Tag Archives: father

A willing horse

2 Replies

Willing horse

I am playing at the piano and as I explore,
fingers of both right and left hands moving on the keys,
each note and chord is beautiful.
A childhood schoolmate is in the kitchen
and the question of what I have accomplished comes up.
She is affiliated with banking,
which would please my father, and I say to myself.
“I have written something I am proud of.”
Not comparing.
I am pleased, satisfied.
Then, of course, I am going down the street and realize I am naked.

Maybe there are no clothes for writers
and playing music gets you out the door.

In the morning a CBC Q interview, Tom Power with Alanis Morissette:
A song comes from and for the person writing it.
Once it is out there, it belongs to everyone.
Use it for yourself.

I think about being carried,
that some art is like a willing horse carrying when needed
and dreams are like that too.

a child pointing to vulnerable flesh that thought it was invincible

Leave a reply

 

Primula

I have not dreamed this flower.
It just is.
In the midst of pandemic compliance
we are still part of spring in the north,
or autumn in the south.

As I near grandmotherhood for a second time, I continue exploring my legacy.
My father used to say there were a lot of people walking around Toronto
with the ass out of their pants because they didn’t get the trump out.

One day, aged, he woke from a nap in a wistful state and spoke of his dream:
a little sow in heat that he is leading on a string.
He walks it to the market downtown but just can’t do it, can’t enter that space.

He is speaking in an Irish accent with a softness and a fondness I have never seen.
I research the original occupant of our old house:
a butcher from County Tyrone, once the town’s mayor.
I find old pictures of the downtown Square
where there used to be a market on the grounds,
long before my father’s days here.
Carriages, fences, long dresses.

My hurry up legacy is the message that violence is so expensive.

Right now the sundering at birth is not so much moving from breathing water to air
as entering a world where one is made to chose between the mother and the father.
Moment one, and even before, the beliefs of our ancestors and their ancestors fill us.
Ancient systems made people things.
Boy children were made things that would own things.
Children and women were made things to be owned.
Men as things were made to trade people as things, made to corral allies,
made to make families tribes of deals made and broken,
empires of loyalty and enslavement.

The first breaths are of the air filled with the idea of people as things.
The first breaths are filled with the fallacy that one must chose love for the mother
or love for the father,
fallacy because it is not love in either case when people are treated as things.
This is the sundering, the system of the false bottom choice.

We are all born in the middle of the story of things.
This story keeps us blind to the story.
The heart of the child knows there is a false bottom story,
but needs others who will get to the bottom
to be freed from the empire of things.
The emperor has no clothes,
and the energy of the people goes either into trying so hard
to believe his clothes are as fine as he says,
or into trying to find others who, like the child,
will say he is naked and foolish.

A house of cards.
The world turned into a game of cards.
Getting the trump out is only playing the game.
Taking the little sow to market is part of waking up in the middle of a story
and not recognizing the ancestors’ voices.
The stories fill the air of birthing rooms.
To heal the wound from belief that we are things,
we need to see we are the ancestors telling stories.
The new story needs to serve the child, not the empire.

The first flower flowers in the north or south at its season.
It just is being itself.
This writing is more than a trump card.
It is a quiet trumpet like the opening of a primula in tune with the coming of a child.
It is a child pointing to vulnerable flesh that thought it was invincible,
that thought it was separate from nature and was a thing,
but is a being.

All movement is right

1 Reply

CCF30112012_00009

Retrospective from 2013

A series of dreams ends with this:

2013_03_05

I am carrying a baby in my arms.
I am aware of how pleasant it feels
to be carrying the baby,
the weight of the child in my arms, 
the grace in the movement.
I feel that when one is carrying a child
and focusing the attention on it
all movement is right,
is meaningful.

These dreams precede the above
(titles and brief synopses/segments):

2013_02_28
young male band may be lip synching, creative woman makes playful ritual work, climb fences, vintage dresses

The young woman artist seems to have made the ritual art
to help me get unstuck and/or to celebrate something –
to remind me about beauty, creativity,
ritual, gifting, unattachment,
trickster energy, young energy,
not worrying about being cool.

2013_03_01
messy apartment, municipal construction, bouncing with men, two cute little children, ride wants me to fix little quilt

Cleansing.
Children and men allies.
Mending a special quilt.

2013_03_02
intervention blocks, dad with blue and gold globe, parties frustrated, hero woman saga

Teen boys could benefit from my father but too risky.
An intervention from my brother contributes
to teen girls not getting active.
It is unnerving to go down a shaft
in iffy buckets with party girls.
Men honour the father who has the blue and gold
supernatural light in a jar.
I’d like to suggest a solution for the damage
that the unaware, entitled friends are causing the host.
I’d like the sad warrior hero woman to let someone
uncover the heritage beauty of her estate
while she is away.
I’d like to convince her that it would be okay
to have a baby in the space.

This one begins the series
(full dream):

2013_02_26
pregnant, First Nations hug, sleeping and breathing underwater

I am pregnant. So is another woman.
I feel young – not wrong that I should be pregnant.
But I am surprised I am as big as I am.
But someone says I’m 40 weeks – or something like that –
but I can’t believe I am – I don’t think I am that big.
Also – some quick flashes of anxiety –
to be about to have a baby and not be ready
– have no foundation set up – a sudden situation.
There are other people around
but they are not necessarily focused on me
or there to help – not there to hinder.
They are aware I am pregnant.
Maybe they are the ones
who reaffirm that I am when I don’t understand.

Walking around a building that is part house,
part gathering place.
Has a grey tone.
Dusk but also the colours of battlements –
and where single guys hang out
Not about colour.
Maybe First Nations guys hanging out.
Single men, various ages.
Events and energy that are not clear
Like they are preparing for an event or altercation.
Patrolling or strolling or pacing along the upper floor outside
– has a view of courtyard and other side of property.
Not about me – I don’t understand.
I see a First Nations man – he reaches out to hug me in a happy way.
Good.

I am below the walkway – in a place like a moat
or a thing that has turned into a moat –
between the outside and inside walls,
really just the main area with water.
I am floating, sort of sleeping underwater.
My feet touch the bottom – soil bottom.
I don’t want to touch it.
I can see through the water.
It is not dirty but I can see things floating in it
as though water is just over the ground –
not a water course – or a body of water or a swimming pool.
But not appetizing or appealing water.
I want to keep sleeping and floating.
I am breathing.
I am wondering about what it means
that I am breathing underwater
Like in utero.
I wonder what that means.

I feel like I might be avoiding something.

 

I feel that when one is carrying a child
and focusing the attention on it
all movement is right,
is meaningful.

Old Technology

Leave a reply

CCF12112012_00000

Being creeped out, I prefer to leave the man who might be a murderer, in the open concept but dark house in the trees, to the conservative, neat and tidy woman who would sleep with him.

I now have to deal with the weirdness of having a third breast on my shoulder, a prominent location on my body, vulnerable. Something our father has put here has grown to this. It reminds me of Celtic armour, and Janet Jackson. It seems to be getting attention for making a statement – but not my statement. I am wearied by the hassle of dealing with it and sorting out the mystery of it.

A travelling friend, a Scott, may not have time to join me for a swim in the lake before getting back on board. Maybe it’s too far or he doesn’t want to be wet while travelling.

A wooded area, the side of a small mountain.
A technical man at the top of a pole where three things hold it up – maybe to receive or send messages, or to be able to intercept something incoming – an attack?
He’s part of our team, he, another man and I.
Up a small hill – open rooms like a bunker – cement pads – layers resting on something.
Decomposing or turning into something else – partly made of mushroom/fungus.
Combining organic growth with planned structures.
An old idea left to develop on its own without certainty that it would turn out.
Developing on its own from neglect or time passing.
Old radios lit up – repurposed – one is a large upright console – almost moving with the energy coming through it – receiving something, part of a relay, with light moving out of it diagonally.
This is a room of concrete set aside for such things, all this action, defence and military and communications, set away from society, in secret, now maybe of use.

[From Apr. 26, 2012]