Copyright 2009- All Rights Reserved
It is useful to make sure that we understand how the word wild or Wild Woman is used by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her book, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Wild is not used in negative sense, meaning out of control, but “in original sense of living a natural life, one in which a creature has innate integrity and healthy boundaries.” Wild is defined as: Occurring in a natural state, not cultivated; Uninhabited or uncultivated region, not inhabited; Extravagant; fantastic.
Though we are born with our wildish nature, we women have been “civilized” into rigid roles and that has “muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls.” We are repressed, captured, pushed down, forbidden, cut back, diluted, tortured, weakened, sanitized, unnatural, consumed by others.
Estes tells us: “Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman but she is an endangered species.”
“The Wild Woman,” says Estes, “is the female soul… the source of the feminine…all that is of instinct, of the worlds both seen and hidden… all the instincts and knowings needed for our lives.”
Dr. Estes contends that when we women lose touch with the instinctive soul, we live in a state where we are cut away from our basic source. The purpose of her book of stories is to help women find a way to live their instinctive lives.
She says:
“This is a book of women’s stories, held out as markers along the path. The stories were chosen to embolden you. They are for you to read, contemplate, and follow toward your own natural-won freedom, your caring for self, animals, earth, children sisters, lovers, and men. …the doors to the world of Wild Woman are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
You might ask: What fruit, what flowers, what life nourishment—spiritual, emotional, physical, mental—for body and soul is there in these stories?
One answer is in this quotation from Estes. “If a story is seed, then we [the listeners] are its soil,” says Estes. The stories in the book are “seeds” and women or the listeners are the “soil.” Living things are born in and from the soil. Living things are nourished and nurtured there. Living things are protected and given strength and sustenance there. Hopefully, the fruit or flower that will bloom from the listener’s “soil” is a woman's inner life being set in motion which leads a woman back to her own real life as "knowing wildish women.”
Estes believes that “stories are medicine… with such power that we need only listen” to find remedy, restoration, repair of any lost psychic, soul or spirit drive. Such is her goal in this book of intriguing tales, myths, stories. I urge you to listen to these stories to find your way to healing paths. Listen to them and find your way to the Wild Woman within you.
Wild women live their instinctive lives...their true lives.
Do you?
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. Publisher-Ballantine Books, 1992.
End
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Woman Series: Women Who Run with the Wolves-Part I
Copyright 2009- All Rights Reserved
I’ve always loved fairy tales, myths—stories. My mother and father told and read me stories when I was a child. When I learned to read, stories—fairy tales, comic books, movies—were my first love. Although some cultures, those of Latin America, of middle Europe, of Africa, still pass stories along, American culture tends to think of stories as only the stuff of childhood and that these things should be left behind us after we come of age. That is a mistake, I believe.—an attitude that misses the point of stories.
What is it about stories that I love…that people love? Why do they transfix us so? I believe the answer lies in this: Stories are a vessel, a construct, a vehicle that we have deliberately created to transport, through time and space for ourselves and each other, precious and essential information for living—ideas, knowings, wisdom, consciousness, learning, hope, touch and connection, nourishment and warmth, support and encouragement to keep going.
They were meant to give us heart as we pick our way over the paths of life. If we tell them to each other as adults and we listen, they reveal the markers of life’s journeys: growing up, adulthood, growing old, birth and rebirth, trials and ordeals, dangers and safe harbors, loss and endurance, sacrifice and hope, transformation and light.
This is certainly true of the book of stories I have just finished reading called Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I recommend its hope to the defeated, the cynical, the pessimist. I recommend its wisdom to the curious, the sophisticate, the intellectual. I recommend its love and warmth to the isolated, the fearful, the lonely and disconnected. It is a wonderful book: Comforting. Supportive. Encouraging. Challenging.
Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes’ book helps women reconnect with our buried healthy, instinctual selves and inner lives. The stories that Estes has collected and retells in her book are fascinating; the explanations of what the stories mean are intriguing. They whisper the secrets of a woman’s core being, her spirit, her soul…how to discover, find, reclaim my true feminine nature, how to heal those precious gifts of feminine instinct, knowing, wisdom (“wildness”) that has been mislaid, buried, waylaid, stolen, denied. Her stories console me, reassure me, teach me to rely on and trust my instincts. They gently release me from what has bound me: social convention, cultural roles, childhood wounds, family history, adult injuries, shame, guilt, secrets, betrayals, fears, traps, learned coping behaviors that have turned into strangling vines.
End Part I
I’ve always loved fairy tales, myths—stories. My mother and father told and read me stories when I was a child. When I learned to read, stories—fairy tales, comic books, movies—were my first love. Although some cultures, those of Latin America, of middle Europe, of Africa, still pass stories along, American culture tends to think of stories as only the stuff of childhood and that these things should be left behind us after we come of age. That is a mistake, I believe.—an attitude that misses the point of stories.
What is it about stories that I love…that people love? Why do they transfix us so? I believe the answer lies in this: Stories are a vessel, a construct, a vehicle that we have deliberately created to transport, through time and space for ourselves and each other, precious and essential information for living—ideas, knowings, wisdom, consciousness, learning, hope, touch and connection, nourishment and warmth, support and encouragement to keep going.
They were meant to give us heart as we pick our way over the paths of life. If we tell them to each other as adults and we listen, they reveal the markers of life’s journeys: growing up, adulthood, growing old, birth and rebirth, trials and ordeals, dangers and safe harbors, loss and endurance, sacrifice and hope, transformation and light.
This is certainly true of the book of stories I have just finished reading called Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I recommend its hope to the defeated, the cynical, the pessimist. I recommend its wisdom to the curious, the sophisticate, the intellectual. I recommend its love and warmth to the isolated, the fearful, the lonely and disconnected. It is a wonderful book: Comforting. Supportive. Encouraging. Challenging.
Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes’ book helps women reconnect with our buried healthy, instinctual selves and inner lives. The stories that Estes has collected and retells in her book are fascinating; the explanations of what the stories mean are intriguing. They whisper the secrets of a woman’s core being, her spirit, her soul…how to discover, find, reclaim my true feminine nature, how to heal those precious gifts of feminine instinct, knowing, wisdom (“wildness”) that has been mislaid, buried, waylaid, stolen, denied. Her stories console me, reassure me, teach me to rely on and trust my instincts. They gently release me from what has bound me: social convention, cultural roles, childhood wounds, family history, adult injuries, shame, guilt, secrets, betrayals, fears, traps, learned coping behaviors that have turned into strangling vines.
End Part I
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Woman Series: The Color Purple
Copyright 2008-All Rights Reserved
When I identify as a Lesbian, the first thing that people usually want to know is what does your family think? The family. Or your friends. Or some aspect of my community.
These questions come up because people are aware of the social stigma associated with same sex attraction, with love between two people of the same gender. It's a stigma that grows out of socialization that that has trained us to take the attitude that only heterosexism, love between people of the opposite sex, is “right” and valued as good. The questions come up because of "learned" homophobia, the fear of and condemnation of same sex attracted people, both externalized and internalized. Homophobia is an ugly and toxic force to be reckoned with. One that is as destructive as racism, as sexism, as classism. Like the others, it thrives on ignorance and shame, on hatefulness and misinformation.
This past fall 2008 semester I taught an English Literature class. With this course, the instructor gets to choose the material and focus of the class. I decided to do a course I called “Out of the Closet: Literature by Black Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Authors.” This wasn’t the first time I’ve taught it. It’s always interesting. The students learn about writers and their characters—about people who have, more often than not, been “disappeared” out of literary courses and academic study. They learn, through the work of talented and distinguished authors, about what life is like, really, when you are bisexual or transgendered or lesbian or homosexual. They learn and I learn—as an author, teacher, and human being.
The first novel we discussed was The Color Purple.
One of the major themes that Alice Walker’s novel explores is love. Love across the spectrum or continuum of what humans know as love. Love between family members, between women as members of a sisterhood, love between men and women, and love between two women. Intimate love. What society would call Lesbianism.
It’s obvious that there is a deep relationship going on between Shug and Celie; they openly sleep in the same bedroom, the same bed with each other. To complicate matters even more, Shug would be labeled Bisexual because she sleeps with men…with Albert, Celie’s husband, and has children by him, as well as with Grady, for another. Another major theme, then, is sexuality…Bisexual and Lesbian sexuality.
And just what is the community’s, the family’s reaction to this relationship between Shug and Celie? In the novel, you might expect to find some family or community reaction, or homophobia, to Lesbianism, but the author does not explore the community’s reaction. Religious, community and family censure in the form of social stigma and homophobia does not come into play in this novel which is set in the early 1920’s in rural Georgia. The author does not explore it directly. What about internalized homophobia? That is self-hate, self-loathing because you are same sex attracted, because you are a same gender loving person. Well. The two Lesbian lovers don’t suffer from it. Shug certainly does not, nor does Celie.
I believe the author’s depiction of these two women argues against social stigma, homophobia, and internalized homophobia. Celie and Shug’s behavior, their attitudes about themselves and their love affair, their personal values and view of God and the world defy the negative… the internalized homophobia, the stigma, the ugly light that some would cast on a same gender loving relationship.
What’s valuable to me about this novel, about teaching it, about reflecting on its themes of love and of sexuality is this: I see Walker’s characters as open doors that invite us to walk out of one place and into another where we examine old ideas and redefine others.
The novel invites us to question: What are our philosophies, ideas, beliefs about what we call God? What is love? What do we value about love? Is it possible that God is love only when it comes to heterosexual love?
The novel invites us to rethink and reshape ideas that some believe are engraved in stone. Celie and Shug ask us, as readers, dare us to redefine our whole notion about love—what it looks like, behaves like, what we think about it, and our attitude toward it.
Love, Walker suggests, is the most precious thing. No matter what package it comes in. I agree.
When I identify as a Lesbian, the first thing that people usually want to know is what does your family think? The family. Or your friends. Or some aspect of my community.
These questions come up because people are aware of the social stigma associated with same sex attraction, with love between two people of the same gender. It's a stigma that grows out of socialization that that has trained us to take the attitude that only heterosexism, love between people of the opposite sex, is “right” and valued as good. The questions come up because of "learned" homophobia, the fear of and condemnation of same sex attracted people, both externalized and internalized. Homophobia is an ugly and toxic force to be reckoned with. One that is as destructive as racism, as sexism, as classism. Like the others, it thrives on ignorance and shame, on hatefulness and misinformation.
This past fall 2008 semester I taught an English Literature class. With this course, the instructor gets to choose the material and focus of the class. I decided to do a course I called “Out of the Closet: Literature by Black Lesbian, Bisexual, and Gay Authors.” This wasn’t the first time I’ve taught it. It’s always interesting. The students learn about writers and their characters—about people who have, more often than not, been “disappeared” out of literary courses and academic study. They learn, through the work of talented and distinguished authors, about what life is like, really, when you are bisexual or transgendered or lesbian or homosexual. They learn and I learn—as an author, teacher, and human being.
The first novel we discussed was The Color Purple.
One of the major themes that Alice Walker’s novel explores is love. Love across the spectrum or continuum of what humans know as love. Love between family members, between women as members of a sisterhood, love between men and women, and love between two women. Intimate love. What society would call Lesbianism.
It’s obvious that there is a deep relationship going on between Shug and Celie; they openly sleep in the same bedroom, the same bed with each other. To complicate matters even more, Shug would be labeled Bisexual because she sleeps with men…with Albert, Celie’s husband, and has children by him, as well as with Grady, for another. Another major theme, then, is sexuality…Bisexual and Lesbian sexuality.
And just what is the community’s, the family’s reaction to this relationship between Shug and Celie? In the novel, you might expect to find some family or community reaction, or homophobia, to Lesbianism, but the author does not explore the community’s reaction. Religious, community and family censure in the form of social stigma and homophobia does not come into play in this novel which is set in the early 1920’s in rural Georgia. The author does not explore it directly. What about internalized homophobia? That is self-hate, self-loathing because you are same sex attracted, because you are a same gender loving person. Well. The two Lesbian lovers don’t suffer from it. Shug certainly does not, nor does Celie.
I believe the author’s depiction of these two women argues against social stigma, homophobia, and internalized homophobia. Celie and Shug’s behavior, their attitudes about themselves and their love affair, their personal values and view of God and the world defy the negative… the internalized homophobia, the stigma, the ugly light that some would cast on a same gender loving relationship.
What’s valuable to me about this novel, about teaching it, about reflecting on its themes of love and of sexuality is this: I see Walker’s characters as open doors that invite us to walk out of one place and into another where we examine old ideas and redefine others.
The novel invites us to question: What are our philosophies, ideas, beliefs about what we call God? What is love? What do we value about love? Is it possible that God is love only when it comes to heterosexual love?
The novel invites us to rethink and reshape ideas that some believe are engraved in stone. Celie and Shug ask us, as readers, dare us to redefine our whole notion about love—what it looks like, behaves like, what we think about it, and our attitude toward it.
Love, Walker suggests, is the most precious thing. No matter what package it comes in. I agree.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Book of Days I: A New Day
Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved
November 4, 2008. Election night. Approximately 8:15 p.m. (California time).
I have come back from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and switched on the television set in my bedroom. An image. A Black man. A message. It takes me more than a few seconds to take it in.
This is what I saw. A photo of Barack Obama with his hands folded across his chest. He is smiling. Under his photo there are words. Unbelievable words. Words that I just can’t comprehend at first. They say:
Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States.
Has there been a mistake? Have I misread it? Are they trippin’ at NBC headquarters? An early, MISTAKEN call, perhaps? Something.
Maybe I’ve gone demented.
But, no. I haven’t Brian Williams, the NBC anchor, assures me and everyone else that Obama has won. That he’s pulled enough electoral votes ALREADY that has put him over the required 270. That he is, in fact, the President-Elect of the United States.
I had expected a long, hard night. A big, a monumental struggle with election returns trickling in slowly. As slow as molasses. But…
Change and History. Just like that, they happen. Lightning fast.
Change and History. Forty years ago, in April of 1968, history was written. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee—my home state. The change agent, the man who had come to lead us to a new level—to change the way things were—was dead. Gone. Quick as a wink. Fast as a speeding bullet. He’d brought us as far as he could. Now, he was gone. We had to go the rest of the way without him. Without the beloved shepherd.
In April, Bobby Kennedy, running in the Primaries for President of the United States, bravely brings the horrible news of King’s murder to a crowd of African-Americans in the streets of Indianapolis, Indiana. Stunned, they go home.
Now, I think: King is no longer with us, but still Bobby is. There's still Hope.
I love Bobby because he’d changed. Because he’s brave. Because he promises Hope. Because he is now our change agent. I was sure he’d bring us through.
In June of 1968, the book of history gets another inscription. They murder Bobby and, once more, Change is ushered in. As is Richard Nixon that November. Ushered into the White House in 1968 as President of the United States. Change had come. And, with these changing events, Hope, for me, had died: for a better day…for the promise that we could bridge the chasm that racism had had forged. For me, Hope had died. And stayed dead for forty years.
Stayed dead until last night. When Barack Obama and the citizens of the United States resurrected it. On television in Grant Park, Chicago, I saw it reflected on the faces of the people gathered there. I saw Hope in all its shining star beauty. I felt it reborn in me.
Hope and Change. A new day. Another change agent ushering it in. A man who will be, we hope, our pathfinder as we cross this wilderness that is Change.
Change. From living Jim Crow as I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee to my witnessing the election of the first Black President of the United States last night.
It’s a journey for me. It’s history I'm living.
It’s a paradigm shift... Change that’s worth noting in my Book of Days.
End.
November 4, 2008. Election night. Approximately 8:15 p.m. (California time).
I have come back from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and switched on the television set in my bedroom. An image. A Black man. A message. It takes me more than a few seconds to take it in.
This is what I saw. A photo of Barack Obama with his hands folded across his chest. He is smiling. Under his photo there are words. Unbelievable words. Words that I just can’t comprehend at first. They say:
Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States.
Has there been a mistake? Have I misread it? Are they trippin’ at NBC headquarters? An early, MISTAKEN call, perhaps? Something.
Maybe I’ve gone demented.
But, no. I haven’t Brian Williams, the NBC anchor, assures me and everyone else that Obama has won. That he’s pulled enough electoral votes ALREADY that has put him over the required 270. That he is, in fact, the President-Elect of the United States.
I had expected a long, hard night. A big, a monumental struggle with election returns trickling in slowly. As slow as molasses. But…
Change and History. Just like that, they happen. Lightning fast.
Change and History. Forty years ago, in April of 1968, history was written. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee—my home state. The change agent, the man who had come to lead us to a new level—to change the way things were—was dead. Gone. Quick as a wink. Fast as a speeding bullet. He’d brought us as far as he could. Now, he was gone. We had to go the rest of the way without him. Without the beloved shepherd.
In April, Bobby Kennedy, running in the Primaries for President of the United States, bravely brings the horrible news of King’s murder to a crowd of African-Americans in the streets of Indianapolis, Indiana. Stunned, they go home.
Now, I think: King is no longer with us, but still Bobby is. There's still Hope.
I love Bobby because he’d changed. Because he’s brave. Because he promises Hope. Because he is now our change agent. I was sure he’d bring us through.
In June of 1968, the book of history gets another inscription. They murder Bobby and, once more, Change is ushered in. As is Richard Nixon that November. Ushered into the White House in 1968 as President of the United States. Change had come. And, with these changing events, Hope, for me, had died: for a better day…for the promise that we could bridge the chasm that racism had had forged. For me, Hope had died. And stayed dead for forty years.
Stayed dead until last night. When Barack Obama and the citizens of the United States resurrected it. On television in Grant Park, Chicago, I saw it reflected on the faces of the people gathered there. I saw Hope in all its shining star beauty. I felt it reborn in me.
Hope and Change. A new day. Another change agent ushering it in. A man who will be, we hope, our pathfinder as we cross this wilderness that is Change.
Change. From living Jim Crow as I grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee to my witnessing the election of the first Black President of the United States last night.
It’s a journey for me. It’s history I'm living.
It’s a paradigm shift... Change that’s worth noting in my Book of Days.
End.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Storyteller II: The Journey, A Story of Humankind
Copyright 2008- All Rights Reserved
Most stories we love are essentially those that tell us about someone else’s journey. Human beings love stories that tell about struggles, challenges, dangers on the road of life. We love to go on the adventure to witness the battles, the hardships, the ordeals that somebody fights through to get that prize (an object, a fortune, a person, freedom, knowledge, maturity, love etc.), the“treasure” at the end that’s worth all the hell endured. We love these stories because we want to know what the story’s main character did to make it through. We’re curious about how somebody climbed over the hurdles, vanquished the monsters, and outsmarted the villains--how that somebody ended up with the “treasure” sought after and hard won. It’s an age-old story line. There are many, many variations on this theme.
When I teach this age-old, universal theme in a literature class, I tell my college students that it shows itself in cultures worldwide. They may not be interested, but I find it to be fascinating that we, no matter who we are, tell this story again and again to ourselves, and that we’ve told it for ages. In literature, we call this theme The Quest or The Journey. Journey stories portray, in a straightforward or symbolic way, the very basic human experiences that give us the following message over and over again: Life is a journey of various stages, each having its own problems to be overcome, but each with its own potential rewards.
The Quest is a story… about adventure, about self-discovery, about possibilities and transformation. It’s a story that tells us to have faith and hold on… that tells us it really is possible to triumph over the things inside us that would cripple or restrict us…that it really is possible to triumph over forces outside of ourselves that would stop us cold. Just have faith and hold on. Because it’s not the treasure at the end, it’s the treasure you get for going. It’s the treasure you get from facing what happens along the way: when you struggle, wrestle with the problem that seems so big and bad that you think it’s gonna eat your ass up; it’s the treasure you get when the questions in your head make you unsure of yourself and the choices you’re making. Do I really want to do this? You say to yourself when things get hairy. Isn’t there an easier, softer way? You start to wonder when those ordeals show up to kick your ass. The thing is: It’s not the destination but the journey that matters. And it will change you. Because The Journey tests you. Transforms you. Defines who you are because of the choices you make as you travel your road. The Journey, then, becomes the real treasure. It’s the means by which you’ve been changed. And, to me, that’s what counts: change, growth, taking your life up to another, a new level.
One of my favorite stories about The Journey is a movie trilogy, Lord of the Rings. In the first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, the main character, Frodo undertakes a journey to return the evil ring of power to the place of its origin in order to destroy it. Frodo volunteers to go. He has an inkling that The Journey will be hard, but I don’t think he realizes, from the outset, how difficult—how frightening and full of challenges it will turn out to be. In legend and in real life, Journeys always are, but that’s the point of The Journey--to go through it and learn from it, to be transformed by it, and to bring back “the treasure” which will benefit others in some way. Traditionally, in The Quest, the Journeyer needs these three qualities above all because The Journey takes you on a treacherous, long, and really hard road of trials: persistence, courage, and insight. And I can see that you would need these things, yet there’s another thing I think you need. The Journeyer has to be willing to go. Sometimes willingness, I think, is even more essential than courage on life’s Journey. If you aren’t willing, you won’t answer when life calls you to put your foot on the road. Willingness is the better part of persistence, pushing you forward so you’ll follow through, instead of giving up when those hurdles, those obstacles, tests, and ordeals show up. Don’t get me wrong. The Journey does require courage. (Courage, not just bravery; being brave isn’t quite enough. It’s courage that sends you into the lion’s den when you’re scared to death.) And you need insight, as well, to figure out things and people that you come across along the way.
Frodo is willing and does answer the call. Then, as things get really hard, because The Journey is always a hard thing to do, Frodo doesn’t want to keep going after he loses Gandoff, his mentor and guide. At that point, the Elf queen tells Frodo—who is now questioning his purpose, confused about whether to continue, and grieving the loss of Gandoff—that because the world depends on him to do this task, which is his and his alone, it won’t get done if he doesn’t complete it. That he is the Ring Bearer, but he must be willing to go. To do it. No one else can.
Now, that’s a scary thing to tell somebody…that the world is depending on you to do something that nobody else in the world can do because this task is yours alone. Wow. You better find some willingness, some courage, some persistence behind that heavy message. And you better find it fast. That is, if you’re going. Somehow though, most of us human beings look inside and find the qualities we need to take our journey. That’s a good thing because nobody else can be us, can travel our road, can complete our individual tasks. The story of The Journey encourages us to go ahead, to have faith that we can do it—whatever it is. To hang in there and do whatever it is we’re supposed to do. Because nobody else can.
I am always inspired by this universal theme called The Journey. It was Joseph Campbell, the scholar, who, some years ago, originally discovered the worldwide presence of this thematic motif in his studies of cultural myths; Campbell defined The Journey’s purpose in human society, breaking it down into stages with identifiable characters who play essential roles. I never tire of rediscovering the power of this story and I never tire of sharing my understanding of it. I invite you to look at the story of humankind through a universal lens called The Journey. It is outlined for you below.
The Journey (The Quest)
Purpose:
To answer the challenge, complete The Quest, to restore the ordinary world’s balance.
To meet difficult tests, ordeals which are part of life; to learn, to grow from them, and, ultimately, change because of these experiences, then bring back the gift or “treasure” earned and share the “treasure” with others.
A story of a heroine/hero who must separate from the ordinary, familiar world to travel on a difficult journey that promises to transform her/his life.
People on The Journey:
The Journeyer (heroine/hero) – person who needs to learn something and who will undertake hardships and sacrifice to answer the challenge of The Journey and complete it.
The Herald – something or someone appears announcing/implying the coming of significant change and issuing a challenge, problem, quest, or adventure.
Mentor/ Guide - Mentor is a wise person (or animal in fables) who provides guidance and knowledge to the Journeyer, usually gives “magical” or special gifts or advice for The Journey ahead.
Helpers, Allies – Help the Journeyer learn the rules of this “new” world.
The Other/Alter Ego – Mirrors the Journeyer in some way by representing/symbolizing our darkest desires or rejected qualities about self, or our untapped resources/abilities, or the “best” in self. This Other can be “good” or “bad.” The Other mirrors the Journeyer and meeting this person is crucial to the Journeyer who must decide to either recognize and acknowledge, to claim or not claim this part of self. If the Journeyer does not claim it, his/her growth, change/transformation cannot take place. And the quest fails.
Stages of The Journey:
Home- the known, familiar, safe haven of the everyday world of the Journeyer before the “story” begins.
The Call – A herald presents the Journeyer is presented with problem, challenge, quest, adventure to undertake to earn a reward/ “treasure.” (Journeyer may not know what the “treasure” is or that a “treasure” can be gotten.) The call can be accepted or refused. (Refusal of The Call - If Journeyer refuses call, the reason is usually fear. The call then comes again later.)
Meeting the Mentor –Journeyer meets a mentor/teacher/guide to get training & advice, to learn new skills for The Journey, to gain confidence in abilities to undertake The Journey.
The Threshold (Crossing) – The Journeyer crosses the gateway that separates the ordinary world from the special, “different” and, “new” world. This crossing tests & questions the Journeyer’s commitment The Journey and whether she/he can succeed.
Tests/Road of Trials – This stage challenges the skills, powers, abilities of the Journeyer who must undergo a series of tests. These serve as preparation for the greater ordeal yet to come. Stakes are heightened by the Journeyer confronting challenges, tests and enemies, by setbacks, hardships endured and dangers encountered by these tests. Because of setbacks, Journeyer may need to reorganize strategy or rekindle morale with help of allies and helpers.
Final Ordeal – Central trial/ life/death crisis; The Journey teeters on the brink of failure. The Journeyer faces her/his biggest fear, confronts the most difficult challenge and experiences symbolic “death.” Only through the "dying" of her/his old self can the Journeyer be reborn. “Rebirth” or change/transformation grants The Journeyer greater insight, wisdom, “power” to see the Journey to the end.
Reward/Treasure -The Journeyer has overcome her/his biggest fear, confronted the most difficult challenge, survived death, now earns reward. Reward is the “treasure” earned/sought. Could be an object, or knowledge, “gift,” a blessing, or love that will now be put to use in the everyday world the Journeyer will return to. Often it will have a restorative or healing function but it also serves to define the hero’s role in her/his society.
Transformation- Journeyer is changed by experiences of The Journey and returns to ordinary world with the “power” (knowledge, gift, wisdom, skills, etc.) to be a boon to others.
Most stories we love are essentially those that tell us about someone else’s journey. Human beings love stories that tell about struggles, challenges, dangers on the road of life. We love to go on the adventure to witness the battles, the hardships, the ordeals that somebody fights through to get that prize (an object, a fortune, a person, freedom, knowledge, maturity, love etc.), the“treasure” at the end that’s worth all the hell endured. We love these stories because we want to know what the story’s main character did to make it through. We’re curious about how somebody climbed over the hurdles, vanquished the monsters, and outsmarted the villains--how that somebody ended up with the “treasure” sought after and hard won. It’s an age-old story line. There are many, many variations on this theme.
When I teach this age-old, universal theme in a literature class, I tell my college students that it shows itself in cultures worldwide. They may not be interested, but I find it to be fascinating that we, no matter who we are, tell this story again and again to ourselves, and that we’ve told it for ages. In literature, we call this theme The Quest or The Journey. Journey stories portray, in a straightforward or symbolic way, the very basic human experiences that give us the following message over and over again: Life is a journey of various stages, each having its own problems to be overcome, but each with its own potential rewards.
The Quest is a story… about adventure, about self-discovery, about possibilities and transformation. It’s a story that tells us to have faith and hold on… that tells us it really is possible to triumph over the things inside us that would cripple or restrict us…that it really is possible to triumph over forces outside of ourselves that would stop us cold. Just have faith and hold on. Because it’s not the treasure at the end, it’s the treasure you get for going. It’s the treasure you get from facing what happens along the way: when you struggle, wrestle with the problem that seems so big and bad that you think it’s gonna eat your ass up; it’s the treasure you get when the questions in your head make you unsure of yourself and the choices you’re making. Do I really want to do this? You say to yourself when things get hairy. Isn’t there an easier, softer way? You start to wonder when those ordeals show up to kick your ass. The thing is: It’s not the destination but the journey that matters. And it will change you. Because The Journey tests you. Transforms you. Defines who you are because of the choices you make as you travel your road. The Journey, then, becomes the real treasure. It’s the means by which you’ve been changed. And, to me, that’s what counts: change, growth, taking your life up to another, a new level.
One of my favorite stories about The Journey is a movie trilogy, Lord of the Rings. In the first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, the main character, Frodo undertakes a journey to return the evil ring of power to the place of its origin in order to destroy it. Frodo volunteers to go. He has an inkling that The Journey will be hard, but I don’t think he realizes, from the outset, how difficult—how frightening and full of challenges it will turn out to be. In legend and in real life, Journeys always are, but that’s the point of The Journey--to go through it and learn from it, to be transformed by it, and to bring back “the treasure” which will benefit others in some way. Traditionally, in The Quest, the Journeyer needs these three qualities above all because The Journey takes you on a treacherous, long, and really hard road of trials: persistence, courage, and insight. And I can see that you would need these things, yet there’s another thing I think you need. The Journeyer has to be willing to go. Sometimes willingness, I think, is even more essential than courage on life’s Journey. If you aren’t willing, you won’t answer when life calls you to put your foot on the road. Willingness is the better part of persistence, pushing you forward so you’ll follow through, instead of giving up when those hurdles, those obstacles, tests, and ordeals show up. Don’t get me wrong. The Journey does require courage. (Courage, not just bravery; being brave isn’t quite enough. It’s courage that sends you into the lion’s den when you’re scared to death.) And you need insight, as well, to figure out things and people that you come across along the way.
Frodo is willing and does answer the call. Then, as things get really hard, because The Journey is always a hard thing to do, Frodo doesn’t want to keep going after he loses Gandoff, his mentor and guide. At that point, the Elf queen tells Frodo—who is now questioning his purpose, confused about whether to continue, and grieving the loss of Gandoff—that because the world depends on him to do this task, which is his and his alone, it won’t get done if he doesn’t complete it. That he is the Ring Bearer, but he must be willing to go. To do it. No one else can.
Now, that’s a scary thing to tell somebody…that the world is depending on you to do something that nobody else in the world can do because this task is yours alone. Wow. You better find some willingness, some courage, some persistence behind that heavy message. And you better find it fast. That is, if you’re going. Somehow though, most of us human beings look inside and find the qualities we need to take our journey. That’s a good thing because nobody else can be us, can travel our road, can complete our individual tasks. The story of The Journey encourages us to go ahead, to have faith that we can do it—whatever it is. To hang in there and do whatever it is we’re supposed to do. Because nobody else can.
I am always inspired by this universal theme called The Journey. It was Joseph Campbell, the scholar, who, some years ago, originally discovered the worldwide presence of this thematic motif in his studies of cultural myths; Campbell defined The Journey’s purpose in human society, breaking it down into stages with identifiable characters who play essential roles. I never tire of rediscovering the power of this story and I never tire of sharing my understanding of it. I invite you to look at the story of humankind through a universal lens called The Journey. It is outlined for you below.
The Journey (The Quest)
Purpose:
To answer the challenge, complete The Quest, to restore the ordinary world’s balance.
To meet difficult tests, ordeals which are part of life; to learn, to grow from them, and, ultimately, change because of these experiences, then bring back the gift or “treasure” earned and share the “treasure” with others.
A story of a heroine/hero who must separate from the ordinary, familiar world to travel on a difficult journey that promises to transform her/his life.
People on The Journey:
The Journeyer (heroine/hero) – person who needs to learn something and who will undertake hardships and sacrifice to answer the challenge of The Journey and complete it.
The Herald – something or someone appears announcing/implying the coming of significant change and issuing a challenge, problem, quest, or adventure.
Mentor/ Guide - Mentor is a wise person (or animal in fables) who provides guidance and knowledge to the Journeyer, usually gives “magical” or special gifts or advice for The Journey ahead.
Helpers, Allies – Help the Journeyer learn the rules of this “new” world.
The Other/Alter Ego – Mirrors the Journeyer in some way by representing/symbolizing our darkest desires or rejected qualities about self, or our untapped resources/abilities, or the “best” in self. This Other can be “good” or “bad.” The Other mirrors the Journeyer and meeting this person is crucial to the Journeyer who must decide to either recognize and acknowledge, to claim or not claim this part of self. If the Journeyer does not claim it, his/her growth, change/transformation cannot take place. And the quest fails.
Stages of The Journey:
Home- the known, familiar, safe haven of the everyday world of the Journeyer before the “story” begins.
The Call – A herald presents the Journeyer is presented with problem, challenge, quest, adventure to undertake to earn a reward/ “treasure.” (Journeyer may not know what the “treasure” is or that a “treasure” can be gotten.) The call can be accepted or refused. (Refusal of The Call - If Journeyer refuses call, the reason is usually fear. The call then comes again later.)
Meeting the Mentor –Journeyer meets a mentor/teacher/guide to get training & advice, to learn new skills for The Journey, to gain confidence in abilities to undertake The Journey.
The Threshold (Crossing) – The Journeyer crosses the gateway that separates the ordinary world from the special, “different” and, “new” world. This crossing tests & questions the Journeyer’s commitment The Journey and whether she/he can succeed.
Tests/Road of Trials – This stage challenges the skills, powers, abilities of the Journeyer who must undergo a series of tests. These serve as preparation for the greater ordeal yet to come. Stakes are heightened by the Journeyer confronting challenges, tests and enemies, by setbacks, hardships endured and dangers encountered by these tests. Because of setbacks, Journeyer may need to reorganize strategy or rekindle morale with help of allies and helpers.
Final Ordeal – Central trial/ life/death crisis; The Journey teeters on the brink of failure. The Journeyer faces her/his biggest fear, confronts the most difficult challenge and experiences symbolic “death.” Only through the "dying" of her/his old self can the Journeyer be reborn. “Rebirth” or change/transformation grants The Journeyer greater insight, wisdom, “power” to see the Journey to the end.
Reward/Treasure -The Journeyer has overcome her/his biggest fear, confronted the most difficult challenge, survived death, now earns reward. Reward is the “treasure” earned/sought. Could be an object, or knowledge, “gift,” a blessing, or love that will now be put to use in the everyday world the Journeyer will return to. Often it will have a restorative or healing function but it also serves to define the hero’s role in her/his society.
Transformation- Journeyer is changed by experiences of The Journey and returns to ordinary world with the “power” (knowledge, gift, wisdom, skills, etc.) to be a boon to others.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The Traveler Journals
Copyright 2008-All Rights Reserved
I used to be too afraid to go…to travel alone to a new place. Just before I turned twelve in sobriety, I decided I couldn’t put traveling on hold any longer. I couldn’t wait because I’d been waiting all my life. Waiting for somebody to hold my hand while I stuck my big toe in the water, so to speak, to see how cold the water might be. Waiting for permission to do what I wanted. Waiting. For somebody to go with me because I am a woman and so people would frown up and tell me it’s too dangerous for a woman to be traveling alone. Waiting. For permission. For a proper time. For a proper companion. I was fed up with all that waiting. I felt like I should see and experience the world outside of my “comfort zone.” So I began. I kept journals of my travels because my friend, Maria Lyons, gave me my first journal to write down what I saw, heard, felt, did. I’ve written in many journals since then. What follows is taken, in bits and pieces, from my Traveler Journals.
In Red Rock Country
Red Rock Country is also known as The Four Corners—Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado. It’s home to many natural wonders in the western United States. I saw some of them. My journal helps me to remember.
July 15, 2001-The Drive to Flagstaff, Arizona
On my Sunday drive from Phoenix, Arizona to Flagstaff, Arizona, I was a bit nervous leaving the rental car place, trying to remember the verbal directions from the staff person. I’d never been in Arizona before and when I emerged from the Phoenix airport, the 101 degree heat slapped me hard. I’d never been in that kind of heat before. It is, after all, the desert, but it had never occurred to me that July was not the best month to be traveling in Phoenix. In the rental car, I turned on the air conditioning quick, fast, and in a hurry, then successfully made my way to Interstate 10 West and to North 17.
Phoenix is at 1000 feet elevation and as I drove, I realized I would be climbing up during the three hour trip. The climb showed me wondrous things. They were wondrous to me because I’d always lived (before I moved to California) in The Midwest and in The South. The land is so much different there. Anyway. In the distance, I spotted brown and black mesas dotted with green, flat-armed cactus. (A mesa is a Spanish word for a sheared off mountain that looks like a table rock.) Lots of mesas along the way. The wind rocked the small car I was driving with strong, unexpected gusts from time to time. That got and kept my attention on the road. I climbed 6000 feet to Flagstaff. (Maybe that’s why I was soooo sleepy when I got to my motel bed.) As I climbed, I saw (and couldn’t believe it) blonde grass blowing in the wind. I laughed aloud. Bleached, silver-blonde grass looking, for all the world, like a woman’s thin, silky hair. What next?
While I drove, I kept telling myself aloud that I was doing fine so that my head’s toxic voices—the monkeys I call them—wouldn’t take off with my self-confidence and scare the bejesus out of me like they always try to do. The monkeys kept me nervous, but they couldn’t take away the exhilaration I felt because of what I was doing. I was alone and I was doing fine, I told myself as I descended into Verde Valley; there, the earth turned from golden desert to green fields flowering with Ponderosa Pine trees. I smiled. Yeah, I was doing fine. Flagstaff and The Grand Canyon weren’t far.
July 16, 2001- Arizona, The Grand Canyon
Who would imagine that the Grand Canyon is in the middle of a national forest of Ponderosa Pine and Scrub Oak? I didn’t. We shuttled on the tour bus up 7000 feet. Once there, the air was cool. Pleasant. I hurried through the trees with the rest of the tourists to the Watchtower, a lookout shaped like a round kiva with a platform circling it. We scurried to the platform, anxious for a first look. It took my breath away. My head kept swiveling round from one place, perspective, angle to the next, trying to take in everything. But you can’t, they say. It’s just too big to take in all at once, all at one time.
The Grand Canyon is a giant gorge cut out by erosion and The Colorado River. And that’s the way it looks. Only it’s the mother of all gorges. So big. It seems to fill the sky with its bigness. Erosion has cut its walls into plateaus, into levels that go deep, deep. The reddish-pink-brown-white stone walls run down so far that you can’t see the end to them from The South Rim above. It’s fascinating to me, this place. A holy place, I’m sure to the Indians who lived here first. Before the White man came and made it a tour. In a way that seems a sacrilege against nature, but if they hadn’t done it, I would have never seen it. And that would have been my immeasurable loss. For seeing The Grand Canyon, I have no doubt—not one—that there exists in our universe a power greater than me…greater than all of us puny human beings.
July 17, 2001- On the Way to Sedona, Arizona
I got a shock on the drive from Flagstaff through Oak Creek Canyon to get to Sedona, a shock when the forest of pines standing along each side of the switchback road fell away. What I saw was so different from any landscape I’d ever known or seen that I almost drove off the mountain trying to get my brain to understand exactly what my eyes were seeing. Like some exotic magic spell suddenly manifesting before my eyes, the red rocks of Sedona appeared, it seemed, out of nowhere. On either side of the road, the pines had been replaced by astonishing, mystical shapes of red rocks, like something out of a fairy tale. In the far distance, I could see the red-orange shape of a mountain of rocks that looked like something designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the visionary architect. He hadn’t though. No human had. Later I found out that it was Cathedral Rock. Just below it, there was a sweeping panorama of humpbacked mountains covered by green pines and dotted with outcrop boulders.
As I drove, I was so awed and overpowered by the sight of Cathedral Rock that it was hard to concentrate on the road; soon, I found a spot, a park, to turn into. At Sliding Rock Park, I got a chance to really see why people have labeled The Four Corners states as Red Rock Country. The sight at Sliding Rock Park was so magnificent to me that tears popped into my eyes. Although I’d seen the redness of The Grand Canyon only a couple of days before, this was the first time I’d ever seen these weirdly shaped, red beauties up close—mountains that had eroded into walls, buttes, spires. I gaped at them, amazed, beguiled…so many shapes, so many sizes, so many odd designs wrought by the hands of erosion, the hands of wind and of water. Designs so gorgeous that I would never have imagined them. Right then, I think, I fell in love with Red Rock Country.
2002, June 28 - Solitude at Snow Canyon, Utah
I found Snow Canyon quite by accident on my trip to St. Geroge, Utah. I came here to see Zion, Cedar Breaks, and Bryce Canyon. They are magnificent, but Snow Canyon has taken hold of me in a unique way.
I look around me sensing this place—Snow Canyon—in a way that is quite beyond my ability to describe. My five senses struggle to send my brain information to make sense and order of my surroundings. The first thing that strikes me is this. Except for the occasional buzz of a flying insect or a random breeze cutting through the heat to flutter the leaves of a few, young aspen trees, there is, I realize, no sound here. No sound. You hear the absence of sound. Absolute, utter silence. I have never experienced hearing no sound...nothing at all.
It takes some getting used to. Because it’s spooky for me having come from Los Angeles, a city that is thoroughly, stridently urban with all the various and sundry noises: Music blasting…jazz, rap, mariachi, golden oldies—music and the sky filled with airplanes whistling in for a landing, helicopters whap-whap-whapping, bus engines roaring, car horns blaring, people chattering in the street, on cell phones, via radio talk shows—having come from such unrelenting, ever constant noise to complete and unbroken silence unbalances me for some moments. It’s as if I’m experiencing a break with reality. That there is, in this day and time, a place such as this where you hear no sound at all is almost unbelievable. It seems a “fantastic” place to me. A fantasy out of a movie. Otherworldly. Alien. And in a way, frightening.
The thing that floods my senses, my sight is Redness. On the horizon, there rises one massive, white, limestone mountain… a lone, ghostly white figure surrounded by a forest of red, stone giants. Everywhere I look I see the color red. Everywhere. Red is the landscape. Red is cross-bedded into sandstone mounds that rise from the ground. Sometimes, bands of white limestone are imbedded within the red. Underneath my feet, the sand is red, too. My tennis shoes are covered with the red dust. I wonder how everything could be naturally so red? Blood red. Scarlet red. Orange-red. Red of such vivid hue that it seems unreal, as if someone took a brush and painted the rocks, the sand, the mountains.
In this place called Snow Canyon, I actually see my tiny-ness—see that I am so small…so insignificant beside the MASSIVENESS, TALLNESS, BIGNESS of the mesas and mountains. It’s overwhelming. Humbling. These rock formations that make up Snow Canyon—walls, mountains, buttes—are a massive presence. At first, I feel awe in the presence of such as this…where age and time seem to have no meaning…where change is majestic, visible. You see and you sense that change is an ongoing, natural force. Something you cannot alter. Something you cannot stop. Something entirely beyond your pitiful, human delusion of “control.”
Here and there slender desert plants with lacey green or gray arms reach out of the red rock landscape, reach out to grasp onto something to survive. Scattered about—as if some giant of old accidently spilled them onto the red, red ground—I see pieces of black lava coal changed now into solid rock from the scalding, hot liquid spewed up from volcanoes that lived here before time began.
After a while, an hour or so, I begin to feel at home with the solitude. This is a place that allows me the silence to reflect on what is living…what has lived before me and will live after me. The things of this place…lava beds and buttes and mesas and rock mounds and sand are the ancient ones. Old beyond measure. And alive. This canyon because it forces me to recognize how temporal my physical being is… that my birth, life, and death are a blink in the universe. It is disconcerting.
Yet somehow reassuring.
(end)
Southern Sampler - Atlanta, Georgia
July 10, 2008
Thunder rumbling. White streaks of lightning. Sporadic rain: spatters or showers or sheets of it coming down like manna from heaven. Though rain has been coming for the last week, has come every day this week, and is expected for the next seven days, it’s not enough to stem the drought Georgia is in.
It's hot. Hot that feels smothery because of the humidity. Hot with water hanging in the air. Steamy. Thick. Clammy. I get used to it fast enough because I lived in the midwest for years. In fact, the heat-humidity here reminds me of Indiana. Thick pine trees crowd the sides of Georgia's highway. You can’t see past them. They obstruct the skyline, my vista—my long, far view of the land.
I do miss the unobstructed vista that Los Angeles presents to my eye. Miss that long view sweeping my eye west to the ocean, sweeping it north to the mountains, or east to the deserts. When I compare Atlanta to Los Angeles, it’s safe to say this: It’s another country here. At night you can hear the cicadas calling—rubbing their legs together to sing each other a song. My friend lives in a suburb outside of Atlanta, in a place that reminds me of a forest. Her back yard disappears into a thicket of trees and underbrush. It’s green here. As green as Seattle. As green as fine emeralds. Or the sea in Hawaii. Life-giving green.
Atlanta. December 17, 2008
Being outdoors delights me. I’m an earth sign so maybe that explains my affinity for the outside. Not long ago, I found a park near my friend’s home. Because of my childhood, I developed into a sort of solitary soul and I’m used to doing things alone though I do love the company of my friend.
But she had to go to work, so, today, I went walking in the park alone. For the past couple of days, it’s been unseasonably warm. In the mid sixties and humid. The sky has been a patchwork of gray. Today, the clouds knit together in a kind of quilt with outlines of little or no definition. Instead, clouds of various hues—milky gray, slate gray, blue bellies, and angry, thunder gray—seem to flow one into the other.
I’ve brought an umbrella on my walk, just in case. And at one point, the jaws of heavens opened to show a faint, baby blue sky with a gloriously bright bauble pinned to its chest. Ironically, tiny drops of rain spattered down as the sun glowed and glimmered for few moments, but the rain wasn’t worth my opening the umbrella I was carrying. It refreshed me for a few seconds, and, then, along with the sun, disappeared.
I looked at the trees and ground as I walked. It’s winter and the grass, so green last summer, has turned dishwater blonde. At its roots, you can see red, red dirt. Iron-rich red. Very much like the red colors of Red Rock Country in the southwest. The trees are bare now. They’ve dropped leaves that cover the ground in layers of browns—cinnamon, sandy, beige. The leaves look like little brown hands to me…some with 5 fingers, the middle one being the longest… some with 7 rounded fingers…some with tipped, pointed fingernails. I don’t know if these are maple or oak leaves. Maybe neither.
But I do know pine trees. I look up at them. Tall, regal, they, too, have done a strip. Their remaining pine needles only crown the tops of their heads. Without the thick branches of pine needles in the middle and near the bottom, I can see through the groves of trees to spy previously hidden homes that snuggle the park’s perimeter.
It takes about thirty minutes to walk the whole park, unlike the huge Kenneth Hahn park at home. You pass a large pond as you go the two mile (or is it a mile?) trek; you pass two generously large, fenced dog runs; you see that they’ve made a space for kids to jump, climb, swing, and spaces for tennis and volleyball courts; there’s also something that looks like a giant gazebo that’s under construction. A nice park, this one. Quiet. Clean. Serene. It’s a favorite.
(end)
I used to be too afraid to go…to travel alone to a new place. Just before I turned twelve in sobriety, I decided I couldn’t put traveling on hold any longer. I couldn’t wait because I’d been waiting all my life. Waiting for somebody to hold my hand while I stuck my big toe in the water, so to speak, to see how cold the water might be. Waiting for permission to do what I wanted. Waiting. For somebody to go with me because I am a woman and so people would frown up and tell me it’s too dangerous for a woman to be traveling alone. Waiting. For permission. For a proper time. For a proper companion. I was fed up with all that waiting. I felt like I should see and experience the world outside of my “comfort zone.” So I began. I kept journals of my travels because my friend, Maria Lyons, gave me my first journal to write down what I saw, heard, felt, did. I’ve written in many journals since then. What follows is taken, in bits and pieces, from my Traveler Journals.
In Red Rock Country
Red Rock Country is also known as The Four Corners—Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado. It’s home to many natural wonders in the western United States. I saw some of them. My journal helps me to remember.
July 15, 2001-The Drive to Flagstaff, Arizona
On my Sunday drive from Phoenix, Arizona to Flagstaff, Arizona, I was a bit nervous leaving the rental car place, trying to remember the verbal directions from the staff person. I’d never been in Arizona before and when I emerged from the Phoenix airport, the 101 degree heat slapped me hard. I’d never been in that kind of heat before. It is, after all, the desert, but it had never occurred to me that July was not the best month to be traveling in Phoenix. In the rental car, I turned on the air conditioning quick, fast, and in a hurry, then successfully made my way to Interstate 10 West and to North 17.
Phoenix is at 1000 feet elevation and as I drove, I realized I would be climbing up during the three hour trip. The climb showed me wondrous things. They were wondrous to me because I’d always lived (before I moved to California) in The Midwest and in The South. The land is so much different there. Anyway. In the distance, I spotted brown and black mesas dotted with green, flat-armed cactus. (A mesa is a Spanish word for a sheared off mountain that looks like a table rock.) Lots of mesas along the way. The wind rocked the small car I was driving with strong, unexpected gusts from time to time. That got and kept my attention on the road. I climbed 6000 feet to Flagstaff. (Maybe that’s why I was soooo sleepy when I got to my motel bed.) As I climbed, I saw (and couldn’t believe it) blonde grass blowing in the wind. I laughed aloud. Bleached, silver-blonde grass looking, for all the world, like a woman’s thin, silky hair. What next?
While I drove, I kept telling myself aloud that I was doing fine so that my head’s toxic voices—the monkeys I call them—wouldn’t take off with my self-confidence and scare the bejesus out of me like they always try to do. The monkeys kept me nervous, but they couldn’t take away the exhilaration I felt because of what I was doing. I was alone and I was doing fine, I told myself as I descended into Verde Valley; there, the earth turned from golden desert to green fields flowering with Ponderosa Pine trees. I smiled. Yeah, I was doing fine. Flagstaff and The Grand Canyon weren’t far.
July 16, 2001- Arizona, The Grand Canyon
Who would imagine that the Grand Canyon is in the middle of a national forest of Ponderosa Pine and Scrub Oak? I didn’t. We shuttled on the tour bus up 7000 feet. Once there, the air was cool. Pleasant. I hurried through the trees with the rest of the tourists to the Watchtower, a lookout shaped like a round kiva with a platform circling it. We scurried to the platform, anxious for a first look. It took my breath away. My head kept swiveling round from one place, perspective, angle to the next, trying to take in everything. But you can’t, they say. It’s just too big to take in all at once, all at one time.
The Grand Canyon is a giant gorge cut out by erosion and The Colorado River. And that’s the way it looks. Only it’s the mother of all gorges. So big. It seems to fill the sky with its bigness. Erosion has cut its walls into plateaus, into levels that go deep, deep. The reddish-pink-brown-white stone walls run down so far that you can’t see the end to them from The South Rim above. It’s fascinating to me, this place. A holy place, I’m sure to the Indians who lived here first. Before the White man came and made it a tour. In a way that seems a sacrilege against nature, but if they hadn’t done it, I would have never seen it. And that would have been my immeasurable loss. For seeing The Grand Canyon, I have no doubt—not one—that there exists in our universe a power greater than me…greater than all of us puny human beings.
July 17, 2001- On the Way to Sedona, Arizona
I got a shock on the drive from Flagstaff through Oak Creek Canyon to get to Sedona, a shock when the forest of pines standing along each side of the switchback road fell away. What I saw was so different from any landscape I’d ever known or seen that I almost drove off the mountain trying to get my brain to understand exactly what my eyes were seeing. Like some exotic magic spell suddenly manifesting before my eyes, the red rocks of Sedona appeared, it seemed, out of nowhere. On either side of the road, the pines had been replaced by astonishing, mystical shapes of red rocks, like something out of a fairy tale. In the far distance, I could see the red-orange shape of a mountain of rocks that looked like something designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the visionary architect. He hadn’t though. No human had. Later I found out that it was Cathedral Rock. Just below it, there was a sweeping panorama of humpbacked mountains covered by green pines and dotted with outcrop boulders.
As I drove, I was so awed and overpowered by the sight of Cathedral Rock that it was hard to concentrate on the road; soon, I found a spot, a park, to turn into. At Sliding Rock Park, I got a chance to really see why people have labeled The Four Corners states as Red Rock Country. The sight at Sliding Rock Park was so magnificent to me that tears popped into my eyes. Although I’d seen the redness of The Grand Canyon only a couple of days before, this was the first time I’d ever seen these weirdly shaped, red beauties up close—mountains that had eroded into walls, buttes, spires. I gaped at them, amazed, beguiled…so many shapes, so many sizes, so many odd designs wrought by the hands of erosion, the hands of wind and of water. Designs so gorgeous that I would never have imagined them. Right then, I think, I fell in love with Red Rock Country.
2002, June 28 - Solitude at Snow Canyon, Utah
I found Snow Canyon quite by accident on my trip to St. Geroge, Utah. I came here to see Zion, Cedar Breaks, and Bryce Canyon. They are magnificent, but Snow Canyon has taken hold of me in a unique way.
I look around me sensing this place—Snow Canyon—in a way that is quite beyond my ability to describe. My five senses struggle to send my brain information to make sense and order of my surroundings. The first thing that strikes me is this. Except for the occasional buzz of a flying insect or a random breeze cutting through the heat to flutter the leaves of a few, young aspen trees, there is, I realize, no sound here. No sound. You hear the absence of sound. Absolute, utter silence. I have never experienced hearing no sound...nothing at all.
It takes some getting used to. Because it’s spooky for me having come from Los Angeles, a city that is thoroughly, stridently urban with all the various and sundry noises: Music blasting…jazz, rap, mariachi, golden oldies—music and the sky filled with airplanes whistling in for a landing, helicopters whap-whap-whapping, bus engines roaring, car horns blaring, people chattering in the street, on cell phones, via radio talk shows—having come from such unrelenting, ever constant noise to complete and unbroken silence unbalances me for some moments. It’s as if I’m experiencing a break with reality. That there is, in this day and time, a place such as this where you hear no sound at all is almost unbelievable. It seems a “fantastic” place to me. A fantasy out of a movie. Otherworldly. Alien. And in a way, frightening.
The thing that floods my senses, my sight is Redness. On the horizon, there rises one massive, white, limestone mountain… a lone, ghostly white figure surrounded by a forest of red, stone giants. Everywhere I look I see the color red. Everywhere. Red is the landscape. Red is cross-bedded into sandstone mounds that rise from the ground. Sometimes, bands of white limestone are imbedded within the red. Underneath my feet, the sand is red, too. My tennis shoes are covered with the red dust. I wonder how everything could be naturally so red? Blood red. Scarlet red. Orange-red. Red of such vivid hue that it seems unreal, as if someone took a brush and painted the rocks, the sand, the mountains.
In this place called Snow Canyon, I actually see my tiny-ness—see that I am so small…so insignificant beside the MASSIVENESS, TALLNESS, BIGNESS of the mesas and mountains. It’s overwhelming. Humbling. These rock formations that make up Snow Canyon—walls, mountains, buttes—are a massive presence. At first, I feel awe in the presence of such as this…where age and time seem to have no meaning…where change is majestic, visible. You see and you sense that change is an ongoing, natural force. Something you cannot alter. Something you cannot stop. Something entirely beyond your pitiful, human delusion of “control.”
Here and there slender desert plants with lacey green or gray arms reach out of the red rock landscape, reach out to grasp onto something to survive. Scattered about—as if some giant of old accidently spilled them onto the red, red ground—I see pieces of black lava coal changed now into solid rock from the scalding, hot liquid spewed up from volcanoes that lived here before time began.
After a while, an hour or so, I begin to feel at home with the solitude. This is a place that allows me the silence to reflect on what is living…what has lived before me and will live after me. The things of this place…lava beds and buttes and mesas and rock mounds and sand are the ancient ones. Old beyond measure. And alive. This canyon because it forces me to recognize how temporal my physical being is… that my birth, life, and death are a blink in the universe. It is disconcerting.
Yet somehow reassuring.
(end)
Southern Sampler - Atlanta, Georgia
July 10, 2008
Thunder rumbling. White streaks of lightning. Sporadic rain: spatters or showers or sheets of it coming down like manna from heaven. Though rain has been coming for the last week, has come every day this week, and is expected for the next seven days, it’s not enough to stem the drought Georgia is in.
It's hot. Hot that feels smothery because of the humidity. Hot with water hanging in the air. Steamy. Thick. Clammy. I get used to it fast enough because I lived in the midwest for years. In fact, the heat-humidity here reminds me of Indiana. Thick pine trees crowd the sides of Georgia's highway. You can’t see past them. They obstruct the skyline, my vista—my long, far view of the land.
I do miss the unobstructed vista that Los Angeles presents to my eye. Miss that long view sweeping my eye west to the ocean, sweeping it north to the mountains, or east to the deserts. When I compare Atlanta to Los Angeles, it’s safe to say this: It’s another country here. At night you can hear the cicadas calling—rubbing their legs together to sing each other a song. My friend lives in a suburb outside of Atlanta, in a place that reminds me of a forest. Her back yard disappears into a thicket of trees and underbrush. It’s green here. As green as Seattle. As green as fine emeralds. Or the sea in Hawaii. Life-giving green.
Atlanta. December 17, 2008
Being outdoors delights me. I’m an earth sign so maybe that explains my affinity for the outside. Not long ago, I found a park near my friend’s home. Because of my childhood, I developed into a sort of solitary soul and I’m used to doing things alone though I do love the company of my friend.
But she had to go to work, so, today, I went walking in the park alone. For the past couple of days, it’s been unseasonably warm. In the mid sixties and humid. The sky has been a patchwork of gray. Today, the clouds knit together in a kind of quilt with outlines of little or no definition. Instead, clouds of various hues—milky gray, slate gray, blue bellies, and angry, thunder gray—seem to flow one into the other.
I’ve brought an umbrella on my walk, just in case. And at one point, the jaws of heavens opened to show a faint, baby blue sky with a gloriously bright bauble pinned to its chest. Ironically, tiny drops of rain spattered down as the sun glowed and glimmered for few moments, but the rain wasn’t worth my opening the umbrella I was carrying. It refreshed me for a few seconds, and, then, along with the sun, disappeared.
I looked at the trees and ground as I walked. It’s winter and the grass, so green last summer, has turned dishwater blonde. At its roots, you can see red, red dirt. Iron-rich red. Very much like the red colors of Red Rock Country in the southwest. The trees are bare now. They’ve dropped leaves that cover the ground in layers of browns—cinnamon, sandy, beige. The leaves look like little brown hands to me…some with 5 fingers, the middle one being the longest… some with 7 rounded fingers…some with tipped, pointed fingernails. I don’t know if these are maple or oak leaves. Maybe neither.
But I do know pine trees. I look up at them. Tall, regal, they, too, have done a strip. Their remaining pine needles only crown the tops of their heads. Without the thick branches of pine needles in the middle and near the bottom, I can see through the groves of trees to spy previously hidden homes that snuggle the park’s perimeter.
It takes about thirty minutes to walk the whole park, unlike the huge Kenneth Hahn park at home. You pass a large pond as you go the two mile (or is it a mile?) trek; you pass two generously large, fenced dog runs; you see that they’ve made a space for kids to jump, climb, swing, and spaces for tennis and volleyball courts; there’s also something that looks like a giant gazebo that’s under construction. A nice park, this one. Quiet. Clean. Serene. It’s a favorite.
(end)
Meditations VI: Twenty Years Sober
Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved
Twenty years ago, on June 14, 1988, I walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and I was terrified.
Every night and morning and afternoon, before I’d walked in, I had prayed feverishly that A.A. would work for me. Prayed. Because I knew that it was the “last stop” for me. Knew it was the last house on the block. The last one that I’d ever see before I tumbled over the cliff and took that long, long fall to the rocks waiting below.
I looked around at the room I was standing in. People were everywhere. Sober people living without the bottle. Now that I was here, in 12-step recovery, I had to be without it. Without my crutch…my lifeline…my alcohol.
How would I do it? I didn’t know.
Didn’t know how I could get through. Couldn’t see my going through more than twenty-four hours without drinking. For the bottle was—I thought then—the light, the lamp that always had showed me where the path was. Showed me a way to get to the place where I could be safe. Where I wouldn’t have to feel….anything.
Beginning that June day twenty years ago, my constant companion for many months to follow was a kind of low-level terror. I was terrified of the sun rising on each new day. Terrified of its slow ride into the west each evening. Terrified because I couldn’t drink each day into night. Couldn’t drink each night into dawn. Terrified because, in my mind’s eye, all I could see those first sober months, was me standing at the entrance to a black-as-night tunnel. What lay ahead in that tunnel waiting for me? Darkness hid the path that would lead me to wherever it was that I’d have to go. And I was afraid of having to go there without my crutch.
I stood at the mouth of the tunnel and wondered: What was going to happen to me now? How was I going to be able to walk this journey?
I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I’d been drinking for 27 years. And though I’d tried so many times and so many ways, I couldn’t stop drinking on my own. I had, finally, come to the place where I desperately wanted to stop, but the fear of living without my crutch was so great that it paralyzed me…subverted every effort…showed me smoke and mirrors tricks that beguiled and persuaded me to stop thinking about stopping. So I had stopped because I’d thought it was shielding me from every emotion that had left me at the well of despair: abandonment, shame, guilt, loneliness, derailed expectations that cause the deepest, gut-wrenching kind of pain, hurt, anger and resentment.
The bottle had always said to me: Just pour the liquor and pick up the glass.
You can depend on me, it had faithfully whispered. I’ll protect you and you won’t have to feel the feelings you’re terrified of feeling.
But, finally, I came to realize that it was lying. Knew long before the court ordered me to A.A. meetings. Still, I clung to the delusion of the bottle as I stepped inside the rooms of A.A. Because I wanted life to be easy. The bottle kept promising me it would. And although I had long ago realized it never really kept its promise, every time I took a drink, I kept hoping it would.
In A.A. meetings, I listened. And when the other alcoholics talked about how you have to live without the bottle… have to step out every day on that smooth-looking stretch of land, hiding any hint of possible danger or misfortune ahead…how you have to keep struggling to climb those kick-ass hills planted in your path at every turn in the road…how—when life drops you into valleys so endlessly deep that you think you’ll never be able to climb out—you just have to keep going instead of running straight for the bottle, I shuddered.
How could I do that? How?
The only way out is through, they said. Whatever it is that you’re going through won’t last forever, they said. This, too, will pass.
The tunnel, which turned out to be my life, terrified me. The thought of taking the risk, of stepping forward blindly, without my shield—the bottle—of leaving myself entirely open, naked and vulnerable…how could I do it?
The only way out is through, they said.
No other choice. I’d have to take the first step. And the next and the next and go on walking through the tunnel. Go on through one day at a time. Go through. Sober.
I did as my days of sobriety turned into weeks, then months, then a year. A year became two, then six, then eleven, fifteen. And now, twenty.
So many things were revealed over the years. Like the fact that I’d spent my life, not living, but running. Or the fact that I habitually future-trip, believing that I can peep around corners to see the worst that is surely coming, and prompting the paint brush in my head to always draw scenarios of bloody disaster on the canvass of my mind.
So many tests have been presented to me over time. And the tests, not the lessons, would always come first, I came to understand. Furthermore, a test was always about the lesson. Did I see the lesson within? Did I understand it? If not, the test would inevitably be presented again. For sure, a whole lot of times, I flunked the test. Had to retake it again and again until I saw what I needed to learn. As time, as sobriety, went on, sometimes, I’d pass a test or two the first time because I discerned and understood the lesson.
How did I get through twenty years? I’ll give you the short version. Honesty. (Admitted to myself deep within that I am alcoholic and that I’d made a wreck of my life.) Open-mindedness. (Acknowledged that A.A. had the answers I needed.) Willingness. (Tried a new, changed way of living that A.A. proposed.)
I had to do house cleaning using the steps, the fourth step in particular, so that I could find out why I had done what I had done. So that I would not repeat it expecting different results. So that I would not live in pain, resisting change.
I had to give up my secrets because secrets will take you back out. And because secrets make you sick, make your life heavy and dark, and make you want the bottle.
I learned how to connect. Connect with other alcoholics at meetings. At meetings where their voices mirrored my feelings and fears and hopes. Where they gave me messages of witness about what a changed life might lead to. Where they told me to try relying on Something Greater Than Myself to get me through. Sometimes, I didn’t understand the messages. They sounded like garbled words coming in through static. Sometimes, they were bright revelations. At those times, a light went on for me…a mystery was solved.
Twenty years ago, I started a journey with fear as my companion. Through all of it, the fear began to lessen as the void within me slowly began to close. The void that I’d tried to fill with alcohol. In time, I began to feel a Presence within where the void had lived. In time, I risked trusting it.
Sobriety, I heard early on, is not a destination, but a journey. My goal—progress as I journey, not perfection. Today, though I have twenty years sober, I acknowledge that I’m going to make mistakes. What I hope is to learn from them. Twenty years has taught me that each time I reach a plateau, there will surely be another ass-kicking mountain around the bend to challenge me to reach higher, go further, climb to the next level. As my partner says: “It’s always one thing after another.” She’s right. What I must keep reminding myself is that I’m grateful to be meeting the next thing, whatever it is, sober.
Twenty years ago, on June 14, 1988, I walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and I was terrified.
Every night and morning and afternoon, before I’d walked in, I had prayed feverishly that A.A. would work for me. Prayed. Because I knew that it was the “last stop” for me. Knew it was the last house on the block. The last one that I’d ever see before I tumbled over the cliff and took that long, long fall to the rocks waiting below.
I looked around at the room I was standing in. People were everywhere. Sober people living without the bottle. Now that I was here, in 12-step recovery, I had to be without it. Without my crutch…my lifeline…my alcohol.
How would I do it? I didn’t know.
Didn’t know how I could get through. Couldn’t see my going through more than twenty-four hours without drinking. For the bottle was—I thought then—the light, the lamp that always had showed me where the path was. Showed me a way to get to the place where I could be safe. Where I wouldn’t have to feel….anything.
Beginning that June day twenty years ago, my constant companion for many months to follow was a kind of low-level terror. I was terrified of the sun rising on each new day. Terrified of its slow ride into the west each evening. Terrified because I couldn’t drink each day into night. Couldn’t drink each night into dawn. Terrified because, in my mind’s eye, all I could see those first sober months, was me standing at the entrance to a black-as-night tunnel. What lay ahead in that tunnel waiting for me? Darkness hid the path that would lead me to wherever it was that I’d have to go. And I was afraid of having to go there without my crutch.
I stood at the mouth of the tunnel and wondered: What was going to happen to me now? How was I going to be able to walk this journey?
I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I’d been drinking for 27 years. And though I’d tried so many times and so many ways, I couldn’t stop drinking on my own. I had, finally, come to the place where I desperately wanted to stop, but the fear of living without my crutch was so great that it paralyzed me…subverted every effort…showed me smoke and mirrors tricks that beguiled and persuaded me to stop thinking about stopping. So I had stopped because I’d thought it was shielding me from every emotion that had left me at the well of despair: abandonment, shame, guilt, loneliness, derailed expectations that cause the deepest, gut-wrenching kind of pain, hurt, anger and resentment.
The bottle had always said to me: Just pour the liquor and pick up the glass.
You can depend on me, it had faithfully whispered. I’ll protect you and you won’t have to feel the feelings you’re terrified of feeling.
But, finally, I came to realize that it was lying. Knew long before the court ordered me to A.A. meetings. Still, I clung to the delusion of the bottle as I stepped inside the rooms of A.A. Because I wanted life to be easy. The bottle kept promising me it would. And although I had long ago realized it never really kept its promise, every time I took a drink, I kept hoping it would.
In A.A. meetings, I listened. And when the other alcoholics talked about how you have to live without the bottle… have to step out every day on that smooth-looking stretch of land, hiding any hint of possible danger or misfortune ahead…how you have to keep struggling to climb those kick-ass hills planted in your path at every turn in the road…how—when life drops you into valleys so endlessly deep that you think you’ll never be able to climb out—you just have to keep going instead of running straight for the bottle, I shuddered.
How could I do that? How?
The only way out is through, they said. Whatever it is that you’re going through won’t last forever, they said. This, too, will pass.
The tunnel, which turned out to be my life, terrified me. The thought of taking the risk, of stepping forward blindly, without my shield—the bottle—of leaving myself entirely open, naked and vulnerable…how could I do it?
The only way out is through, they said.
No other choice. I’d have to take the first step. And the next and the next and go on walking through the tunnel. Go on through one day at a time. Go through. Sober.
I did as my days of sobriety turned into weeks, then months, then a year. A year became two, then six, then eleven, fifteen. And now, twenty.
So many things were revealed over the years. Like the fact that I’d spent my life, not living, but running. Or the fact that I habitually future-trip, believing that I can peep around corners to see the worst that is surely coming, and prompting the paint brush in my head to always draw scenarios of bloody disaster on the canvass of my mind.
So many tests have been presented to me over time. And the tests, not the lessons, would always come first, I came to understand. Furthermore, a test was always about the lesson. Did I see the lesson within? Did I understand it? If not, the test would inevitably be presented again. For sure, a whole lot of times, I flunked the test. Had to retake it again and again until I saw what I needed to learn. As time, as sobriety, went on, sometimes, I’d pass a test or two the first time because I discerned and understood the lesson.
How did I get through twenty years? I’ll give you the short version. Honesty. (Admitted to myself deep within that I am alcoholic and that I’d made a wreck of my life.) Open-mindedness. (Acknowledged that A.A. had the answers I needed.) Willingness. (Tried a new, changed way of living that A.A. proposed.)
I had to do house cleaning using the steps, the fourth step in particular, so that I could find out why I had done what I had done. So that I would not repeat it expecting different results. So that I would not live in pain, resisting change.
I had to give up my secrets because secrets will take you back out. And because secrets make you sick, make your life heavy and dark, and make you want the bottle.
I learned how to connect. Connect with other alcoholics at meetings. At meetings where their voices mirrored my feelings and fears and hopes. Where they gave me messages of witness about what a changed life might lead to. Where they told me to try relying on Something Greater Than Myself to get me through. Sometimes, I didn’t understand the messages. They sounded like garbled words coming in through static. Sometimes, they were bright revelations. At those times, a light went on for me…a mystery was solved.
Twenty years ago, I started a journey with fear as my companion. Through all of it, the fear began to lessen as the void within me slowly began to close. The void that I’d tried to fill with alcohol. In time, I began to feel a Presence within where the void had lived. In time, I risked trusting it.
Sobriety, I heard early on, is not a destination, but a journey. My goal—progress as I journey, not perfection. Today, though I have twenty years sober, I acknowledge that I’m going to make mistakes. What I hope is to learn from them. Twenty years has taught me that each time I reach a plateau, there will surely be another ass-kicking mountain around the bend to challenge me to reach higher, go further, climb to the next level. As my partner says: “It’s always one thing after another.” She’s right. What I must keep reminding myself is that I’m grateful to be meeting the next thing, whatever it is, sober.
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