How Faithful the Trees

I wrote a story when I was younger in which a character found clarity by physically climbing to a high place. From there, it seemed she could see all the possible paths of her life stretching out in front of her. From there, she could choose clearly and with purpose,  walk on in peace, with perspective that would not have been possible in the flat, Midwestern town she’d called home to that point. It was a simple metaphor of landscape, clear and uncomplicated.  It spoke to me at the time.

For the last two months, I’ve been planning a backpacking trip with a good friend. Last week, we finally set out to hike a short section of the Appalachian Trail. Our plan was to start at the highest point, along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, and continue from there to a point we had chosen, where we’d parked the car ahead of time.

At several points in my life, I’ve felt like that character wandering in the confusing flatland. The physical sacrifice of climbing upward has often led to revelation of one kind or another. And lately, since things have been feeling as flat as can be, as confused and lost, such a climb seemed the perfect remedy. I so wanted the perspective. I so wanted the familiar process of revelation and the subsequent downhill momentum where epiphany makes the path seem easy for a time.

There were some clues early on that it wouldn’t turn out that way. There were transportation issues, last minute logistical problems. Approaching the climb we realized coming down would be harder than we anticipated and would take more time. My friends knees ached on the downhill stretches while I struggled under the weight of my pack on the uphill. Eventually my body launched a full out rebellion. Feet blistered, muscles tightened, and food turned my stomach, making it hard to replace the energy I was losing on the day’s hike. I didn’t sleep. Sleet came on our first night and rain all the next day. Things took longer than we had anticipated, and our trek quickly turned into one long and arduous must-do list with a tight timeline.

It seems no matter how much I tell myself that what I want is peace, clarity, and gentleness, what I construct for myself is an incredibly difficult and urgent road. I convince myself that the clarity I need is over the next mountain and run to meet it, only to find another peak a little higher, a little farther off in the distance. In some ways, it’s easier to keep climbing than to just sit still.

Fortunately for me, there were others on my path who showed me more compassion than I was showing myself – my hiking companion who led the way and carried more than her share when I was too sick and exhausted to think clearly, the incredibly kind hiker who helped us find a simpler way down than the one we had planned, and my Aunt Sara, who provided impromptu assistance and a wonderful, peaceful place to recover.

Today I read a post by my friend, Wrensong, who wrote, “How faithful the trees are as they continue in their work in spite of us.” I considered the stillness and patience of these wisest of teachers, their willingness to stand still, through sleet and rain, through seasons, through decades and centuries, their faith in drawing nourishment always from this one place, and when more nourishment needed, in simply going deeper to find it. How brave this seems compared to my habit of arduous climbing. How faithful.

The World Tree

“I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate. For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language….”

- Treebeard from J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

There are significant trees in any number of religions and mythologies. In Christianity, knowledge of good and evil comes from a tree, as does immortality. Buddha finds enlightenment sitting under a tree, as does Isaac Newton, in his own way.

The World Tree, or Axis Mundi, has roots that reach deep into the lower world, branches that reach high into the upper world, and branches that spread out in all directions in the middle world. It’s the place where knowledge from all these directions comes together.

This month’s alchemy group explored the World Tree image.  I felt a bit intimidated, at first, by the prospect of forming any representation of the tree that is the axis of the world. It would have to be spectacular and unusual. It would have to be the type of image a person could look at and think, yes, this tree is somehow special, different.

Ultimately, the tree I constructed was actually very ordinary looking. It had a thin trunk, a few branches, roots shooting out in all directions. It was not spectacular, and yet, it did look to me like it could well be the center of the world. It reminded me that any place can be the center, the place where the knowledges of upper and lower, north, south, east and west are all connected.

Poe’s Funeral

Driving home today I heard a story on the radio about a funeral for Edgar Allan Poe, who apparently wasn’t given a proper ceremony when he died in 1849. I haven’t read Poe in a long time, but I once had most of “The Raven” memorized. I used to write it over and over again in boring 8th grade English classes when I was supposed to be taking notes.  That same year, my imagination was captivated by a story in Time magazine about the Poe Toaster, who visits Poe’s grave each year with a bottle of cognac. I cut out the article and saved it for many years after.

Later, I lost interest in Poe’s work and came to consider it a bit over the top for my taste. But I look back now with fondness for the girl who discovered his poems and stories. I think we are at our best when we love what we love and follow that wholeheartedly, whether it’s over the top or not. I’m grateful to the younger me for loving poetry and holding onto it, even through awful junior high English classes that could have succeeded in killing that interest completely.  I’m reminded, I need to learn to trust that younger girl a little more often. She knows a few things I may have forgotten.

The Fool

Whatever the answer
it’s yes that’s the question.
I am a fool dancing over the edge.

- from “Take Me for Longing” by Mark Simos

I was talking with a friend about first love, and she told me about hers, a relationship she had in college that ended miserably. She was heartbroken for a long time, though eventually, of course, she moved on, and at the time of the conversation, was a few months married to someone else whom she loved very much. She said, “You only get your heart seriously broken like that once. After that, you’re always more cautious.”

That’s what I was thinking about when I met with my alchemy group to explore the archetype of the Fool. I remembered that energy of first love, where the world opens up and all things seem possible, and we don’t yet know the real pain of feeling loss or betrayal in a relationship that once seemed so beautiful and permanent.

The Fool in the tarot deck is usually about to step over a cliff, though he’s looking up and doesn’t notice. A small dog nips at his heels, or in some decks, bites him on the leg, trying to call his attention, perhaps get him to look down and avoid catastrophe. But the Fool isn’t about avoiding catastrophe. He’s out to meet it head on. He’s often seen carrying a bag on a stick, hobo-style, a small bag with just a few belongings.

During the image-making process, some of us chose to craft a bag of the type the Fool might carry.  We were invited to imagine what might be inside, and what such a bag might be made of. There were a number of brightly colored, glittery fabrics to choose from. I couldn’t decide, so I wound up using scraps of a number of different types of fabric, some on the outside, and some on the inside of the bag. The main fabric wasn’t brightly colored at all. It was dull and full of holes, net-like. It appeared very old and worn. The result was a patched-together bag that looked like it had been repaired, badly, time and time again. Some of the material on the inside showed through; it looked like it could easily spill its contents at the first sign of trouble.

The Fool in the tarot deck is the very first card, numbered zero. But the deck itself is cyclical in nature. It’s not meant to depict a beginning and an end, but a journey that happens over and over again. The bag I crafted belonged to a Fool who had seen many such journeys already. I thought of what my friend said about love and thought that this was true about so many things. We can lose big in all different areas of our lives and get our hearts broken, then we sometimes spend the rest of our lives getting up the courage to set out again, to even approach the edge of a cliff like the one we stumbled off to begin with.

If we’re wise like the Fool is wise, we set out anyway, knowing there is more trouble out there than we can possibly contend with, knowing the bag is full of holes, knowing we’ll avoid the familiar cliffs, perhaps, but that there will be others. Perhaps we look down a bit more. Perhaps we learn to listen better to the faithful dog companion. But hopefully we also look up, and risk trouble, and even dance a little bit on the edge of a precipice or two.

Violin Dream

I dreamed I was in the elevator of an old apartment building I used to live in. There was a girl there wearing colorful clothes who immediately started talking to me. She had gone to high school in the city I grew up in (though not my high school), and she had some criticisms of it. She was a musician carrying a violin. I was fascinated by it, as I used to play one myself. But her violin was homemade, something she had crafted herself in a rustic fashion out of found wood. I picked up the bow. The back of it was thick, twisted wood, and in place of horsehair was something I could not exactly identify. I wondered what kind of sound it would make when dragged across the strings, and how the balance of it might feel in my hand.

While I was examining the bow, the girl had gotten off the elevator. I hadn’t even noticed what floor she lived on. I thought, perhaps I should go door to door until I find her.

I still have her bow.

Sublimatio

Photo by Katinka Kober

Sublimatio is the alchemical process associated with air. Chemically, it could be represented by steam rising. Psychologically, it could be understood as moving above a situation in order to get an objective view.

In many spiritual systems, it’s understood that we live in the middle of things – as Tolkein would have it, Middle Earth. There are underworlds and upper worlds as well. My alchemy group understood Sublimatio as both ascending and descending, getting out of this middle world for awhile in order to see things differently. So when we began exploring this process through image making, Sublimatio showed itself most often in the form of a ladder. One participant, a psychotherapist, talked about therapy as a process of descending the ladder with a client and coming back up with something useful, building connections between the realms. Another person constructed a beautiful, tall tree-like structure that resembled a sail or hot air balloon, barely weighted down and looking as though it could catch the winds of the upper world at any moment and be pulled away.

In my own work, I saw a definite contrast between Coagulatio, in which we built stepping stones for a horizontal, Middle Earth path, and Sublimatio, for a vertical, between-worlds path. I was far more comfortable with Sublimatio. I almost always prefer to rise into the intellectual and spiritual, to see with the bird’s eye view, or to climb down to the unconscious archetypal depths.  It was easy to construct a ladder, much harder to build a horizontal path for a journey in this world. The ladder felt old, well built and often used. The stepping stone was beautiful and difficult, new and untested.

Coagulatio

Photo by Renata Szar

Coagulatio is the alchemical process of coming down to earth, of setting things in stone.

I expected to have a lot of trouble with this one. I am much more comfortable in the abstract, spiritual/intellectual realms and often feel nervous at the idea of making anything too solid and permanent. So when the art therapist described to our alchemy group how we would explore Coagulatio through work with literal concrete, bringing elements of our choosing and setting them together with concrete or grout, I wondered what in my life I could possibly want to make that permanent and how I could trust my artistic skill enough to make this work. I wanted to take risks, to choose items from my world that really were meaningful, and I would have to believe that the process of concretizing or my lack of skill would not ruin the elements I chose.

As it happens, Coagulatio filled our little workspace with more laughter and light-heartedness than any process we have worked through so far. Though people talked about their trepidation at the outset, we all smiled and laughed our way through the project. Scary though it was, it felt wonderful to bring things down to earth for awhile, to pin a few things down, so to speak.

One of the options for this project was to bring materials together with concrete in plastic molds to form a stepping stone. This seemed an apt choice, since bringing a idea down to earth is often necessary before another step can be taken. I thought about my propensity for getting lost and how very rarely I have the opportunity to be conscious and intentional about how my stepping stones are formed, and with what material.

When our time was up, no one had finished. Even those who had completed the assembly of their pieces still needed time to let them dry. I took my own work home to complete it, and though I have worked on since, I still don’t consider it done. Where I expected to have trouble setting materials in stone, I now find myself wanting to add more.

Solutio

In  long ago college course on death and dying, I read that drowning was among the most peaceful ways to die. Reportedly after some initial panic, drowning is a very peaceful experience, not unlike floating.

My alchemy group explored Solutio last week, the alchemical process associated with water, a fitting follow-up to Calcinatio, the process of burning. Most people had peaceful associations with water, though we were reminded that water can also be aggressive and raging. Think hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans.

For me, though, Solutio called up the sensation of standing at the edge of the ocean and feeling all my words dissolve. Not just words, but any thought of words, as though nothing solid could exist beside the incredible, vast, primitive ocean. My Solutio image was a small container tangled with fabric resembling seaweed, like something that would wash up on shore, mostly empty, whatever it once carried having long ago dissolved in the sea. It felt not unlike Calcinatio, in which something that once seemed important must go up in flames. But Solutio did feel gentler. It let me picture those dissolved aspects of self, those old ideas, floating out onto the ocean. It let me consider what it is I would put in that container, to be slowly rocked out to sea.

Calcinatio

On some hill of despair
the bonfire
you kindle can light the great sky—
though it’s true, of course, to make it burn
you have to throw yourself in …

from “Another Night in the Ruins”

by Galway Kinnell

 

Before my alchemy image-making group got together last week, we were encouraged to think about Calcinatio, the alchemical process of burning, and what might currently be “on fire” in our own lives. We considered fire as life energy, fire as a purifying force, fire as a cooking process that changes one substance into another.

When we began making images, I wanted to make something with two pieces: one permanent, stable entity and one entity that would burn. I constructed a frame to act as a sort of fireplace and decorated it with a woodburning tool. I liked the idea of the stable portion being decorated with the marks of past fires. The wood for the frame was a sunbleached white driftwood the group had decided looked like bones, giving my frame a skeletal look. For the burning portion, I thought of ceremonial kindling bundles and decided to create something similar, so I wrapped charcoal in burlap, supported it with a frame of sticks, and tied the ends with string. When I finished, though, the kindling bundle was larger than the frame of bones I built to house it.

I thought of what fire had looked like when it showed up in my life in times past, like sickness, sometimes, more often like being lost. I thought of what seemed to be burning up for me now, old plans and visions for the future, the illusion of thinking I know where I’m going. I read Galway Kinnell’s poem about kindling a fire that could light the great sky, and I considered the care I’d taken in constructing my kindling bundle, how I wanted to be intentional about the bonfire I started, how and with what materials I would start it. I did not want to wait for illness or lostness to burn away what I no longer needed.

When I looked at my Calcinatio image again, the kindling being bigger than the fireplace felt like the punchline to a joke.  Of course, I had built the frame of bones first. Of course, the kindling for the fire was far too big to burn inside that small frame I had taken such great care in constructing. You have to let the self start the bonfires that will break the bones of the ego, if the kindled fire is to light the great sky.

A Short Anthology for Ellen

A couple of years ago, my friend Ellen and I decided to celebrate birthdays a little differently. Having visited Rwanda and made close friends there, and feeling very keenly the abundance of our lives and the scarcity of resources elsewhere, Ellen requested that friends and family who felt compelled to give her a gift simply make a donation to the African Great Lakes Initiative. Each year since then, I have done just that.

But we also have a tradition of giving small things, inexpensive or not involving money at all: a used book or a favorite recipe, for instance. Because Ellen is a fan of poetry anthologies, and because it’s been a long time since I added any links to the poetry page on this blog, I’m posting a mini-anthology in honor of Ellen’s birthday.

“Passing Through” by Stanley Kunitz

“Found Letter” by Joshua Weiner

“won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton