On the Wing 2

On the Wing

Butteflies are lovely, silent, like angels.  In the Middle Ages they were a common symbol for the Resurrection: first there is a stumpy little caterpillar, earthbound and greedy; then it apparently dies and is buried in the coffin of its own cocoon; the butterfly emerges metamorphosed-colorful, beautiful, apparently no longer needing food (adult butterflies are primarily nectar drinking), and flying free on gentle wings.  The image is better even than it first appears because something very dreadful and frightening happens inside the chrysalis.  We use the word 'cocoon' now to mean a place of safety and escape, but in fact the caterpillar, having constructed its own grave, does not develop smoothly, growing wings onto its first body, but disintegrates entirely, breaking down into an organic slime which then regenerates in a completely new form.  It goes as a child into the dark place and is lost; it emerges the beautiful princess, or proven hero.  The forest is full of such magic, both in reality and in the stories.

-from the book From the Forest by  Sara Maitland

 

There is something alive in a feather.  The power of it is

perhaps in its dream of sky, currents of air, and the silence

of its creation.  It knows the insides of clouds.  It carries our

needs and desires, the stories of our brokenness.  It rises and

falls down elemental space, one part of the elaborate world of

life where fish swim against gravity, where eels turn silver as

moon to breed.

How did the feather arrive at the edge of the dirt road where I

live?  How did it fall across and through currents of air?  How

did the feathers survive fire?  This I will never know.  Nor will

I know what voice spoke through my sleep.  I know only that

there are simple powers, strange and real.

-From the books Dwellings and the essay 

The Feathers by Linda Hogan  

THS IZ NT SCIENZ

THS IZ MAGICK!

Getting Elevated

                     GeTTinG 

                                              EleVaTed

Old Woman Nature
naturally has a bag of bones
tucked away somewhere.
a whole room full of bones!
A scattering of hair and cartilage
bits in the woods.
A fox scat with hair and a tooth in it.
a shellmound
a bone flake in a streambank
A purring cat, crunching
the mouse head first,
eating on down toward the tail -
The sweet old woman
calmly gathering firewood in the
moon…
Don’t be shocked,
She’s heating you some soup.

By Gary Snyder

Ghost Dance

A(r)MOR(e)

Greed and Aggression by Sharon Olds

Someone in Quaker meeting talks about greed and aggression
and I think of the way I lay the massive
weight of my body down on you
like a tiger lying down in gluttony and pleasure on the
elegant heavy body of the eland it eats,
the spiral horn pointing to the sky like heaven.
Ecstasy has been given to the tiger,
forced into it's nature, the way the
forcemeat is cranked down the the throat of the held goose,
it cannot help it, hunger and the glory of
eating packed at the center of each
tiger cell, for the life of the tiger and the
making of new tigers, so there will
always be tigers on the earth, their stripes like
stripes of night and stripes of fire-light
so if they had a God it would be striped,
burnt-gold and black, the way if
I had a God it would renew itself the
way you live and live while I take you as if
consuming you while you take me as if
consuming me, it would be a God of
love as complete satiety,
greed and fullness, aggression and fullness, the
way we once drank at the body of an animal
until we were so happy we could only
faint, our mouth's running into sleep.



"I look. I look so hard it becomes an embarrassment-
and then I see eyes. Lion eyes. Two amber beads with
a brown matrix. Circles of contentment until I stand;
the lion's eyes change, and I am flushed with fear.

"Quiet," Samuel whispers. "We will watch for a while."

As my eyes become acquainted with lion, I begin to distinguish
fur from grass. I realize there are two lions, a male and
a female lying together under the stingy shade of a thorn tree.
I can hear them breathe. The male is breathing hard and fast,
his black mane in rhythm with the breeze. He puts his right
paw on the female's shoulder. Ears twitch. We are no more
than ten feet away. He yawns. His yellow canines are as long
as my index finger. His jowls look like well-worn leather. He
stands. The grasses brush his belly. Veins protrude from his
leg muscles. This lion is lean and strong. No wonder that in
Maasai mind ever aspect of a lion is imbued with magic.

Acting oblivious to us, he moves to the other side of the tree.
From the protection of the Land Rover, we spot a fresh kill. It
is a wildebeest whose black flesh has been peeled back from a red
scaffolding of bones. The lion sits on his haunches and feeds.
He separates the wildebeest's legs with his paws and slowly sinks
his teeth into the groin. He pulls and tears large strips of meat.
With his head tilted, his carnassials shear more muscle and viscera
from the body cavity. His rasping tongue licks the blood from
the bones. Ribs snap. His claws clamp down on the wildebeest as
though escape was still possible.

The carcass is like a cave that the lion enters. He growls, and the
female joins him. He nibbles her ear and then licks her face and
neck. I am startled by his bloodstained muzzle. Side by side, two
lions devour their prey."

-From "An Unspoken Hunger" by Terry Tempest Williams

Electric Shamanism!

F.T.W.

hAAPPY FYCKING NEW YEARS!!!