Occupation in your Eyes. Poem by Willi Paul 2010.
I am in your micro wave
Melting the North Pole
Calling for the Old Silicon Valley
Charging the new black hole
I am your compost pile
The dark black box in the garage
Spent cartridge in your gun
The billy beer can under the couch
I am your empty pool
The top of the dirt pile in the side yard
Occupation in your eyes
Slime of lost causes and silly intentions
I am dust and wax and spit and tv's last glare
Lost Boston tapes
Bald head and broken nails
Green coal in your fire place
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The poem I read at our closing last Monday, about the Body and more...
WHEN GRAPES TURN TO WINE, THEY LONG FOR OUR ABILITY TO CHANGE.
WHEN STARS WHEEL AROUND THE NORTH POLE,
THEY ARE LONGING FOR OUR GROWING CONSCIOUSNESS.
WINE GOT DRUNK WITH US, NOT THE OTHER WAY.
THEY BODY DEVELOPED OUT OF US, NOT WE FROM IT.
WE ARE BEES, AND OUR BODY IS A HONEYCOMB.
WE MAKE THE BODY, CELL BY CELL WE MADE IT.
GOD'S JOY MOVES FROM UNMARKED BOX TO UNMARKED BOX, FROM CELL TO CELL.
AS RAINWATER, DOWN INTO FLOWERBED. AS ROSES, UP FROM GROUND.
WE ARE BEES, AND OUR BODY IS A HONEYCOMB.
WE MAKE THE BODY, CELL BY CELL WE MADE IT.
RUMI, TRANSLATED BY ROBERT BLY
Very clever and apropos for a number of reasons I can think of, Willi. Thank you.
Question (for everyone, actually): Who do you think the audience might be for such a poem? As a group, we've touched on how to share "depth" and with whom (some of us suggesting in the first meeting that there are some people we don't even bother to tell (families, anyone?) and we all know the adage about casting pearls before swine.
I just think your poem is very powerful, Willi, and I'm wondering where you might personally dare to share and have an authentic discussion about its effects--kids? adults? elementary or high school classroom? university, and if so, which class(es), book reading at a book store, lecture in the corporate world? Are the images powerful enough to stand on their own and spark a response in everyone, or just those of us who are attuned because we've been looking?
Are there existing events where one could use this kind of thing to get a point across?--or would we, as soul stewards and activists, need to create our own?....
I am creating new rituals and connecting these to new myths. One such synergy is the Sharing Expo in the emerging Transition Towns movement. Here several presenters teach a "mini-workshop" in the spirit of re-use and recycle. A Conversation Circle is in place for the next Sharing by Palo Alto Transition on 6/21.
We are the portals.
Willi: This seems like a creative way to do outreach. I'd love to hear more about the context, the depth, and other events you've worked on in order to gain a more concrete understanding so I can visualize them.
Something about this thread--between your posts, Willi, and the combination with Adele's observations about our brokenness and failure led me to this article on the importance of mythology in contemporary culture.
"Does Myth (Still) Have A Function In Jungian Studies? Modernity, M... Michael Vannoy Adams. You've probably read it already, Willi, but I wanted to share for others.
I'm particularly struck by the fact that this event has to do with Easter, and how much more mythologically symbolic could Easter be?
Part of our problem as a culture is that we collectively take myths too literally, and that we don't "recognize" the "gods" when they are present. What myth(s) are we each individually and collectively living both inside and outside the DiscoverRing here?
I enjoyed this poem Willi: thank you. I read it back to back with an email from Spring Publications about a new book called The Crucible of Failure - of which they wrote amongst other things::::
"Invoking the genius loci, Polly Young-Eisendrath proposes, “Our inherent brokenness provides a primary way to embrace our imperfect species and the imperfect world on which we depend.”
The authors generally agree that, as a collective, we are bent on Icarus-like heights, prone to follow the hubristic ego. How might we learn to renunciate success? For all the shame involved, can we grasp failure as the need for a paradigm shift? Explorations ensue from case work in the analytic consulting room, from field work with refugees, from history, myth, fairy tale, and even mountaineering itself. Ultimately readers of this volume are invited to consider that, “life has to be undone, and one often gets to truth through error. . . . So be human, seek understanding, seek insight . . .” —C.G. Jung"
To work forward authentically in the "depth" milieu asks an attention to personal truth and the tricks of ego...which is quite exhausting actually. We are, or let me say for myself I am influenced, by cultural images of success, notwithstanding my higher/lower wisdom - and quite frankly wanting to remake the world has tinges of that as well. "I am dust and wax and spit and tv's last glare..... ":)