Prompted

While waiting for my new images to arrive by snail mail, I’ve been using my collage as a prompt for poetry. So far I’m finding that without a pre-determined focus in the making, my writing is moving more in its own direction and less in mine. I don’t feel so compelled to wring meaning from every image.

In other words I’m stepping off the path and wandering off. I can see I’m still more attracted to purple flowers than blue ones, but at least I am not setting out to pick a bouquet of purely lavender hues. In fact I can pass the violets by without a glance while chasing butterflies…

Reality

Aromatic coffee wakes me.

Scent from the steaming cup creeps

into my dream, slips beneath closed doors,

between tight-locked window panes

and brings me back to bedsheets and sunshine,                                                        

crisp-folded napkins, and the morning news.

I blink, changing worlds each time eyes

shut open, open shut.

Staring across the threshold of my tray

into mystic daimon worlds where mystery

manifests in different forms

from native prophets’, I wonder

why familiarity breeds contempt.  How

we fail to honor miracles that surge

like restless crowds beyond the nictitating eyelid

with which we veil second sight, third eye, active

imagination. We notice

the fluttering moth, but fail

to perceive the prescient mites

migrating toward its ear; grab

a fistful of mixed nuts, but never ponder

the strange collaboration between bee,

flood, and fish that lets Brazil nuts propagate.

We scorn connection at our peril.

One wing flapping

can wreck a world

or save it.

This is another piece that came. As I reread it just now, I realized I was unconsciously applying the “I Am One Who” SoulCollage® method of dialog, in which an image in the card is allowed to speak through the artist about itself.

Fusion

She is the old one, grass green,

shot through with veriditas, wearing

serpent as succubus, confidant, familiar—

ancient chthonic companion, Jezebel

of Eden. The one who tempts us

to love what we are.

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The Three-Way Motif

The Three Graces

 

The Three-Way Motif
The Month of April

This month, April, we will be exploring the number three and how it manifests in Story. It seems that in many tales the number three is an integral part of the telling. For an example in the story of Aladdin’s Lamp, the hero gets three wishes from the Genie. In the story of the Lazy Spinner, she gets three rooms of flax to spin. Often there are three main characters in a story, such as The Three Little Pigs. What is it about the number three that repeatedly shows up in story?

Three is a about multiplicity, creative power, growth, forward movement, overcoming duality. Three is the first number to which the word “all” has been appropriated and “The Triad is the number of the whole, inasmuch as it contains a beginning, middle and an end. The power of three is universal and is the tripartite nature of the world as heaven, earth and waters. It is man, as body, soul and spirit. It is birth, life and death. Beginning, middle and end. It is past, present and future. It is the father, mother and son. In folklore, there are three wishes, three tries, three Princes or Princesses and /or three fairies. In the wizard of OZ, there are three witches, two good witches and one bad, there are innumerable trinities of Gods and Goddesses…

The chief symbol of three is the triangle. Other symbols of three are the trident, fleur-de-lis, trigrams, and the trefoil. There are three charities, graces, and sirens. Cerberus is triple-headed; the Chimera has three different animal parts, the head of a goat, a lion, and a serpent. In Christian beliefs, the Magi brought three gifts to baby Jesus. Peter denied Christ three times. There were three crosses at Calvary, and Christ was dead three days before he rose again.

There are many divine deities that have triple aspects; Isis, Osiris, and Horus; Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva; In Christianity there is God the father, Jesus the son and the Holy Spirit. From Japan, there are three Treasures, Mirror, Sword, and Jewel. In Mexico, the Trinity is represented by three crosses, one large cross and two smaller ones.

In my collage, “The Three Graces” dance together in celebration of Aphrodite. They celebrate beauty and joy. They bestow beauty, kindness, love tenderness, pleasure, creativity, artistry and sensuality. They dance for the quality greater than faith or hope; they dance for love.

The Language of the Birds

The language of the birds has a venerable history dating back to the ancient Greek world.  Aesop was supposed to have understood it, as did Tiresias.  The figurehead of Jason’s ship, the Argo, carved of wood from a sacred grove of trees at the oracle site of Dodona, could speak with birds.  The priestesses of Dodona received their prophecies from the rustling leaves of the oak.  Herodotus reported that:

“… two black doves had come flying from Thebes in Egypt, one to Libya and one to Dodona; the latter settled on an oak tree, and there uttered human speech, declaring that a place of divination from Zeus must be made there; the people of Dodona understood that the message was divine, and therefore established the oracular shrine …”  

Sacred trees and birds naturally share a long association, one I am sure will reveal itself in artwork to come.  Meanwhile, we can’t leave Greece without mentioning Aristophanes and his satirical play The Birds, in which two men conspire with a hoopoe bird to try and overthrow Olympus.

The hoopoe was valued for his virtue by Persians, but seen as a harbinger of death in Scandinavia.  He introduced King Solomon to Sheba.  In Egypt they painted his sacred image into the walls of their tombs.  Jumping ahead two thousand years to the work of the Sufi mystic poet, Farid al-Din Attar, we find the hoopoe leading a Conference of Birds on a quest for enlightenment.  About the same time, on the other side of Europe, troubadours were thought to write poetry and sing in the language of birds, while alchemists claimed that same avian lexicon as an arcane mystical language holding the secrets of the universe.  Others considered the language of the birds another name for angel-speak.

As you can see, it’s a fascinating topic.  There are even some fairy tales written about it, giving me enough material to inspire several weeks of work.  This week I started out as usual to create a collage, beginning by digging out my bird file and cutting images for a couple of hours.  However, I couldn’t make them coalesce into anything interesting.  Instead, I wrote a poem, Lakshmi* Listens, and illustrated it with a power point slide.  I then saved the image as a jpeg and posted it here.  I am still not as “outside the box” as I would like to be, but already the chains feel a bit looser…

* Lakshmi – the Hindu goddess of spiritual and material prosperity, wealth, purity, generosity, and the embodiment of beauty, grace and charm.

  Lakshmi Listens

Living alone

she learns to listen

distinguishing tweet from chirp

 chitter from squawk, constricting

 tongue and throat, rasping 0ut

syllables harsh enough to splinter ice;

whistling refrains so sweetly pitched

Lakshmi stoops to overhear, dripping

nectar tears

into the dimpled lake.

©2014 Christine Irving

And NOW for something different!

And NOW for something different!

The two of us are pleased that we’ve stuck with our blog for a year but we are also very excited about starting this next year with a fresh new focus. We decided to continue with Myths, folktales, stories, poems and tall-tails but to broaden our approach. Instead of picking the tale/story first we are going to take an element, category or aspect of story and approach the creative work in an open-ended way. It is my hope this will expand the imagery to include some surprises and to connect to myths, stories and folk tales in a new way.

February is going to be about BIRDS. We are going to work with the idea of birds. Birds, all types of birds: sea birds, raptors, ducks, forest birds, open field birds, night birds, water fowl, big birds, tiny birds, birds as spirit, their feathers, beaks, feet, eggs, and nests, birds as totems, bird wings, bird flight, soaring, gliding, and flightless birds, diving birds, bird plumage, song birds, bird symbols, and their predators. We will be considering all of it.

Another change is that we are going to take turns posting. Each week one of us will be responsible for the blog post and art piece, (a mixed-media and/or collage) plus an essay, poem or story. Of course, we can always post more often but for sure every other week. We plan to give this format a 3 month trial and then decide to continue with it or make more adjustments.

The idea of this blog is to continue our collaboration, which we both love, to create an art piece on a regular basis, and to focus on the study and application of symbols, story, story telling and creative writing. We welcome your feedback and suggestions. If you’d like to play along with us let us know.

Spider’s Sonnet

I want to shift my shape and stalk

across a jeweled dew-dropped web

spinning a spiral tunnel as I walk

all corners anchored firm to fight the ebb

and push of errant breeze or stormy blow

snug against all tricks Fate might deliver.

When it’s finished I will back on tip-toe

down my chute, stop to sever silken thread

curb my hunger patiently, crouch in a

waiting trance, anticipating nothing.

I rely on heaven-sent sweet manna.

Some hasty flighty creature on the wing

will bumble in my net and stick there fast

to offer me refreshment and repast.

©2000 Christine Irving

Raven Comes Flying

Raven flies on two wings

riding the winds of change,

beating  zephyr to gust, breeze to tempest

spinning vortices from each pinion,

tumbling tornadoes of transformation

to make and remake this world.

Old men tell Raven tales –

each wing warrants a season

its own time of telling.

The Wing of Making demands respect. Awe

silences young warriors, stifles the giggles of girls.

Creation myths recount beginnings, touch mystery

summon ancestors, First Man, First Woman.

Such stories require gravitas, solemnity, ceremony.

Solstice passes, season shifts

long nights, colder days cry out for laughter;

 fables to fend off boredom, hunger, rage.

Now, old men flap jaws and arms

send shadows soaring ‑ light/dark, dark/light

The Wing of Mischief craves hilarity,

famished for mirth to shake the belly

   leave the strong men sniggering

awash in helpless tears.

.

Raven flies on two wings

riding the winds of change,

beating  zephyr to gust, breeze to tempest

spinning vortices from each pinion,

tumbling tornadoes of transformation

to make and remake this world.

©2013  Christine Irving

COYOTE

Coyote might have gone

the way of buffalo or beaver

but  he learned to smell

strychnine in the snares,

taught himself not to eat

the trappers’ tainted meat.

 

Shifting his boundaries

he followed bulldozers

east through razed woodlands,

skulking into clearings,

foraging the up-turned earth

for insect eggs and baby mice

until he wound up on a truck

farm in New Jersey

gulping down blackberries,

stripping the savory bushes

till his chin ran red.

 

Now he ranges around Boston

Pensacola, and Poughkeepsie

lured into a maze of safe sidewalks

by the pull of painted T-shirts

and carved fetishes of thread-wrapped stone.

 

People should consider who they conjure:

dung-eater, prophet-with-no-honor,

liar, iconoclast, thief; Trickster Coyote

casting moon shadows,

haunting suburban hedges,

beating the odds.

©2000 Christine Irving