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MINING THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES - THE POETRY, PROSE AND PAINTINGS OF EDWINA PETERSON CROSS

THE POETRY, PROSE AND PAINTINGS OF EDWINA PETERSON CROSS

MINING THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES
~ A Study and Collection ~

INTRODUCTION

I have had deep, paralyzing claustrophobia as long as I can remember. Even the thought of a small, narrow space is enough to start my heart hammering, my blood jumping sickly and trigger a full blown panic attack. There are things I can not think about. And yet . . .

In a sort of inside out, yin/yang magnetism, I am fascinated by the idea of underground labyrinths, secret passage ways, hidden staircases, sequestered lands. One of my favorite stories is the tale of The Seven Dancing Princesses who go each night down a dark, secret stair to dance the night away and wear out their shoes. One of my favorite books is the second of Ursula LeGuin’s “Earthsea Trilogy,” The Tombs of Atuan which tells of the High Priestess Arha, the eaten one and the rituals and traditions of the Darkness in a phenomenal underground labyrinth. My favorite Narnian book is The Silver Chair, much of which takes place underground and Oh! I am mesmerized by the land of Bism where salamanders dance in the fire and you can squeeze yourself some fresh juice from a ruby or a diamond. This upside down fascination seems strange and mystifying, but perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps we are always a little fascinated by our own fears.

My Great-grandfather was a miner, one who was said to have the ‘Golden Touch’ and be able to intuit where minerals ran below the surface. He was very successful and struck gold several times. If he hadn’t happen to own all the banks in the city when the Great Depression struck, I might have grown up a lot more spoiled than I did. As it was, my family still owned a mine when I was young and it became a sort of familial Wishing-rock when I was a little girl. “When we sell the mine . . .” was something we said when wishing for those things that there is no use wishing for because they are too far out of reach. In the same way I hear people say, “When I win the lottery . . .” There was always plenty of room in our lives for wishes of all dimensions and stratifications of wildness because somewhere over the crest of Cedar Mountain, up past Navajo Lake there existed: “The Mine.” Obviously, I never went even a little ways down into the mine, though my brother and sister did. I didn’t need to go inside the mine, I knew what was in there. I knew it was an endless cave of stunning wonders. It held everything material I had ever wanted and a good deal more. It was filled with the scintillating magic of possibility, the enticing enchantment of potential. It held ‘The Wish’ and was brim full of dreams. We were gifted with the ability to make that wish again and again in a million different ways all because a dark hole in the side of the mountain was ours and ‘someday’ we were going to sell it.

They are powerful words: Possibility. Potential. The inherent capacity for coming into being. Capability of existing or happening or being true. Opportunity. Choice. Opening. Expectation. This study and collection begins with possibility and potential; where two other synonyms meet at a cross roads: Prospect and Theory. It began when I saw the opening to the Alluvial mine at Soul Food Café and began to wonder about prospecting with a theory.

I had already begun the mining. Before the opening of this Alluvial mine, I had already begun to dig. In the beginning I didn’t know what I was digging for. Though I would not call it a “Golden-touch,” like my Great-grandfather, I sometimes have the ability to put my hand down and intuit when and where something is running below the surface. In this instance I put my hand against my own heart and knew that despite my claustrophobia, my panic and my fear, the time had come for me to go down into the mine, because there was work down there that had to be done.

At the opening of the mine shaft I would build a Descansos. http://www.dailywriting.net/Descansos.htm
brought me to the Descansos process as described by Jungian writer Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She writes that there is a time in a woman’s life, usually in midlife, when she has to make a decision - possibly the most the important psychic decision of her future life - about whether to be bitter or not. Estés goes on to explain that women reach the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they've had it. Dreams of the twenties may be lying in a crumple. There are broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises. To cleanse oneself Estés suggests making descansos. To make descansos means taking a look at your life and marking where the small deaths and the big deaths have taken place. There were places in that dark, terror filled mine where old wounds were spewing out toxic poison gases, doors I had slammed shut on pain and tried to forget that were now leaking black, acrid fumes that were beginning to choke me. Bitter indeed. Dr. Estés had been describing me. This is where I began. This is where I entered the mine and went down into the dark.

For roughly the last sixteen months, as a person with acute claustrophobia, both real and psychic, I have gone deep into the darkest mines of my soul and fought suffocating fears, terrors of the dark, panic at what I might find there, horror at what I might not find. I have moved a lot of slag and downed brace-timber, cracked open long sealed shafts until my fingernails bled and walked into breathless, choked tunnels amid the specter of ghosts.

One of the most important things I have learned is this: An artist cannot create with selected pieces of their being. You cannot reach inside for the power that moves and say, ‘this I cannot touch’ or ‘here I will not go.’ The seals had to be pried off the doors, the slag mined away before a vein of gold would appear or uncut diamonds burst like sparks of white fire from the dark. But more importantly the closed, choked rooms of phantoms had to be opened so the air could flow through, so the gusts could blow the dust from walls and floor, leaving me, not a deep, dark, dirty mine, but a hallowed, hollow cave of washing wind.

I am a writer. Before I walked through the doors of the Soul Food Café two and half years ago, I was a totally blocked writer; I was not writing at all. Within these walls I relearned my skill, regained my craft, recovered my art. Within these halls I called to my Muse and she came; she has never left me since that day. Now I believe that this is attributable to one of the most arcane, mystical and hidden secrets of the Soul Food Café. Within this mansion of many doors there is such a huge wealth of material that this secret could be hidden anywhere and it would be very difficult to find. The mastermind behind the operation is so clever, however, that the greatest secret of all is hidden in the place no one would ever think to look. Since you’ve made it this far with me, I will now share this secret with you. It’s hidden in plain sight.Right in the top of the front page, dead center. http://www.dailywriting.net/Zen.htm Cunning, yes?

When I went down into the dark, I knew exactly what tools that I would need. I began to write. http://www.dailywriting.net/WritingWell-Being.htm

For more than a year I worked in the darkness, with one faithful, patient witness holding a single lantern. I moved most of a mountain. I kept finding new, deeper and more intricate shafts. I began to think about supplemental tools and I began to paint as well. Then I came to that significant cross roads of Prospect and Theory. Once again it was Clarissa Pinkola Estés who pointed me down the path toward the tools. I followed her to her source and began to study the archetypes of C.G. Jung.

In a poem I have written:

I am no Jungerian scholar
I comprehend his thoughts in mist and metaphor
His concepts in analogy and image
I met him in the Dreamtime, walking

This is exactly the case. Here I have brought some of the theories of Carl Jung to my painting and my writing. I do so as an artist and not a scholar or clinician, for what has emerged is based on image and metaphor, idea and extrapolation and not the letter of his thesis. I have used Jung’s ideas as they revealed themselves to me in image and word. My goal has been development of greater self awareness, creative expression and psychological insight, both personal and in universal.

In the end, I hope to come up into the world again having passed that balance point C.P. Estés speaks of; no longer suffering from that bitterness that can rise up like black-lung from the poison vapors of unexamined wounds. The bitterness that can strangle a person’s soul and silence an artist’s voice.

I will come back into the mountain air carrying gems and precious minerals; paintings, poems, stories, as Hamlet said: “Words. Words. Words.” They will come from the bottom of the mines, they will come washed in my blood and when I hold them to the sun, some of them may be spiked with veins of gold or the milky glow of uncut crystal.

I hope to come back to the surface closer to conscious. In the end, each of us is responsible for our self and the long painful work of becoming conscious is, in truth, our only hope in a world that approaches a phase of human history where everything hangs in the balance; where the capacity for destruction may be weighed precisely against our archetypal soul’s capacity for compassion and love.

I hope to arise from the dust and find the canary in the cage is still singing.


©Edwina Peterson Cross
January 21, 2005


This collection is dedicated to Heather Blakey, who held the light unwavering, donned the blue robe with generous sensitivity, made it all possible.

MINING THE JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES

CONTENTS

1. THE SHADOW

2. THE ANIMAS

3. SYZYGY

4. THE CHILD

5. THE SELF

6. THE MOTHER

7. MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER

8. THE PERSONA

9. THE FAMILY

10. THE HERO

11. THE MAIDEN

12. THE GUIDE

13. THE ANIMALS

14. THE TRICKSTER

15. ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS

Unless otherwise noted, all writing and all painting
is the work of
Edwina Peterson Cross

Author's Notes

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Those familiar with the Archetypes of CG Jung may find even my metaphors and images traveling wide. For instance, I do realize the in looking at the archetype of THE CHILD, I should be considering the child within myself. Some of the poetic selections deal with my own children rather than the child within. Or do they? That is the question of course. What do you learn about the child within, by looking at the child without? What do you discover about the nurturing of self in the way you come to nurture others? There are many of these MIRRORED METAPHORS in the poems, prose and paintings included here. Often there is more than one mirror. The subsections in THE CHILD are Jung’s and added a fascinating dimension to the subject.

The archetypes are not organized in any particular order - other than the first five being the archetypes most often examined in studies of Jung. THE SHADOW, THE ANIMA/ANIMAS, SYZYGY, THE CHILD, THE SELF. This study originally began as an investigation of just these five archetypes. Then it grew. And grew!

It is perhaps unfortunate that THE SHADOW happens to be the most commonly examined of the archetypes. Since it is, it is where this collection begins, which means that the very first selections you will see are somewhat dark. I do hope you will go on, past this darkness, as there are many different dimensions, textures and degrees of illumination that follow.

Many of the images and concepts, you will find, are anything but traditional. For instance, traditional images for MANA - SPIRITUAL POWER most often revolve around phallic and lingam symbols, cultural implications that are associated with male sexuality. I have seen something different; a loosely connected collection of images which called to me. Images, which I was intrigued to note, feature, quite a bit of fire.

THE HERO is also probably not what you expect. The Hero’s quest I choose to explore is not the usual tale. There has been a cultural upheaval in women’s ‘roles’ in the last fifty years. I began to wonder where a woman looks for a mentor, a guide or a ‘hero’ now. I looked for images, listened for metaphors - and answered myself.

Archetypally, Jung considers THE ANIMALS as they interact with the human psyche. This selection features the animals that have called to me, artistically, in the last year, I think that is probably a good indication, not of the universal psyche, but of my own.

I read in several places that Jung’s identification of THE FAMILY archetype had to do with blood ties. Regardless of what the original intent was, this is a concept whose time is past. There are innumerable configurations for the word “Family” now, being related by blood is only one. The majority of this section deals with my personal shaping of the word “Family.” However, in acknowledgment of what “Family” truly means, this section begins with a painting of the Bell-Poulson family, one of the most fantastic families I know. Not one of these people is related to any other one by blood. All of them are related to each other by LOVE. Love is what makes a family.

As a note on the section titled THE MAIDEN: I consider “Maiden” to cover the period of a woman’s life between Childhood and Motherhood or taking up her Life Task and have never deemed that it had a thing to do with her sexual activity. I thought I better clarify that before some of my Maiden’s started pointing out that they didn’t think they qualified any more. Again, tradition does not reign here. You will not find these Maidens waiting helplessly for someone to come and rescue them.

The final section includes four concepts that I would like to consider in more depth at some time. Each one is represented by just one painting. They are concepts linked to Jung, but not archetypes and are therefore ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS.

The fourteen archetypes I have chosen are by no means the only ones. How did I choose which ones I would address? Yes. I listened for metaphors and looked for images. In other words: I picked those that interested me. The older I get the more I find this to be an excellent way of proceeding in life, all the way around.

I do hope you enjoy what you find here.

~ Edwina Peterson Cross

Mirrored Metaphors

THE SHADOW

THE SHADOW - OF COLD

The Shadow of Cold


I.
Some find the shadow in darkness
In vine haunted forests of rot and mould
The shadow of my soul awaits
In the barren blue wraith of cold

In a world without joy or gladness
Too cold for sigh or tear
Nothing lives in the frozen waste
But the whisper of a frigid fear

A fear that unbinds all reason
Leaving nothing that I can prove
A fear that freezes every cell
And leaves me unable to move

Unable to access water or air
Or to call on the power of fire
Unable to feel dejection, delight
Bright passion or dreaming desire

Unable to laugh, unable to cry
A paralyzed, helpless disease
Curves my spine, drops my head
Numbs my muscles until they freeze

Shadow of impotence and blue ice . . .
Not what I would have chosen
Powerless, useless, immobile
Bound and locked and frozen



II.
I have found the shadow secreted
I have found the power to tame it
I have called it from the blue ice fields
Because I am able to name it

I know the fear of freezing
I know from where it came
I know the fear of fear itself
I have given it a name

I know of crippling shame
I know of ice cold dread
I broke the back of the shadow
When I learned to lift my head

I couldn’t have tracked the shadow
If I hadn’t have known it
I couldn’t have swallowed the shadow
If I hadn’t come to own it


©Edwina Peterson Cross

Nightwoods


While we walk
In the wilderness of the shadow woods
All we know is it’s twining darkness the
Sense of the unknowable exhaling wildness
Lacing the next reaching root, the next
Whipping branch that reaches out to slice
Our face with unexpected purpose
The smell of something breathing on the neck,
The touch of panic threading through the blood
The raw, panting, single note of
Fear

We could walk those woods by daylight
And note that the path is clear and wide
That there is nothing menacing anywhere
And laugh at ourselves for the our way our blood
Had beat in our throat or the way our knees had felt
Each rustle in the underbrush when the world
was painted with ink and omen,
We could walk the same path with a huge, bright
Lantern, washing away the night, showing the same
Clear path, and we could laugh at ourselves again, but
That would be foolish

A lighted wood and
A wood of darkness
Are not the same place
At all

We hope to learn to walk the dark
To breath the blackness with even calm
To intuit reaching roots and whipping boughs
And learn to dance around, moving through the dimness
With the eyes of a hunting cat, the balance of a deer
To come to still the jump of panic in the blood
Smooth the raw, panting, strangled note of
Fear

We come to learn to face the night
Not turn the
Darkness
To Day


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

onion, apricot, adagio, a face turned to the light
so the shadows fall like sighs against the
cracked pavement
candles, chocolate, fingers placing spoons against
rose colored napkins in the shade of an oak tree

such things can be
for beauty’s sake alone

water
still through the rainbows of cut crystal
harp strings
fog settling into the bottom of the valley

I try to remember
Each piece that isn’t pain
Each piece whose average, unexceptional perfection
Might spell salvation

Pink satin slippers
A rosewood pen
The thick wool of a well made hat
Blood on my fingers the color of

Rain

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

Shadow Sonnet V

Darkness black like polished rain
Licks the sides of night
Breaks the fragile back of pain
Broken wings of flight

Waiting still for something hollow
To echo from the void
There is nothing left to follow
No remains to be destroyed

Absent even loss, and sorrow
From this vacuum slick and black
Forfeit up a sold tomorrow
You cannot buy it back

Cold as a missing midnight stone
An empty echo of the word ‘alone’

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

Shadow Song IV

Sing a song of something taken
A song that echo’s twice
Slumbering heart that will not waken
Frozen like a vice
Moths will fry against the moon light
Songs will break at dawn
In the stuttered, staggered numb night
All will soon be gone
It takes back what can’t be given
What is split and railed
Darkness, broken can’t shriven
The cold black coffin’s nailed
Daylight that will not be breaking
Leaks like tears through rain
A body frozen is not aching
Death knows no song of pain


© Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

Shadow Sonnet XI

The roses wither, droop and dry
Their color grows intense
A sagging sunset colored sigh
Rot sweetened, dusty scents

The candles melt and sputter
Wax grows transparent, warm
Runs like melting butter
Assumes a different form

I danced on polished hardwood floors
I danced on breaths of air
Swallowed the sound of closing doors
And came to this stock-still chair

Pooled wax hardens without thought or sound
Rose petals scatter like poems on the ground


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

Paradox

I feel a wry piece of a legacy
Sylvia Plath's head in the oven
Rocks in Virginia Woolf's pockets
Hamlet's oh so omnipresent consummation
Devoutly to be wished

The pain whispers endlessly
Flatly, prosaically:
"What is the point?"
And what has poetry to do with this?

Syphilis took both Mozart and Schubert
One damp, late night binge and it's following fever
Lifted Shakespeare from this world
Like an errant piece of cambric in the wind
So much for reason
To go with your rhyme

I wanted my children
With a rock deep, earth splitting passion
And now, in a silken sort of irony
They hold me here
A quivering butterfly stiff pinned to a card
Not with malice, but with love
And a need that, while diminishing,
I still must listen to
I still must hear
Despite the ceaseless, seductive, sibilant whispers of the
Pain

Now I know
I will never fly again
Never the freedom of the bright blue wind
Never the rush of a blazing, liquid sky
But there will be no euthanasia
No kindly bottle filled with desensitizing fumes
No easing oven, no numbing stream
I will continue
I will tremor and flutter
Wobble and twitch
Pinned within this
Pain
Trapped
Within this
Paradox


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

Taking Xanax for Pain

Given shrieking pain or bone gnawing fatigue, I'll take fatigue in a second and this
hot sharp pain has wound me up like a toy until my springs shudder and shake
and I think they will recoil, snap, sending me wild, an explosion that will
Not explode, a collapse that will not give, a break down that just winds tighter until I rupture scatter into a million pieces, but even that won’t be allowed
But then
the panic begins to recede like a syrup tide, taking the tightness taunt
tense frozen taking the fright, alarm, shuddering recoil, trepidation
that was closing in double fists over the already
Insufferable intolerable unbearable that must be suffered tolerated born
The graphic twisting pain may dim, not depart but may be muffled
pushed down with a damper that presses hard for the pain may become pressure and ache

No. The bright piercing pain hasn't gone at all, it just
Doesn't matter
the exhaustion is close on the footsteps of the fierce pain
now running together, pacing one another, running through over throughout
Up and down down and up up and down
All those clear overlays in the encyclopedia H
For "Human"
clear pages laid one by one over a still very silent man that
Dale Jackson and I used to look at in kindergarten, the huge book on both of our laps our feet sticking straight out from the couch turning translucent pages with fascination
Pain has run shrieking up and down each and every transparent page
each and every system over and over eternally forever and now again this
wearing exhaustion paired with the suddenly unimportant pain
Goes burning up and down skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive
vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous nervous nervous
Nerves and my head wants to keep dropping forward, but the fire doesn't seem to matter anymore because the panic is gone

and Dale is gone. He faced the virus, plague of a new century, viralpoison screaming up and Down over and through all those translucent pages, he fought
for skeletal muscular respiratory reproductive vascular excretory digestive circulatory nervous and lost

Somewhere in time, two little children sit with the H encyclopedia on their laps
feet sticking straight out from the couch turning transparent pages with
fascination, but not knowing
not knowing at all what it
Means


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF PAIN

LEGACY

To whom can I leave my rosewood pen
Soaked with starshine and with blood?
To whom can I will my veins of ink
That pulse with ebb and flood?
I’m circled by people who love
But few who understand
That I build this world of words and light
On a plain of pain and sand
Who will know the exquisite agony
Of questing the perfect word?
Of feeling your heart thrown open
When you know that your words are heard?
Who will feel the strength of the mountain top?
And the panicked black canyons between?
Who will taste that behind the laughter
Runs a river of tears unseen?
Who will know that being strung on a wire
Is a curse, but a blessing as well
For I do wring the power of words from pain
And mine beauty from the dark depths of hell
Who will walk the path my pain has cleared,
Though the way is still narrow and rough?
Who will know that deep in the darkest despair
The light and the words are enough?

~ For Laurence Estlin Walsh ~

©Edwina Peterson Cross
April 3, 2004

THE SHADOW - LEGACY FOR LAURENCE

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

What is the sound when Art dies?
As magic melts into mundane?
Is a miracle something that cries?
As it rusts in a workaday rain?

Do creative sparks rip the sky,
If they fall to the cold ground unused?
Do dreams scream when they die,
When the dreaming’s been bruised and abused?

What is the sound when Art dies?
Can you hear a soul wasting disease?
Can you hear breath and bone turn slowly to stone?
Can you hear when a heart starts to freeze?

What is the sound when Art dies?
Can’t we hear with a pin-point acumen
The sound of a massive demise
If humanity kills what is human?


©Edwina Peterson Cross


FUNDAMENTALIST GROUP TRIES TO SILENCE SMALL THEATRE COMPANY
Monday, February 7, 2005, Grants Pass, OR - Connect the Dots Theatre Company, a small community theatre organization, has been targeted in recent days by a small group of local fundamentalists who are using letters, phone calls and e-mails to harass the theatre company and attempt to erode their financial support from local businesses.

This poem was written in response to this crisis near my own home town. The crisis continues all around us from direct attacks like this to attacks on funding for the Arts on every front. Please help humanity retain that which makes us human - PLEASE SUPPORT THE ARTS.

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

I like irony
It’s rather full bodied and rich, with a smoky note
It swirls ruby in the cup and smells of humor,
Albeit a little sour,
Kirsh/licorice, fruity and incongruous

There they stood this morning
Having nothing whatsoever to do with each other
Two words, two concepts,
Too universal, too pandemic
To relate in any sentient way
“Truth is Beauty, Beauty truth.”
Ponderous. Pedantic.

Then there was a sensual touch of thought
Breath on my skin; tangible and clear
Once again your woven words
Have brought everything
To a piercing point
Of recognition

Ah, Mr. Yeats, reach your hand through time
And join me in a cup of rich ironic red
Your words have lit and mapped my heart
Let us drink to the black beauty of this pale truth you tell
The sheer white truth of beauty’s deep, dark spell

Earth in beauty dressed
Awaits returning spring.
All true love must die,
Alter at the best
Into some lesser thing.
Prove that I lie.

Such body lovers have,
Such exacting breath,
That they touch or sigh.
Every touch they give,
Love is nearer death.
Prove that I lie.

W. B. Yeats

©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls ~ It tolls for thee.”
(John Donne)

"I have felt a great disturbance in the force."
(Obi-Wan/George Lucas)

Glistening drops in a sea of potential
Spirits bound to spirits by our search for more
We Dance through our journey, reaching out . . .
Grasping hands, sharing thoughts, touching hearts
Building, growing, learning to become
What will be whole
What will be knowledge, beauty, understanding
What will be god goddess heaven eternity
What will become the ultimate: Love

Sudden loss declares itself
In bloated flesh, splashed blood and grinning bone
In pain, anguish, and grinding grief
Pieces of wholeness slip from our fingers
We stumble in the dance
The monstrous brown wave
Crashes over all our heads
Their screams tear through our throats
We are all diminished, all bereaved
By the unfathomable, immense multitude
Of radiant possibilities
That have suddenly
Gone still


©Edwina Peterson Cross
December 29, 2004

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

A town
A small space of earth
Lives layered like sedimentary rock
Rich sandstone stripes of remembrance and vision
Here we were together, here we grew
We lived, we laughed, we loved
A town
A small space of earth
A name

In the dark of this new winter dawn
Through a mist of tears
I shuffle my towns like laminated dreams
Laying their bright names across my knees

WellsvilleWoodbridge
AttleboroAshlandOccoquan
LosAngelesLeadvilleLeetownLamoineLogan
CedarCitySilverSpring

They sing like crystal chimes
In a clear high mountain wind
Each name is precious
Each full of meaning, memory, marrow

One is the birth of red rock desert hills
Spiced with cedar and sage
Another is forever in a thousand shades of green
Sweet with pine and stars
One brought me my hearts desire
Amidst the rolling mist of a sea washed shore
One taught me to walk in beauty
Inside the sacred circle of the Rockies Wasatch wheel

In the dark of this dawn
Through a mist of tears
I know that the world is made of this:
Not huge cosmic concepts or prodigious precepts
But these small private places of the heart

Meaning, memory, marrow
Lives layered like sedimentary rock
Rich sandstone stripes of remembrance and vision
Where we grew, we lived, we laughed, we loved
A small space of earth
A town
A name

And I hear the shadows whisper
Among the crystal chimes . . .
Anatevka
Darfur
Fallujah


©Edwina Peterson Cross
November, 2004

THE SHADOW - OF LOSS

Honey smoked wood of Egypt
Turned on a lathe of time
Glossed by oil of a thousand hands
Tear cured in a vat of brine

On the other side of nothing, I,
Sit plaiting barren words
Weaving futile tinctures of light
And counting wood
Dichetal do Chennaib

Hang your harp in the tree, hang yourself, one eyed man
For what wisdom is worth in the end
Bite the apple, bite the sky
Both will turn to wormwood in your mouth
Bitter as gall in Gilead

If I tore my throat with a Valkyrie’s wail
Would it buy a cup of comfort?
To what end this eternal spinning
If it will not weave a piece of gauze
That will staunch this heartsblood flow?

The Banshee brings a rattling coach
Wood for a lychgate or bier
I see the darkness, hear the pain
Where is the fire for the Phoenix?

Shears and knives and scythes of steel
Wooden handles wear-sanded smooth
Who will teach my frozen fingers
To make a simple knot?

Smash your loom, hang it up with the harps
In this vast branching bentwood of Ash
There is no cup of comfort
No spiders lace for this monstrous pain
Save time
And what comfort is time?
The ravens gather with hungry eyes

So I whisper to the wind that moans through severed strings
Of harp and of loom and of heart
I am here
Helpless incapable powerless
With nothing to offer
I am here

He spun in the wind where the ash tree stood
A Wise Man in a dark, blood spattered hood
The spinner said, ‘tis understood
That in the end, it all comes to wood


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW

Burqa

My boyfriend said he didn’t like people looking at my legs.

“Everyone looks at everyone’s legs” I said, “it’s this thing called a mini skirt”
“No, they look at yours more.”
“OK, so I’ve got good legs. Sue me.”
“You could do something about it.”
“Put everyone’s eyes out with the pin of a broach?” I suggested. “It worked for Oedipus.”
“You could take your hems down.”

I was still for a long, long moment. “Down to where?” I asked quietly, “down to my knees? The skirt I worked in last summer comes down to my knees
Did it stop people from looking at me?”
He looked at the ceiling, he knew perfectly well that it didn’t.
“Down to where?” I asked again, “down to my ankles?”
Now he looked at the floor.
I lifted a handful of long, gold hair.
“What do I do with this? Dye it mouse colored? Must I cut it off? Or just cover it all the time?”
“What do I do about my face? Do you know where I can catch a good old fashioned case of small pocks?”

“What is it you want sweetheart” I asked softly.
“I . . . I want other guys to stop looking at you.”
I sighed. “As far as I can see, the only thing for you to do is get me a burqa. It seems the logical thing as well, because it is what you really believe in, it’s what you really want.” His face had folded at the forehead. “What the hell is a burqa?”
I shrugged, “Its sometimes called an abaya, or a chador. It is a long, black garment worn by Muslim women to cover their body, it covers every inch of the body, with only a grid that you look through. Everything is covered so nothing can be coveted. It says to the world: “You may not look, this body belongs to someone else, it isn’t even mine to show to the air, because my body belongs to someone else.” “For hells sake,” he said exasperated, “that is not what I want.”

My eyes had narrowed dangerously and my lips were pressed tight. I was very, very quiet for a long minute. “Yes, it is, it really is, it is exactly what you want. The problem is . . . The big, huge problem is, I will never, never, wear one. Never. Not for real, not figuratively. I won’t take down my hems. I won’t cover my hair. I will not be less than who I am. I will not cover who I am. I will NOT cover who I am for you or anyone else. You want a girl in a burqa, you go find another girl.”

~

How sure is seventeen
Sure of every moral fight
Lines drawn in the sand
Are always black and white

How sure is fiery youth
When we have every clue
And know exactly what we would
And would not ever do

Then life came in tangles
A game you had to play
Where people wore false faces
And black and white was grey

I pledged my love to one man
And everything was rearranged
But the world only saw my body
And couldn’t see the change

I worked and studied learning
To be the best I could become
The world looked at my face and hair
And said, ‘this women’s dumb.’

I didn’t know when it happened
It was something that didn’t show
But slowly, steadily, secretly
Black fabric began to grow

A colleague at work, a stranger
It began to panic and chafe
And then my best friend’s husband
I knew that I was not safe


One day my pants won’t zip
So I buy a bigger size
Three months later, another pair
The black web begins to rise

I keep getting bigger
And unlike at seventeen
Nobody turns to look now
I move through the world unseen

I will never cover up who I am!
I once said so strong and sure
Now I see the world through a woven grid
Swathed in black from my head to the floor

I wove this burqa out of fear
A cave in which to dwell
It isn’t made of cloth or flax
But it covers just as well

It is ponderous, ugly and awkward
And I hate it, of course,
When I think of how I used to move
I am sick with a deep remorse

Sometimes I stop and consider
Taking the thing away
I could feel the air again
I could stand in the light of day

I could dance again in the summer wind
I could end this shrouded sham
I could stop being someone else
I could uncover who I am

But here I am behind these bars
Stabbed with fear that makes me doubt it
What if I took my burqua away
And I could not live without it?

What would I do when the cover came off
No longer safe behind the screen
How would I walk out into the world
Knowing that I could be seen?


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE SHADOW - BURQA

THE ANIMAS - MERLIN

THE ANIMAS/BELOVED

~ One of Jung's interpreters held that the anima/animus character
was only understandable to those who have known true love. ~

I am no Jungerian scholar
I comprehend his thoughts in mist and metaphor
His concepts in analogy and image
I met him in the Dreamtime, walking

But I understand the anima/animus
Down to spit, pith and marrow
It is a weaving I like, a net for thought
I find attractive and entrancing, more so because
It holds water

~

I.
I projected what I wanted, I loved what I had
Projected because it was already
Mine

The times we said we were too close to be
Two people, too much to be apart,
We were simply
Right

And what I loved so much in you, was mine
All along
Animus/beloved the other side of who
I am

I will take your laughter,
Your quick mind,
Vivid dreams, creative spark,
Your utterly unique expression
And string them like pearls
On a wire of living light
I will add your gentle hands,
Ingenious ideas,
Soft words,
Sharp wit,
The love in your eyes and
I will tie a circle with your tears

Then I will compass my throat
With this circuit of pearl
And push them through ‘til they
Click on bone
Breathe bone, become bone
From this bone they were birthed
From this bone they became
Now they are
Recalled
Returned
Restored
To make
Me
Whole

Friend/lover
Brother/sister
Soul-mate

Mine


II.
Speak from my dreams, my mythic muse
The other side of the mask
Speak leather to lace, bone to breast
A shadow that’s harlequin cast

The dynamic strength of words
The powerfulness of action
Stretch sinew to my curving
Blend strength to my compassion

Mixed potency of power
Splice spirit to my sensitive soul
Sculpt something clear and round
Translated, vibrant, whole

Coming at last to understand
I needn’t fear the other part
It is no hostile generic specter
But half of my harmonic heart



III.
The dream picks the form - sign, symbol, persona
Surfing through mythos on a rainbow wave of vision

“How the anima/animus appears reflects either the condition or needs of our soul presently” ~ That’s what the man said.
You gotta listen to what the man said. Besides

Jung said that the animus is more likely to be personified by multiple male figures, while the anima is frequently a single female. The anima/animus appears in Symbolism in Dreams and Narratives: a peer figure of the opposite sex to the ego-bearer to whom he/she has a strong and compelling tie or bond, mythological attachment, often a lover, brother/sister, soul-mate.

He dips the quill into the ink, which sloshes across his already stained fingers. I look over his shoulder. “Whatcha writing?”
He looks back at me with a small smirk. “Words. words. words.”
“Smart ass.”
He laughs through his nose and continues to scribble.
“I’ve got this incredible story . . .” he says. “Well no. It’s not that it’s an incredible story, it’s that the characters and starting to come alive here, which is MAKING it an incredible story.” He dips into the ink again. His eyes look bright and slightly fevered, his hands are moving so fast that the ink is splotching and splashing. “My hands won’t keep up with my head!” he exclaims. I know the feeling. I know the look in his eyes. I decide to leave him alone. I walk to the window to see that the world is swathed in a soft grey fog.

While my back is turned the Bard becomes a Wizard. It is always happening, doesn’t bother me in the least. I turn around to the smell of apple blossoms and find him examining his hands. “Ink. It never really comes off you know. Why does he have to be such a slob?”
“Ink. I don’t think it’s been invented, dear. I think you have to write on wax with a stylus, but I’m not sure.”
“Doesn’t help my cuticles.”
“Humm. Merlin?”
“Humm?”
“When does a story become a myth?”
“Oh, goodness, I think you are assuming some things here. What makes you so sure a myth starts out as a story?”
I raise an eyebrow. “But myths ARE stories. What else would they start as? I mean, even if they are true stories, they are still stories.”
“Even so, there are all sorts of places that a story has to go before it becomes a myth. You can’t discount legends, folklore, fables . . .”
“Right. That was my point. When does something cease to be a story and become something else?”

He is patting him self all over his robe with a distracted visage.
“What are you looking for?”
“Pipe and tobacco.”
I shake my head. “Don’t go turning into Gandalf while I’m talking to you. Merlin doesn’t smoke.”
“Right. Well. Look here above your desk. Frazer, Graves, Campbell, Estes. Briggs. Don’t you find that a rather unholy combination if you are trying to make up your mind about story and myth?”
“No, because I’m not going to make up my mind from what one person says.”
“Not even me?”
“Most definitely not even you! Though, I’ll add your opinion to The Powers-that-be.” I jerked my head at the books above the desk.
He laughs softly “You are not going to make up your mind at all. You just like kicking the idea around. Your stories are all mixed up with dreams and fantasies, reveries and illusions anyway. Bubbles. Speaking of which, where is Jung?”
“Laying open on the desk.”
“Figured he had to be around here somewhere.”

I pick up the book, but when I turn back he has changed again. I smile slowly. “Hi Pal.”
“What are we reading?”
“Jung.”
“Oi vey. Too much brain work. I vote for Yeats.”
I reach for another book and hold out my hand.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats
There we've hid our fairy vats
Full of berries
And of Reddest Stolen Cherries.

Come away oh human child
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand
(W.B. Yeats)


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE ANIMAS - YIN/YANG

THE ANIMAS - ANDROGYNY

THE ANIMAS

Avalanche

Come with me to the meadow
And I will dance
I will dance until the sun splits into a million gleaming shards
Bright as heaven, sharp as silver
That will crown the top of the world
With a lucent light
As pure and piercing as the past

Come with me to the meadow
And I will dance
Until my feet bleed snowmelt flowers:
White lace arnica, cream filled lilies, blue columbine etched with gold
Larkspur, lupine, nodding limpid bluebells
Simple white daisies
Flung wildly open to the brilliant slashing sun

Come with me to the meadow
And I will dance a note of such sweet pure music
As this thin air has never tasted before
I will dance a note so clear and clean
That it will shatter diamonds, scatter light, surmount the sun
A note that will shake the soft spring air
Like a still, single cyclone,
Splintering the silence,
Slicing the sheer skin that spellbinds the snow
Until it shivers, shudders, sighs
And slides

Stay with me in the meadow
When the sharp shards of the sun go out
When the roiling whiteness settles all around like a lake of light
When all the world is silent . . .
Sing for me in the meadow
And I will hold your voice in my mouth like snow
Like silence, like silver, like splinters, like sorrow
Then softly
I will swallow

Stay with me
In this mountain meadow full of moon
Milk on marble
Pearls on platinum
Alabaster kissing alabaster
Like a promise never broken
Like a love never lost
My pale bare feet against the
Silent snow

Come my love and I . . .
Will

Dance



©Edwina Peterson Cross

Avalanche is the First Place Winner of the 2004
Palabras Press ~ Dance-With-Words Poetry Contest

THE ANIMAS - AVALANCHE

SYZYGY

SYZYGY - The Dance of the Archetypes

Dance of Archetypes

Here some Archetypes jumble on the page. Is this all the Archetypes there are? By no means. It is an interesting list however. I look at them. Some of them are familiar. I smile. Some of them are so familiar that I know their embarrassing childhood stories. Some of them know mine. Some of them are foreign. Some of them are threatening. Some of them are neutral. Which will I dance with?

Actor Addict Alchemist Anarchist Artist Avenger Bureaucrat Beggar Bully
Caregiver Child Clown
Companion Coward Craftsperson Crone Crook Damsel
Detective Dictator Dilettante Diplomat Disciple Diva Dreamer Eternal Boy/Girl Evangelist
Fool Gaia Gambler God Goddess Gossip
Healer Herald Hermit Historian Innovator Judge Knight Liberator Lover
Magician Martyr Masochist
Matriarch Midas Monk Muse Mystic Nature Boy/Girl
Networker Nun Olympian Patriarch Pilgrim Pioneer Poet Politician Predator
Priest Prince Princess Prophet Prostitute Provocateur
Puck Puppet Puritan
Rebel Redeemer Rescuer Revolutionary Robot Saboteur
Sadist Sage Samaritan Scholar Scout Scribe Seductress Seeker Seer
Servant Settler Shaman Sidekick Slave Spoiler Storyteller Student Teacher
Thief Tramp Trickster Tyrant Vampire Victim
Visionary Warrior Witch
Wizard Zombie

Some of them will speak to me, will seek me out. Some of them will know automatically that they belong to me. Others will take some thought. In a mutual dance of electing, my Archetypes and I will choose each other.

Caregiver Artist
Crone Child
Detective Eternal Boy/Girl
Dreamer Gaia
Fool Goddess
Healer Mystic
Historian Seeker
Knight Student
Magician Alchemist
Matriarch Lover
Muse Princess
Poet Scribe
Puck Seer
Rebel Teacher
Scholar Trickster Witch
Seductress Storyteller Wizard

Now. Just as an experiment, what if I had to give some of them up and keep others? It is an exercise that is only academic, of course, for I will surely keep them all, and add more if the time comes when they fit. Sometimes an archetype is outgrown and not active any more. Still I keep even those, for their history is wired into who I am now, through who I was then. But if I had to narrow it down, which ones fit best? Which could easily go and which ones could I just not stand to part with?

I begin to narrow, to cull, to examine each Archetype more closely to see which attributes pull me the most strongly, which ones I will wear most often.

Caregiver Crone Dreamer Seeker
Magician Matriarch Muse Poet
Scholar Seductress Wizard Storyteller Artist Child Mystic
Lover Teacher Goddess Rebel


And Again . . .

Caregiver Dreamer Poet
Scholar Storyteller Artist
child Mystic Goddess Seeker

And yet again . . . closer to the bone . . . closer to the mirror. . . closer to the dream . .

Dreamer Poet Child Artist Seeker

How can I let go of one of these? OK, it’s academic. Well then . . .

Dreamer Poet Child Artist

Dreamer Poet Artist

Poet Artist

Can I do it? Can it be done? Can I take it down to one?

Poet

Indeed. And with that . . . the word is said.
And something worth knowing is known.

SYZYGY

Syzygy

Singing to a Womb of Words

(Shadow meets the Soul to become whole
Skadi sits and grins while her snow spindle spins . . . )

I sing into a empty room
Of stones and pain and dark bloods bloom
She smiles as she sits at her vein strung loom
Knowing well that I should not presume
Nor speak out loud from the depths of the gloom
Drawing faces on the walls of a midnight tomb
Wondering why I assumed what I should not assume
I’ve always known I was alone in the room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What did you think?” The spinner laughed
Like a shush of slithering snow
“You, whose hands are dyed with the craft
You certainly ought to know.

Stretch the heart strings then weave the woof
In colors that dream and fly,
Push out the walls and raise the roof
Burst open to cradle the sky,

Entwine the horizon with vertical thought
Wreath patterns in circles of song,
Then taste the blessed vision you’ve wrought
Much wider than empty is long

This room is not empty, but brimming with chance:
A bright womb of words that are waiting to dance.”


©Edwina Peterson Cross

SYZYGY - Megan's Rose

THE CHILD

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

Lacquer

In her carseat carrier in the doctor’s waiting room
Her starfish hands seek her mouth
Like two celestial space flowers, opening and closing
In a liquid, arrhythmic flow that is purely, impeccably
Almost two-months-old
“Almost two months”
You tell me when I ask, raising her from the seat in a
Single, smooth, seasoned step to your shoulder
Where a receiving blanket waits with prescience
Over your practical denim work shirt

I see your eyes travel to my hands and an eyebrow lifts
At my cranberry flame acrylic nails
You turn your back, our conversation over
My lacquered hands having automatically sorted me as “other”

You have no way of knowing that this is the first polish
I have worn in twenty-five years
No way of knowing that I still rock grocery bags
Or the way my head whips around
When a tiny voice in a crowd calls “Mommy!” although
My baby’s voice is now a low, deep basso
You have no way of knowing
That I now must look up to see that baby’s face
Yet, when the nurse calls my name, and I pick up my things
I will spend at least a fraction of a second
Searching for the diaper bag

I cut off my long hair twenty-five years ago
And never grew it back
Starfish tangled in it like complex chestnut kelp until
It was more trouble than it was worth
I spent years without earrings
For the searching starfish quested the brightness
Discovered, clenched and pulled

Through much of my life, I wore your uniform, right down to the
Prescient receiving blanket
I know the dance you weave by heart
I walked and rocked the same patterned steps
My hands automatically patting an ancient, age-old scansion
Softly against a tiny back

It was such a very short while ago
That I put on a skirt and earrings that hang down
That the starfish I loved slipped out of my fingers
And I painted their tips with cranberry flame


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

Senior Year

I feel your impending absence
Like a phantom limb
Not yet severed

I follow you around
With college brochures
Questions
Suggestions
Poems
You must feel you will trip
Over me
Every time you
Turn

While you are still physically here
Your eyes look through me
I feel your intention
Moving
Out the door
Down the road
Across the country
Away

I try
Not to look too long
Listen too hard
Or touch too much

My meditation
To learn to open these hands
Meant to shelter
Which might smother now

Uncurl the clenching
And simply
Let go

And you
Gracefully
Side step my anxious
Following tread
And graciously pretend
Not to feel my tears
In your hair
In the dark


©Edwina Peterson Cross

THE CHILD - CIRCLES

First Flight

The nest outside my window is full.
Last week they were tiny, wet
with fine, fuzzy, down-covered heads
eyeless, mewing for something
not knowing what or why.

Back and forth the mother soared,
life focused, never stopping
filling the need of the open crying mouths
then flying straight for more.

In just one week
they have become
birds.
Speckled breasts and fluffed up wings,
small sharp beaks and bright black eyes
that now know the need;
fill the belly and then
the sky!

They stand in the nest
ruffling feathers,
flexing wings,
experimenting.
On the hard concrete below
one small body has already broken.

Mother bird is flying faster now.
Will she find enough
to give them what they need?
She senses spring
is almost gone.
Time is short.

And mine . . .
eighteen years of nesting
now stands teetering on the edge
testing balance,
stretching wings,
perceiving with anticipation
the sweet currents of the wind.

I cannot soften the concrete below
nor choose the moment of flight.

My thoughts are flying faster now.
Have I given her enough?
Have I given her what she needs?
A breath of summer
rocks the nest.
Time is short.


©Edwina Peterson Cross