inimicable. ineffable. numinous, luminous.
I am re-reading my journals to find my gardening notes.
At the beginning of one book are scattered writings from at time
quite a while back now. There is a set of notes I took from reading
Women Who Run With The Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Life Death Lifecreation. increase. power. dissolution. death. incubation. creation. increase...
1. recieve nurturance. take sincere compliments to heart.
2. respond. chose. emote. decide.
3. be wild.
Censor nothing.
(the divine paradox)
4. Begin. fail? fail away. good. So what? yeehaw.
5. Protect your time.
" Do not disturb unless I have won the lottery or the Northern Lights are out."
6. Stay with it.
I LOVE MY CREATIVE LIFE MORE THAN I LOVE CO-OPERATING WITH MY OPRESSION.
7. Craft your real work.
and
General Wolf Rules
1. eat.
2. rest.
3. rove in between.
4. render loyalty.
5. love the children.
6. cavil in the moonlight.
7. tune your ears.
8. attend to the bones.
9. make love.
10. howl often.
When we asert our intuition, we are therefore like the starry night; we gaze at the world through 1000 eyes.
Although sweetness can fit into the wild, the wild cannot long fit into sweetness.
If there is but one root of pain, it is the refussal to learn beyond this present moment.1. dont rush anything
2. be present
3. breath with your belly
4. just be
5. it is okay
6. relax
While the notes were taken years before Cortes, the language now to me resounds of the Island, where this is part of the daily vocabulary.
It is interesting to re-read it again, as it always is. It grounds me out and makes me re-affirm the value of my spiritual life. Particularly interesting to me this time is to realize that 'ineffable' and the concept of the 'divine paradox' began here. I have chosen 'ineffable' as my email address, after a long obsession with the word.
The concept of the Great Paradox, as I have taken to calling it, even shortening it the GP in the margins of library books, is of my constant thought these days. It is the great ineffable really - it is that which is the hardest to talk about.
Through my readings for WS101 class I found the GP in Gunn Allen's work, as an embracing of the duality that much of feminist discource has worked to deconstruct. The dualitities have proven detrimental to much of our social processes and personal health. The dualitities are imbedded in our ideology and they therefor pervade our lives. Our disconnection between between consumer and citizen is an example. That this computer was made where? by whose hands? what were their lives? who did I give my money to? what institutions did I support?
I am reading Derick Jensen again.
Strangely Like War this time.
" They attacked the forest as if it were an enemy to be pushed back from the beachheads, driven to the hills, and broken into patches, and wiped out. Many operators thought they were not only making lumber but liberating the land from the trees."
Murray Morgan, 1955
Once a forest is clearcut, it would take a couple hundred years at least to regrown, it was allowed to regrow naturally. If it is planted, and becomes a fibre plantation (which is not a forest), it can only survive three successions. All the plantations so far cannot be made to grow a forth succession.
Jensen is speaking in Guelph on April 06/06.
To return to Pinkola Estes and the mythopoetic genre, I encountered that term 'mythopoetic' but a week ago, taking notes for that WS101 class. It was in a journal article written by a feminist acedemic in '94, discussing if and how the men's movement fit into the women's movement.
She believes the men's mythopoetic movement, (specifically Iron John by Robert Bly), initatory rites, and self healing work is critical to building a healthy world , healthy fathers and lovers, a healthy world for women to negotiate. If we are to have a partnership society where every blade of grass, bird, every part of myself, and yourself, where every moment is sacred - entirely sacred -
then we must accept the great paradox
of trying to talk about, and not trying to talk about the ineffable
-both of which are true, at the same time.
...to look at the sky with 1000 starry eyes.