A question for women

Why do I feel unknown?

Why don't I know when my sister is in pain?

Why is my mother never impressed with anything I do?

Why are we, all of us, so utterly alone?

Logic is Erratic

Thank you, Ferngully

A Visit From Wisdom, by Khalil Gibran

In the stillness of night Wisdom came and stood by my bed. She gazed upon me like a tender mother and wiped away my tears, and said: "I have heard the cry of your spirit and I am come to comfort it. Open your heart to me and I shall fill it with light. Ask of me and I shall show you the way of truth."

And I said:

"Who am I, Wisdom, and how came I to this frightening place?

What manner of things are these mighty hopes and these many books and strange patterns?

What are these thoughts that pass as doves in flight?

And these words composed by desire and sung by delight, what are they?

What are these conclusions, grievous and joyous, that embrace my spirit and envelop my heart? And those eyes which look at me seeing into my depths and fleeing from my sorrows?

And those voices mourning my days and changing my littleness, what are they?

"What is this youth that plays with my desires and mocks at my longings, forgetful of yesterday's deeds, rejoicing in paltry things of the moment, scornful of the morrow's coming?

What is this world that leads me whither I know not, standing with me in despising?

And this earth that opens wide its mouth to swallow bodies and lets evil things to dwell on its breast? What is this creature that is satisfied with the love of fortune, whilst beyond its union is the pit? Who seeks Life's kiss whilst Death does smite him, and brings the pleasure of a minute with a year of repentance, and gives himself to slumber the while dreams call him?

What is he who flows with the rivers of folly to the sea of darkness? O Wisdom, what manner of things are these?"

And she answered, saying:

"You would see, human creature, this world through the eyes of a god. And you would seek to know the secrets of the hereafter with the thinking of men. Yet in truth is this the height of folly.

"Go you to the wild places and you shall find there the bee above the flowers and behold the eagle swooping down on his prey. Go you into your neighbor's house and see then the child blinking at the firelight and his mother busied at her household tasks. Be you like the bee and spend not the days of spring looking on the eagle's doing. Be as the child and rejoice in the firelight and heed not your Mother's affairs. All that you see with your eyes was and is for your sake.

"The many books and strange patterns and beautiful thoughts are the shades of those spirits that came ere you were come.

The words that you do weave are a bond between you and your brothers.

The conclusions, grievous and joyous, are the seeds that the past did scatter in the field of the spirit to be reaped by the future.

That youth who plays with your desires is he who will open the door of your heart to let enter the light.

This earth with the ever open mouth is the savior of your spirit from the body's slavery.

This world which walks with you is your heart; and your heart is all that you think that world.

This creature whom you see as ignorant and small is the same who has come from God's side to learn pity through sadness, and knowledge by way of darkness."

Then Wisdom put her hand on my burning brow and said:

"Go then forward and do not tarry, for before walks Perfection. Go, and have no fear of thorns on the path, for they deem naught lawful save Corrupted blood".

Short Fiction

8:52

Chloe exhaled, exhausted. Not the kind of exhaustion that comes after a long days work and is eased with a large meal. The kind of exhaustion that comes before the day has even begun and can only be endured with coffee. She glanced at the glowing green box numbers of her car dashboard, assuring her she achieved the seemingly impossible task of getting to work on time. The mere endeavor of getting herself out of bed was often struggle enough, but to pull her distracted kindergartner away from the colorful cereal box and to pull herself away from her clingy two year old at daycare added to the tricky morning schedule.

She took another deep breath and turned her car off, and the radio with it. She enjoyed the music in the morning. Whether it was her toddler's sing-along tape or whatever songs the stations were replaying these days, the music always served as an escape. Turning the car off in the parking lot of her office building always seemed, in some way, a defeat. Chloe clutched her day bag, filled with as many gum wrappers and cough drops as work-related items, and opened the car door.

She was hit by the cold of this early October morning. Where had summer gone? Chloe was in the habit of leaving the house without a coat. She remembered with militant diligence to dress her children appropriately, but somehow managed to disconect herself from the reality of the weather. Chloe threw shut the door and clicked the lock on her key chain. She bundled her arms around herself and sprinted for the door.

Barb who sat at reception looked up as Chloe opened the door, releasing its cold wet breath. Chloe slid into her office, slumped her bag on the chair, clicked on her computer, and made a b-line for the ladies room. Her morning routine ran like the songs on the radio - possibly without pattern, but certainly repetative. She went into the small kitchen area and poured herself a cup of coffee. She talked with Sue about their children's halloween costumes and the general impossibility of 5-year-olds. She smiled dutifully at the CEO and her other coworkers, echoing their good mornings. A few minutes later, Chloe returned to her desk and wiggled the mouse to remove the screen saver.

Half attentive to the task of entering her computer password, half distracted by the remnants of yesterday's work left on her desk, Chloe sipped her coffee and began to re-order her mind. She thought about the main objectives of her day and began to create an outline in her mind of priorities. To better get her baring she took a quick glance to the corner of her computer screen to check the time. 12:42. "Damnit, what's wrong with this piece of junk now?" Chloe murmured. She took in a long slow breath and pulled out her cell phone to find out the real time. 12:42, it mimmicked. "Impossible", Chloe thought as a sense of panic ran over her. How could she have wasted so much time? It had to be a mistake. 12:52 the clocks now read, and Chloe's eyes focused on the numbers. 12:55, 12:56, 12:57. The minutes moved on like seconds. At first Chloe was relieved, negotiating that she had misread the seconds keys for minutes keys. But this consolation soon faded as the clocked flipped, 1:00, 1:01, 1:02. Stop. STOP! Chloe hissed, hitting the sides of the computer. She took in a deep breath, swiveled around in her chair, and hopped to the door. "Barb", Choe exhaled. "Barb, something's wrong with my computer. "Barb went to lunch", Sue's voice came from her office down the hall. "Lunch? Already", Chloe asked. "It's 1:30, Chloe! Sounds like someone's been lost in their work" Sue joked. Chloe felt a prick on the back of her neck that spread round to her ears and forehead as a quiet 'no' escaped her mouth. She stood there for a while uncertain of what to make of this phenomenon. Pulling our her cell phone again, the time read "2:03". Hours, gone. Impulsively, Chloe ran from the office.

She ran down the road. She ran to the end of the road and she kept running. Chloe ran through a field and into some woods. She came upon the bank of a creek in the hallow of two hills and stopped. There she saw a bird land on a brach and then, alerted immediately to her presence, take off again. Everything else seemed to run in time. Cars still rushed by at their normal speeds. The birds did not pause for her to observe. Even the water in the creek flowed onward. Chloe was filled with rage. "Stop!" She insisted. "Stop just stop for a second!" she screamed down at the indifferent water. "I said STOP" she demanded, splashing into the water and facing the oncoming current. She knelt down in the creek bed and spread out her arms and pushed against the flow. The water rose up and over her arms. Stop, she pleaded, stop, Stop, STOP! she raged, splashing the water back into place. The water approached her calmly, where she threw it up in rebelion, kicking and slapping at the current. Chloe tried with all her might to hault the march. With limbs and water flailing all around her, Chloe could not stop it. It fell back in line behind her. In her madness Chloe slipped into a sitting position and the water turned her around. She saw that the water continued its cource behind her, uninterupted, with no sign she had been there at all.

Chloe crawled out of the water onto the muddy bank and wept. Her tears ran down her cheaks with the hostage water escaping from her hair.

Exhausted.

Not the kind that comes at the end of a long day's work, and not the kind that comes before the day begins, but the kind of exhaustion that all mortal beings sense. It was a good exhaustion. It calmed her like a heavy blanket. Chloe fell back on the ground, panting. She looked up at the trees and watched them loose their leaves. She felt the prick of those fallen leaves on her neck. She smelt the decay. It smelt sweet.

3 dreams

In the first, Keith and i, aware of an impending tidal wave, sought out a room in the top floor of the highest building. There with others, we sat in false calm. i saw out the window, towering above the building, the white crest of the imminent flood contrasting against the dark night sky. A gasp escaped my throat, alerting the others, for which I felt guilty. I held a young boy in my lap and used all my will to convey a sense of calm as I pet his hair and kissed his forehead. With a loud roar and a blinding flash of fear, I braced myself for the hit.

In the second, our community of friends fell into some conflict and Keith and I seemed to draw out the unabashed contempt of others.

In the third, I saw a skunk approaching me. I was lying on my back and instinctively tried to curl into a ball to make myself unknown. As it came closer, I tried to block it from me with my feet. The skunk attempted to break through and come closer so I tried gently nudging it away with my toes. The simple gesture incited a violent reaction, and the skunk began to bight and claw at my feet.

DreamMoods.com/DreamDictionary

Tidal Wave
To see a tidal wave in your dream represents an overwhelming emotional issue that demands your attention. You may have been keeping your feelings and negative emotions bottled up inside for too long. On a positive note, the tidal wave symbolizes the clearing away of old habits. If you are carried away by the tidal wave, then it means that you are ready to make a brand new start in a new place.

Children

To save a child in your dream signifies your attempts to save a part of yourself from being destroyed.

Skunk
To see a skunk in your dream suggests that you are driving people away or turning them off. Alternatively, the dream indicates that your suppressed anger is on the verge of exploding. You are not expressing your true feelings even though you do not agree with a decision.

Simply Occult

I was talking with my good friend Joy the other day about the wisdom of stay-at-home parents. She sent me this excerpt from a Wendell Berry Essay:

"Later in her book, Davis speaks of the wisdom of the 'valorous woman' of Proverbs 31 as a 'kind of intelligence bred through generations of work done in particular places, with particular materials, in response to concrete and immediate problems.' This articulate, humble, practical local intelligence is antithetical to imperial rule, and it is the only effective way of resistance:

The logic of empire is the centralization of information and social control; its essential processes are acculturation of local populations and appropriation of goods. Local knowledge, however, is difficult to control, since it is by definition dispersed and relatively autonomous. Nor can it be appropriated from without; [it] can be learned only from inside the community."

What really grabbed me, and I think my friend, was the truth that women, who have traditionally stayed at home and been kept at bay from academia and the wisdom of the professional world, held within them all this time a 'practical and local intelligence'. While society has deemed this state of home-bound living a pitiable weakness and vulnerability, we have the opportunity to reclaim its value, not within the bounds of empire, but as a counter imperium of autonomous rule!

In our ambitions of forming an intentional community, many of our friends have exchanged formal education and master's degrees for hours of personal study trying to reclaim that knowledge that responds to concrete and immediate needs: food, water, shelter, and health. That journey has led many of us to greater intimacy with the world, the seasons, the streams, the plants and predators and prey, new-found brothers and sisters of equal worth and countless wisdom. We seek out the wild places. We study plants and herbs for their healing and nutritional properties. And that's when it hit me: the image of Joy chanting in a tiny little home in the middle of nowhere, or Luke talking to himself or performing ceremonies alone in the woods, or Kate throwing different plants into a pot brewing up some cure for aches and pains...suddenly I saw my group of friends as a coven of witches!

While in the past I have dismissed witches as satanic and scary, I am now drawn to them as symbols of anti-empirical knowledge and feminine power. I am not talking about the religious movement Wicca, though I would not dismiss its aspects of Pantheism. I am talking about a story I have been told since I was a little girl. Look at the definitions of a witch in dictionaries: someone with supernatural powers; an ugly old woman; a seductive young woman; an herbalist. I am talking about a campaign against the greatest threat to the empire: local knowledge. This campaign slanders feminine/local power and wisdom. I am talking about the occult, or knowledge of the 'hidden', as opposed to knowledge of the measurable, or science. I am talking about that which society condemns. It's weird to live in the middle of no where. It's weird to throw plants into a pot and make your own potions. It's weird to join with nature in ceremony. It's weird to live independently of the empire.

And I like it.

Cain and Chloe

It is November, and I am still unemployed. It is November, and there are 7 billion people on this planet. It is November, and snow already covers the ground. There is a ‘perfect storm’ of factors playing into our generation’s revival of small, intentional communities, and I feel the strong draw.

In our own community, we talk about Chris Martenson's Crash Course. It has become a frightening premonition for many of us, I think, and I myself had my first Crash Course-inspired nightmare the other night.

Martenson defines debt as a claim on future work. So, in my dream, China was collecting on its debt with human labor. The citizens of the United States were occupied in rotational work camps that, like seasonal immigration cycles, followed the country's weather patterns in agricultural and factorial work. Keith and I were separated from our dream children, who I remember very distinctly to have the names Cain and Chloe.

Because I have never considered those names for children, and because I love the idea of a collective consciousness accessible through dreams, I looked into these two names.

Chloe is Greek for "young green shoot", and Cain means "reed" in many traditions, or the hollow stem of a tall grass.

In Greek mythology, Chloe is raised by people that are not her parents and carried off by raiders from other nations. Fitting for a dream set in an occupied country. Separately, Chloe is another name for the Greek Goddess Demeter. To dream of Demeter, according to DreamMoods.com, is said to represent your maternal instinct and desire to provide for your dependents. You see, Demeter is the Goddess of the harvest, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons. She presides over the sanctity of marriage, the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. I imagine it represents the part of me that is awakening to the limitations of the Earth and a growing anxiety of what awaits future generations.

In my mind, the name Cain immediately takes me to the story in Genesis. As Daniel Quinn tells the story, ancient Semitic herders would have heard the story of Cain killing Able to symbolize an old way of living being killed off to make way for the cultivation of the land. It is interesting that my growing awareness of environmental degradation as the crux of economic and political unworkability birthed a dream child named Cain.

I find it interesting that in my dream I had one child that was a green shoot, and another that was a hollow reed. I find it interesting that both have to do with a cultivation of the land. One embodies the fertility of the earth and the seasons, and upholds the sacred law of life and death. The other breaks that law and commits the first recorded murder, and it is more than the murder of a man; it marks the destruction of humanity's relationship with the natural order.