"Durga"

 

"Durga"

Durga is the primal feminine goddess who was called into existence from the source when the battle between the gods and the demons was all but lost to the demons.  When suddenly, the gods said to themselves, "Oops, we need the manifest feminine, it is the only way if we are to have a chance and win this battle"... And so she came into existence from the source of all creation endowed with all the attributes and powers of the gods, but she came riding into existence on a tiger, with power and love unparalleled.  She defeated the demons with ease and grace, between each one she slew she rested more and more deeply into her love of the truth, into the essence of who she was and from she came.

She is a great teacher to us about demon-slaying, about the power of love, what we love most, for her it was Truth, no demons stood a chance.

She came into focus for me in a dream about a week or so ago, and knowing consciously nearly nothing, other than she was a powerful Hindu goddess, today I looked up, and I understood!  I understood, she is the power we, I need to sum up to battle in our depths, our most fearsome demons.

"Filling the chalice"

 

Smoozing: Quan Yin, Laxmi, Tara

"Guardian of the heart"

 

Even here

 

I am falling into the gravity at the center of my heart

having returned to the landscape 

crevices and gullies of old wounds.

Now I occupy

the abandoned shadows.

My shoulders drop

there is new space for air to flow inward

rib basket expanding

belly owning her round space

generating the impulse

for roots to delve more deeply into the earth.

Even here where she weeps

even here in old mining country

where the pain beneath my feet

is so palpable

where earth and women were violated

"las estacadas" left to bleed out

in the name of honor and religion.

Even here where nightly bomb blasts 

rattle windows and nerves

in the belief that they are blasting holes in the sky

through which the Virgen can descend.

The goddess of my heart 

the one who visits me in dreams

flies through the night sky of her own volition

blessing the land and its people 

with sacred water and amber.

So, even here, my feet touching the ground

enter into a conversation

a resonance with the disturbed mantle.

I know I have been called upon 

to drum to chant voice her pain

and do my best to weave gossamer threads

through the rifts, wounds, and scars

below our feet, here.

—Lorena

"Gathering acorns"

 

el cantar de nuestros cantares

En las ranuras de la tierra que somos 

resplandece el caracter que nos regalan los años

los amores, las decepciones

las vivencias y las tragedias que nos tocan inevitablemente.

La cara limpia, lavada, sin máscaras 

comparte al mundo los secretos que tanto necesita 

del vivir tocando los celajes más delicados y exquitos

y de caer al abismo sin aire

de sobrevivir y luego volver a caminar y cantar

el cantar de nuestros cantares.

—Lorena Wolfman 

I exist

 "I exist".  This image came from a very deeply felt painful and moving experience of holding my heart, listening to my heart with deep attention.  My heart spoke, she said "I exist" with all her soul intelligence, with all her life experience, so often doubted, so often ignored, so often made less of... but her voice, was very tender and clear, "I exist". 

This took me into a very dark place, as though the emotional weight of discounting and ignoring heart were pouring over me... Growing up my mother had such a guarded heart, my father had such a forgotten and shy heart, they could not model for me what it was to give heart her full-bodied acknowledgment.  Nor was it part of the culture. The particular intellectual culture that doubted spirit and soul, that had no words for speaking of it.  

Though I give my mother great credit for her search, as an anthropologist, looking far and wide, looking into the her-story of history, looking to the soul poetry of the Navajo, yet not fully able to own it, though it was what perhaps moved her most deeply, but not being able to own it, she could not let on that she knew my heart-soul existed.  I felt I could die so many times growing up.  Heart untouched, untended to in so many ways, pain ignored because it was too overwhelming and there were no words, no one knew how to hug. I learned how to years later and taught my mother to hug.

When I would break down on occasion, unable to put on a brave face any longer, it was my father's tender heart who came to me with a kind word summoned forth from his tender heart.  But mostly he was absent from the time I was 9 or 10 onwards (though his workaholism began sooner), when I had no idea where he was, in town, out of town, in the country, out of the country. 

After my father's death, there were people who worked closely with him that said they had no idea he had a daughter, though by then he did call me weekly.  From my mother's diaries, I know that my father did not want to have children.  I seem to remember he wanted her to abort.  But as a small child, he was my favorite parent, the one who carried me on his shoulders, the one who took me for A&W Hamburgers and shakes when I was hungry. It makes me very sad to remember how neglected I actually was.  There are pictures of me as a young child, hair unkempt, clothing unkempt... 

Though as a little baby before I learned how to walk, I was so bright.  Such a shining light. My mother said before she died how she wished so dearly she had spent more time brushing my hair, and caring for me. She cared for me in other ways, mostly of the mind, teaching me to write and to read, encouraging me to remember my dreams upon waking.  When I was 4 and 5 we often did yoga together.  So it was not as though there were no resources given, even in the midst of neglect of many material and emotional kinds. My mother struggled a lot with depression, and low self-esteem despite being one of the most articulate and brilliant people I have been graced to know. "They" say, most recently I heard it from Elizabeth Gilbert, that depression covers anger and rage, my mother could not tolerate my anger as she could not tolerate her own anger.  

So my soul heart says "I exist" and I realize that I still struggle to care for my heart emotionally, often over-ride or ignore, just as I was taught by example.  It is a life-long journey... As Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen says, "Life is a practice". And maybe somehow in all of the is the truth of what has been said "wounds are where the doorways are"... some of our greatest gifts are birthed of the wounds...

Reviving the wild heart

 

Homesickness

 

Arrival of the Goddess of Poesis

 

Clearing ancestral wounds

 

"Giving Thanks"

 

To the other shore

 

Owl Spirit

 

Naga guardian

 

Stitched together

 

The eros of listening

 

Leche de Dambala #4

 

The thin membrane of absence

 

The promise of seeds

 

untitled

 

"Nourishing the baby angels"

 

In the Cave

 

waking poem

golden light dapples the shadows on the walls

the whole garden appears to be underwater

a single bird calls out the day

—Lorena

Before rising

 

Before rising

I rest held in the earth's lap

Through the window

green against white

tepozan leaves striking 

avian poses

while a cardinal red bird 

beats in its chest

then is gone

Memories and dreams

rise like vapors 

across the window

book gong drum lama

you dance

hugging the wall 

and turning flirtatiously

to be seen over the phone

as you talk to a woman in France

And here we are gazing to the end

gravity holding us

to our mortal promises

the ones we were born with

—Lorena

Sene I

 

In my dreams

 

in my dreams

I dream of being a fish

swimming in the currents

darting in and out of spirals

of water and space

letting the fluid waves guide me

into new awakenings

in my dreams I remember the wisdom

engraved in the patterns of my bones

in the clay of my flesh

nothing less than cosmic maps

the flow of all creation

animating and reanimating

each breath each tissue each cell

floating in the vast ocean of existence

—Lorena

waking poem

 

ink dark sky

pales into morning

a garden is birthed out of the shadows

the morning star's echo can still be heard

waning moon at midheaven

—Lorena

In the vastness

 

I am dancing in the vastness, in the immensity of a full moon night in the pale sand dunes of a desert valley.  The Milky Way overhead, stars shining brightly across the skydome, illuminate the ripples in the sand. The grace of the dunes has been sculpted by the wind and gravity.  The starlight that bathes the sand, bathes my skin, in a rainfall of light from billions of miles away, here on this sandy ridge.  My toes press into the warm sand, I turn and twist my feet, my spine follows, as I feel deeply into the fine grains coming up between my toes and over my feet. I cross one foot over the other and I twist forward and then back with each step. My dance embraces this place. The softest breath of air caresses my arms, mingling with the starlight and the moonlight and rising like an aroma, the aroma of space.  My own body illuminated by celestial bodies becomes another body of light exalted by shadow as the dunes themselves.  The vastness of the sky and the vastness of the dunes reach out forever.  I bath my ensouled body in the vastness.

—Lorena

waking poem

 

in the predawn

gentle sway of grey lace 

and curved silhouettes

turning green into sunrise

—Lorena

10-27-21

She dances in a red dress

Coming out of the woods

she dances in a red dress,

she and all that she is.

Life pulse stretching out through her arms,

she steps forward,

the wisdom of her years framing her face.

She has earned her skin.

She flies over the ground

in the light of the blue moon,

beaming amidst the fireflies.

She is many and she is more 

than the sum of all the faces she has inhabited. 

She illuminates the forest,

she dances the concert of her being.

—Lorena

Waking poem

 

leaves shake

wings beat emerging

a dark silhouette in flight

—Lorena

Hillman on the DAIMON

 

“Each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling.

The daimon motivates. It protects. It invents and persists with stubborn fidelity. It resists compromising reasonableness and often forces deviance and oddity upon its keeper, especially when neglected or opposed. It offers comfort and can pull you into its shell, but it cannot abide innocence. It can make the body ill. It is out of step with time, finding all sorts of faults, gaps, and knots in the flow of life – and it prefers them. It has affinities with myth, since it is itself a mythical being and thinks in mythical patterns.

It has much to do with feelings of uniqueness, of grandeur and with the restlessness of the heart, its impatience, its dissatisfaction, its yearning. It needs its share of beauty. It wants to be seen, witnessed, accorded recognition, particularly by the person who is its caretaker. Metaphoric images are its first unlearned language, which provides the poetic basis of mind, making possible communication between all people and all things by means of metaphors.” 

–James Hillman

"Dancing daemons"

 

Waking poem

 

milky translucent clouds

a perfect breast 

drawn above the trees

—Lorena

Inmensity

 

Inmensity—

I felt her seeing me from everywhere

even from within my smooth bones

and as twilight took hold of the sky

          her breath became more palpable

                               in the form of awe.

—Lorena

La inmensidad

 

la inmensidad

no es sinónimo de la enormidad

—cuyos brazos pesan—

la inmensidad nos lleva en sus alas

nos despierta la piel ante la profundad del cielo

lo que se ve y no se ve

lo no identificable

más allá de los elementos

más que la suma de las partes

la percibimos mirándonos desde todas partes

es su inteligencia que abraza cada partícula 

de nuestro cuerpo

hasta aue cada una se despega 

de cada uno de su apegos errados

y gira entre los astros

—Lorena

Resting earth

 

"La Inmensidad"

 

"Allies"

 

waking poem

 

tremble of tepozan leaves

emulating wings in flight

across white sky

—Lorena Wolfman

full moon

 

on the night of the full moon

when you remember to greet her luminous sphere 

your skin may just awaken

like a spirit arriving out of the darkness

sleek and perceptive

as that of a panther

listening through every pore

the slightest vibration 

felt in along the length of each hair

a concert of aliveness

shuttering in the curvature of space

—Lorena

Waking poem

 

gentle rain falling

occasional bird flies overhead

wet nopal tines

—Lorena

Layers

 

Here, there are layers—

Continents breaking apart 

over hundreds of thousands of years

into new configurations

floating across time

moved by geologic forces

rising from the molten heat 

at the center of the earth

moved by what moves through us all

the whirling skin of our scars 

is the same as the currents 

coming down from the stars

Gaia and Serius conspiring 

whisper to the air and the ocean

to become flow

the tapestry of the seasons

the rising and settings

the warp and weft of our lives 

the bowl and labyrinth of our days.

—Lorena

New Flesh

 

"Escuchar con la piel"

 

"Enmascarada"

 

Egg of Emptiness

 

Hands in Prayer

 

Sueños del mar

 

En la espera

 

Lines of pleasure

 

"Danse de l'arbre"

 

Medusa III

 

Medusa II

I am so mystified by this image... Mystified in the sense of being drawing into the mystery of the creative process, the breathing process, the process of perception itself.  This digital callage is after a deep somatic meditation where I ended up in my diaphram with a very a more subtle relationship to structure... underneath there is an anatomical image of the torso with diaphram that you might just be able to make out... it is a response to the the one of my other torsos... in which this same torso painting appears.  The title that came to me for this one is "medusa del mar" which translates to "sea jellyfish"... something else is coming into focus. It is as though I followed the tunnel in the other drawing and came into this...

 

"There's a storm coming"

 

"Medusa del Mar"

 

Healing Resonance

 

Just waking from dream imagery continues to work with the sense of the healing direction... After working so much with digital collage yesterday, as I was surfacing to wakefulness these were the elements I, my mind's eye, was playing with... There are 4 superimposed elements here... cello body, water, scar tissue and a droplet rebounding from the surface of the water creating a wake around it...

Challenge - Resource

 

Each step

—for Teresa

It is not what

or even where

but how we touch the earth with our feet

how we allow ourselves to feel 

how she touches us back 

there's a dance in each step

in each point of contact 

between our soles and the earth

stillness and movement dancing in each balance point 

along the way

in each step moving forward

our bodies bridging

earth and sky.

—Lorena Wolfman

Belly pressed to the earth

—for Dre 

Streched out 

with its belly pressed to the Earth

the serpent of life lifts it’s hands in prayer.

It gently cups the precious space

between its palms

as it sheds its skin.

As old falls away

dust and debris begin to rise

revealing the shadow. 

At times, the dark forms of it’s dream 

take on fearsome dimensions

as it sculpts its spiraling vortices,

laying down the pathways for creation.

—Lorena

Into the woods...

—for Dre

 

I find myself drawn into the woods

to take a shirin-yoku tree bath

to feel the fresh air

blessing my lungs with its green scent.

Only here amidst the leaves 

can we truely function fully

nostrils flaring to receive

the news of joyful blossoming.

—Lorena

I am incubating my Self