondering on which of these things is the place between, if these three things relate to the breath. I think they do relate. Holding on is the inhale, letting go is the exhale, and that place between the breaths is the simple act of loving what is mortal. What a mistake to think that the letting go means no longer loving! The loving always sits there, spacious between the holding on and letting go. Here at Brigid, I’m slowing down and trying on being in that place, the pure loving, even as I let go. It’s worth a try!

the place between

I often find myself teaching clients how to use their breath as a fundamental meditational/magical tool. Bringing attention to their breath, I ask them to let what they need to take in and what they need to let go of come into focus. I then guide them to feel as they breathe how we are constantly taking in and constantly letting go, noticing how the place between can often equal the breathes themselves. I’m acutely aware that I’m in a time where what I’m letting go of seems to directly equal what’s coming in, and thankfully, there’s times when that place between the letting go and taking in comes sharply into focus as well.

Brigid (or Imbolc or Candlemas) is a cross-quarter pagan holiday, the place between winter solstice and the equinox. This Brigid, between the sharp grief of what’s been lost, and the almost dizzying gifts flowing in, I’m taking some time to celebrate that place between....and marveling once again on the power of three....the inhale, the exhale, the place between. Every year Brigid reveals herself to me in a new way. She is that point between the forge and the well, the inhale and the exhale, the loss and the gift, the winter and the spring. Has there ever been a year when I've felt this more acutely? Not in my memory. Thanks, triple goddess! You never cease to amaze me!

rich

Yesterday evening I came home from my son’s basketball game to find one of my goddess daughters (I’m rich in goddess daughters!) and her friend up in my ritual room. The ritual room is up in the attic, adjacent to my art studio. It was in the stepping into these rooms some 12 years ago that I knew I had to buy this house. Many psychically attuned cohorts have felt the ritual room to be a magical portal, and I’ve gotten accustomed to my role as some kind of psychic bouncer, having learned the hard way that the room needs to be cleaned and cleared out on a regular basis. Spirits seem to like to party down in the room, and left unchecked, the energy can be quite rave like. Plenty of initiations, both Reclaiming and Feri, have been done in this room, and the last four have been a blend of both, which the spirits seem to be particularly amenable to. If not amenable, they speak up, most notably with fire. This room has taught me a lot about asking permission, and listening to seemingly inanimate objects.

My goddess daughter had come by because both she and her friend had dreamt of the room, and wanted to spend time in it. They’ve decided they want to learn more about witchcraft. They were both here solstice night, and ended up talking late into the night up in the ritual room with the other teenagers. Years ago, my goddess daughter spent an afternoon up in the attic with my coven Triskets doing tarot readings. At six, she was an astute reader. Up until about 12 or so, she was very interested in magic and my gifts to her included things like tarot cards, essential oils for spell work, and every book about fairies suitable for kids. Her mother is one of my oldest friends, and while not a witch, has always encouraged me to mentor her daughter magically. These last few years my goddess daughter has been immersed in hip hop and slam poetry. Her mother and I have wondered if her interest in magic was a phase of childhood, but have also noted that her poetry is magic in itself, potent and powerful.

Last night, stirring the risotto I was making for dinner, I smiled to myself as my goddess daughter and her friend sat at my kitchen table, asking me if they could keep coming over and talking to me about magic. One of the things I’ve been recently mulling about is recognizing and taking stock of the fact that I’m part of the first generation of this culture to break away from monotheism, the first generation of this new religion of Wicca, and how strange and incredible that is. Much of what’s happened has been purely experimental and totally new territory. No wonder so many mistakes have been made! As I stirred the risotto, I felt a deep wonder at being at the start of a possibly long lineage. It’s not about being Feri, or being in Reclaiming. I’m a witch who is passing on to my goddess daughter what I know of magic, cautionary tales and all. Someday she may pass it on too. Friday night, after a poetry reading, she's coming over and wants to hang out in the attic, and talk to me more about magic. Am I blessed, or what?

the interconnectiveness of all things

This weekend was devoted to the magic of linking. It’s been close to a year that I’ve been blogging. On Friday I set the intention to come thru the weekend with my blog having links to other blogs. As I worked towards it (and it was work!) I pondered on the power of it, the complexity of the interconnectiveness. How incredible that out here in cyberspace old friends and cohorts are finding each other and building another kind of intimacy and connection! With every old connection, new ones are made as well. This blogging is creating its own ecosystem between the worlds, full of stories, with new pages nurtured by their connections to older ones, with each link creating a new pattern.

Hiking with Naomi on Saturday, we marveled at the infinite variety in nature, the variety even in the color green. This time period, when you can sense the spring straining to be sprung, elicits such a feeling of possibility. Walking thru the San Anselmo watershed, we trained our eyes to look for mushrooms and orchids, finding both in plentitude. We stopped and ran our hands over lush moss, and turned over dead branches on the ground to explore the worlds underneath. In the woods, both the sturdy and the delicate support and depend on each other, and the complexity of the interconnections is literally mind-boggling.

That evening, sitting down to candlelit dinner at a table filled with old and new friends, I marveled at the way we humans inact the complexity of the internconnectiveness going on all around us in our conversation. We naturally look for links between us, drawn to strengthening and reinforcing each one. Driving back from the Sunset, giving a ride to Elizabeth, I thought about how for most of us, this linking, this connection, is such a source of pleasure, and how the more complex our links, the richer our satisfaction. What a fantastic thing to have happen between the worlds, this linking of stories and sites in cyberspace!

I avoided settling down to figure out how to add the links to my blog until late into Sunday, but by that time, my intent in making the links was clear. Let my linking be a carrot thrown into the cosmic soup…sending ripples out which reinforce and resonate with the infinite variety of diverse connections which make this planet such a place of beauty and wonder, and may what happens between the worlds, truly affect all the worlds. This blogging is good magic.

umbrella of kindness

I walked out of my office tonight to a downfall of rain. I turned my face up to it, relishing the freshness of it, the feel of it. Seconds later, a young woman with a huge umbrella came up to me and said something I couldn’t quite understand. My guess is she was saying it clearly, but it was so surprising, I couldn’t quickly comprehend it. She was offering to share her umbrella with me, to walk me down the street. When my brain started working, and I could take this all in, she told me she wasn’t crazy, just waiting for the bus, and as long as she was waiting, she figured she’d be of service. Plus, she said, she needed some good karma coming her way.

I was loving the rain, remembering my life as an Oregonian, where rain was such a fact of life that umbrellas were eschewed and wetness embraced. Nevertheless, I joined her under the umbrella, knowing that such kindness shouldn’t be refused. We came to the end of the block just as the bus appeared a few blocks down, rounding the hill at Dolores. I thanked her, wished her much good karma, and with a wide smile and much elation, walked the next half block to my car as she ran back to the stop. How easy it is to bring happiness into this world!

justice delayed is justice denied

It’s Martin Luther King’s birthday. I spent the evening at a Youth Speaks Poetry Slam. Youth Speaks is a remarkable organization that’s mobilized young people to write poetry. My goddess daughter Hazel is in it, and my young friend Susanna, who in 9^th grade took an elements of magic class from me and rapidly became extended family. It’s an amazing group of kids from both privilege and poverty, bonded in their belief in the power of the spoken word, and you can feel the magic as soon as the first kid gets up. Poems about MLK, about first love, about striving to be “cool”, about being of mixed race, about being queer, about purely being, all had a place here. “Clap it up!” was yelled after each poet, all getting a loud round of applause, all praised for their bravery and their story. The guy who started this is one of those heroes of the Aquarian age, not taking center stage, but passing the power and glory all around. I was in tears less than a minute into it.

It was a great thing to do today. Earlier in the day, I had one of those conversations that use to unhinge me for days, but today, having dropped my role as Lucifer, it was disturbing, but not disabling. In fact, the upshot of the conversation pointed to a crack in the storyline, a shake-up in roles. One of the members of the selection committee for California Witchcamp called to talk to me about my response to a e-mail I’d been sent thanking me for applying, telling me to apply again, and letting me know that preference was given to those who teach in their home communities. Jeez. I had e-mailed back suggesting that honesty might be a better policy, and the sooner there was acknowledgement that I and a sizable group of others who do teach in our home community were blacklisted from teaching at this camp, the sooner the possibility of some healing could start. Old habits die hard.

The conversation started with the usual vexing Reclaiming doublespeak. I wasn’t picked because I’m so hard to work with, such a troublemaker, and there’s no way I’d be welcomed at a camp I say I’m blacklisted from. Whew! Now that last one is really tricky! It ended with recognition that there is a structural problem with California camp, and even acknowledgment that I’ve played a Cassandra role in the community. I said it was a little more like Lucifer, and to spread the word that Cassandra or Lucifer, that role was open to a new taker. As we talked, I felt the comfort of the detachment that’s been growing for over a year or so. Free at last! The selection committee member grudgedly admitted that what has gone down is unjust, that I’ve been scapegoated for speaking what so many others also believe but won't say publicly. She spoke of things taking time, of fear of open conflict tearing the community apart. That happened a long time back. It’s a done deal.

How refreshing to end the day in a room full of young people encouraged to tell the truth about their lives, to speak out with passion, to each be applauded for their story, in all their exquisite variations. If I had a dream, this would be it. Clap it up!

new year, new era

Tonight I will be going to a friend’s house for dinner. He’s a fabulous cook, so I know that every dish will be exquisite, every bite a pleasure. The conversation and view of the city will be as rich as the food, I’m sure. Last night Naomi drove me over to the Chabot observatory and we looked at the full moon thru the powerful telescope, being able to see up close the patterns and craters that tattoo the surface, then we laughed our way thru a swank cocktail party of L Word celebrities and ended up in her scrumptious living room discussing the mystic qualities of the alphabet. I’ve jettisoned the role of Lucifer. Reya has put another Pluto in my astrological chart, in the hopes of bringing more balance to a personality more accustomed to giving than to receiving. If the last 24 hours are indicative, this really is a new year, a new era. I’m for it.

Friday, the 13th

Today I was released from a role in a story that’s been being played out for well over a decade. Why I’ve played this role, how it came about, why this particular story was invoked and who had a part in the invocation, this remains a mystery. Perhaps more will be revealed, but right now I’m reveling in the sense of freedom, the liberation from the trappings and duties of a role I never auditioned for. Writing this tonight, with the full moon glimmering in the sky, I attempt to draw back and look at this story with a new distance, and explore my own spin. Everything feels different.

For many years I was a favored cohort of the famous witch Starhawk, the one who wrote what so many of us have called the bible of modern (is there any other?) witchcraft. I was there thru the early years when the Craft was growing by leaps and bounds. Close to two decades later, the “community” which gave birth to the now international “tradition” has become energetically codified into ceding one person the last word. Tragically, this is not what any of us wanted, including Starhawk. Being the first generation to break away from monotheism, with an overculture organized around celebrity, with a bright Star in our midst, it’s probably not surprising that we would inadvertently act out the myths and stories of monotheistic gods and their challengers. These were the stories we were raised on. At this point, Reclaiming has spilled far past it’s original container of the Bay Area, and beyond the container, things may look very different. Here in the Bay Area, a story has been working thru the community in much the same way a story is worked at a week-long witchcamp, with priestesses aspecting the roles and every cranny of the story being explored. Who could have guessed that the story we'd be working for a decade would be the story of God and his angel, Lucifer?

In two covens with Star, I had deep affection and love for her, sharing with her not only our long history, but a similar sense of humor and reverence for the irreverent. She was a good friend. Our covens were testing grounds for the tools that soon would be wielded and taught at the spreading witchcamps, and the tales of our exploits combining magic and activism would spice several of the books Starhawk would write.

During those years, my friend Reya referred to Starhawk and Rose’s home as “Studio 54”, the club in the 1980’s that only the most famous and beautiful were admitted to. It was heaven, and I was at home there. Then, something happened. Actually, many things happened, almost simultaneously, resulting in my free fall from grace and the taking on of the role that’s plagued me for years. My coven bought land together, I asked for Feri initiation, the Reclaiming collective dissolved, Starhawk hired a community member to be her personal assistant and lobbied for her personal assistant to produce our communities two big events, The Spiral Dance and California witchcamp. This personal assistant had just taken on the magical name of the protaginst in Star's novels, and has played out the role in the Bay Area community that novelist's protaginists usually do, being a kind of mini-me or shadow/mirror of the author.

During this time, I was in a study group on Feri, made up of six of us who were working towards initiation. Within a year, I was no longer in coven with Starhawk, and my study group had turned into Reclaiming’s first Feri coven, the Triskets. The Triskets were light bringers, clamoring to make things more transparent, demanding that shadows be named and brought into the light. I shudder now thinking of our intensity. We brought into the spotlight the Feri origins of Reclaiming, giving those roots a glamour and power that are still bearing strange fruit. Mistakes were made.

What was it about that year or so that invoked the Lucifer story with such force? Is this a story that has to be worked thru in the first generation of a “tradition” that breaks away from judeo-christian monotheism, or is it a story so archetypal that it will always resonate? Being first generation witches, those who are still in someway operating in reaction to the monotheism in which we are raised, did we unconsciously invoke it? Or is it indeed an intrinsic part of Feri?

Last year I watched as my dear coven sister Thorn devoted herself to the current of Lucifer, the bringer of light. This threw my other Trisket coven sisters and I into revisiting our connections to Feri. It prompted me to take another good look at the story of Lucifer and examine how a bringer of light could be so fully transformed into being percieved as the embodiment of evil. I remember the moment that with a blinding flash of bright insight I realized that if anyone was playing the role of Lucifer in local Reclaiming, it was me. I was for years a favored cohort of our famous witch. Challenging her power, questioning how we were structuring ourselves, I fell from her grace. The energy body of local Reclaiming polarized itself between the two of us. Anyone who shared similar views with me was seen in my sway, I was credited with more power than a normal mortal should have. Some idealized me, some saw me as the root of all troubles in the community. Before I realized what story was being played out, I was perpetually confounded by what was going on, and was trying constantly to clear my name. In the Lucifer story, the more you try to clear your name, the more bedeviled you become.

Today, it shifted. I can feel it. I’m free of the role. The part of Lucifer in Bay Area Reclaiming will no longer be played by Deborah aka Oak. Whew! I’m relieved. Thank you, full moon. Thank you Friday, the 13th. I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. This time, I'd really like a romantic comedy. Alright?

Reya's brilliant invite

WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading

WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2006

WHERE: Your blog

WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Bridgid, aka Groundhog Day

HOW: Select a poem you like - by a favorite poet or one of your own - to post February 2. I don't imagine zillions of bloggers will partake of this online celebration of midwinter, but I am curious to see who is called to join this project, and especially curious to read the poetry that gets published.

RSVP: If you plan to publish, will you either leave your blog address as a comment on this post, or send me an email? I'd like to collect the poems. Goldpoppy.blogspot.com

Whether or not the groundhog sees his shadow, there will still be many more weeks of winter following February 2. I think it would be nice to have a bunch of bloggers' choice poetry to read until the spring thaw.

Feel free to pass this invitation on to any and all bloggers.

long story short

It’s raining today. Since the last time I’ve written there have been mighty storms, and heart swelling bright days full of the portent of spring. A leaky roof has been repaired, a housemate’s leg has been broken, relationships have shifted and been re-aligned, and the days have increasingly gotten longer. Light is returning.

In the Craft, there’s the saying “as above, so below”. The longer I’ve been a witch, the more the sense resonates that what’s going on externally is a mirror to what is happening internally and visa versa. The wheel of the year, the tug of the seasons and the vagaries of the weather, all interact with and punctuate the narrative of this novel life.

This solstice packed some punch. I’m still recovering, but relishing what the return of the light is choosing to
shine it’s brilliance on. This is going to be some wild new year.