Upon Waking: My Personal Mythology

We're studying Greek mythology in my World Lit I class and just this past week we watched an excerpt from "Power of Myth," Bill Moyers' classic interview with Joseph Campbell. Having reacquainted myself with Joseph Campbell's philosophy, I have more clarity on my own mythology and its symbols. This is made apparent in my dreams and what I'm trying to get at with the collection of shorts titled Upon Waking. According to Campbell, myth is the stuff of dreams; the two come from the same place--the subconscious, which is the driving force of our desires and fears despite what our intellects tell us. So this has been my project with Upon Waking, to decipher the mythology, the symbols of my subconscious and figure out the themes I grapple with, both subconsciously and consciously.

What are these themes? Rejection is one for sure. Despite my successes as a writer, rejection has damn well become commonplace, and although I pretend to shrug it off, I don't really. It manifests in my dreams as an experience with an ex-boyfriend, someone who, in the past, broke my sweet little heart. This person's ghost rises up from my inner depths and hurts me all over again in a situation that almost always borders on the absurd. "Dauphin" is an example of this, where an ex-boyfriend's ghost walks through my classroom on his way to a business meeting.

A second theme is my battle with the drudgery and the bludgeoning repetition of the days. This is accompanied by my desire to immerse myself in some natural and majestic place. "Roundabout to Wilderness" adequately portrays this theme, as does "The Ship." Both stories feature natural, almost mythical kingdoms, where I (through the guise of a persona, perhaps) experience a feeling of freedom.

It's a funny thing, writing about dreams. You think it's just a bunch of mishmash but when you sit down to record it, you realize there is an actual story there. The absurdity unveils itself into reason and it's curiously spot on with respect to your issues. Also, it's quick. It tumbles out onto the page effortlessly and in minutes. But this is what happens when your mind is trained in meditation; it's the focusing and the breathing that can get you back there. And it's funny how adaptable creativity is; as a mother with young children and a job, I don't think I would be able to write any other way at this point in my life.

Of Sand and Gold (from Upon Waking)

You had brought me to your gilded house in the sand where your sisters sat at a long table drinking wine amidst candles flickering and the white of cloth and the scurry of maids, gossiping, perhaps, to surmise if I were a decent prize with my fine brown hair and embroidered gown. I was allowed to wander; it was an island after all, down to the sea where the waves pushed up the rocks, foaming in laughter, mocking my fear, mocking me, as perhaps your sisters mocked me in their gilded dining hall with the flames elongating like fingers depicting a speaker here, a listener there.

I am humble, you see, a woman. A prize. You are the one with the desire, or are you, absent prince? I walked along the sand when the waves retreated and the island bore her legs. The long rays of the sun warmed my slender white arms; the beach was a pool of amber. They were searching for him, my bone, my blood, for he had been lost, perhaps taken, perhaps dead, according to Rumour. I would not be permitted to greet my sorrow in my own homeland, mourn him.

In the sand, the rocks were smooth, cobbled by the sea; I bent down to gather them, cradle them in my veil, tie them to my waist. On my way back to the pier laughter could be heard, the waves, far away but not too far.

It was there and then it was not, the jetty into the water, the dark wave, your voice, the wash of crepuscular sky.

Battlegrounds and the Need for a Cleared Space

Battlegrounds and the Need for a Cleared Space

The Compassion Anthology: Letter from the Editor

In my twenties I lived in a house with two male roommates: one was a good-natured, unemployed packrat who gleaned (to use Sandra Winter's term in her essay "The Gleaners") from our neighbors' trash, and the other was an ex-con yogi who painted mandalas and hung them on his bedroom wall. The packrat roommate was constantly home creating a mess wherever he went in the house. There were always dirty dishes in the sink, towels on the floor, overflowing trash, CDs, magazines, clothes everywhere, and of course, his gleanings. Nothing had a place. I took the room in the house because I couldn't find an apartment that would take my dog. Also, I was broke. The only way I could live in that chaotic household was to constantly clear a space for myself to exist.

I had my own room and spent most of my time there where it was clean and warm and cozy and where my dog and I watched the Romance Channel. In the kitchen, I cleared a space for a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee every morning. I cleared a small space in the sink to wash my dishes. In the den, I cleared a space on the floor for my yoga mat to center myself after a stressful day of teaching. I managed to exist in this chaos, and I still hold this philosophy, especially when things are in disarray, mentally and/or physically. I think clearing a space is an essential skill for survival, but not only this. When you clear a space and push the minutiae back, you choose a different consciousness,  a sort of simplification. You choose, in a word, peace.

This past winter break I spent every spare moment delving into ancient texts like the Iliad and the Odyssey to create curriculum for the World Literature I class I was assigned. I had forgotten that Homer spares us not the gory details of how larger-than-life soldiers slaughtered one another in the Iliad. The brutality is a bit exhausting to read (in the Iliad, it's the men who are slain; in the Odyssey there's an animal sacrifice on nearly every page) and yet in the midst of Homer's account of the Trojan War occurs a most tender and compassionate scene where King Priam of Troy visits the great hero Achilles to ask for the body of his son, Hector. Achilles not only slays Hector out of revenge for the blood of his comrade Patroclus, he ties Hector to his chariot and drags his body around the camp for days.

Now, Priam is an easy target for the revered warrior Achilles, a lamb gone to slaughter, if you will, but instead of killing Priam on the spot, Achilles does something utterly amazing: he weeps with him. When Achilles beholds Priam, he has "a deep desire to grieve for his own father" and the two "[give] way to grief." Achilles then commands the women slaves to have Hector's body bathed and anointed with olive oil; he himself wraps it in a battle-cape, loads it unto Priam's wagon, and promises Priam a cease fire until Hector's funeral rites are over.

I have been exceptionally aware as of late, how my own battles persist: the battle for good health despite my aging body and its minor yet annoying ailments; the battle with disorder, uncleanliness, and chaos inherent to raising two toddlers; the obstinate battle between creativity and livelihood; the prominent battle between creativity and motherhood. Being a soldier of 101 battles wears me out, and I know when I've reached the point when I need to clear a space for myself; I know when I need to construct a demilitarized zone.

The DMZ that exists between North and South Korea is a favored trope, referenced often by poets and writers. It is, quite literally, "an accidental paradise" to quote CNN, where rare and endangered species live relatively peaceful lives. It is an anomaly, a paradox, just like the space cleared for compassion in Achilles' lodgings.

This clearing of space, this DMZ inside Achilles' lodgings, would never have been possible if not for the god Hermes who put Achilles' soldiers to sleep before they could overtake Priam's wagon. The presence of the god is a metaphor for aligning with our higher natures to claim compassion paramount for ourselves and others. In our rushed and stressed world, to clear a space really seems like a monumental task--a task for a god. But it's possible. This focus on our higher nature is the subject behind Lily Prince's painting "The Better Angels of Our Nature" (pictured above right). This vibrant, ethereal, yet earthy piece has the goddess of liberty figuring prominently in the high ground, an indication that our alignment with such natures is the true meaning of freedom.

For our winter 2016 issue of the anthology, we are especially privileged to have poems from the manuscript Songs in the Storm by the late Admiral Mahic, a Bosnian poet who cleared a space for poetry in the midst of a war. I've been working closely with Mahic's translator and friend, the Canadian writer Brian Fawcett, who resurrected the manuscript from the archives at the University of Northern British Columbia. Mahic's poetry strikes me with a sense of awe for the human spirit and its dichotomies; it reminds me of the Joseph Campbell philosophy of the transcendent energy of God and how, when it hits the time space continuum, breaks into opposites: yin and yang, good and evil, male and female, war and compassion.

Please clear a space in your own lives to process the work here by our artists, poets, and writers and consider joining us for our annual exhibit in May at North Shore Community College titled Women Artists and Writers: Compassion, Creativity, and Courage to benefit Amirah (see Submission Guidelines).

Yours in creativity and compassion,

Laurette Folk, Editor of The Compassion Anthology

Priam and Achilles by Alessando Padovanino (above), The Better Angels of Our Nature by Lily Prince (below)

Dauphin (from Upon Waking)

When she awoke, the children were gathered at tables in their apartment. Apparently the classroom was locked and the parents brought them here, to the apartment she shared with her husband who, not surprisingly, slept throughout the whole ordeal and then miraculously vanished. The children were getting restless, and she, still in her robe with a curious stain on the collar, was slightly intimidated by having some twenty pre-schoolers in her private home, becoming all the more rowdy by the minute. But she was a seasoned veteran of teaching, and she knew she could pull something from the stocked bag of tricks that comes with some fifteen years in the profession. She decided on the game of telephone, and she lined them up and handed the first child the message realizing then that of course the child couldn't read, so she whispered it into his ear, this ridiculously banal message (what should the message be, she panicked, just a minute before and thought of something at last) and the child turned to the next and so on and so forth. As the message passed from child to child, she went to close the door to the hallway, when suddenly her ex-boyfriend's ghost, X, passed through it. X had left for the day, relinquishing his childlike Japanese wife to their children and in one fell swoop, dismissed the children playing telephone, commenting something about her having her hands full (no adoration in his voice whatsoever), then passed through the exterior walls and onto his meeting with a guy, the guy, regarding the online dating business he was starting. She tried her best to dismiss him as he did her, but couldn't. Just the night before, X's ghost shared a bed with her and her husband, and she, eagerly, with heart brimming, opened her legs to him and he entered her to experience sensation only, as one does when one reaches for a piece of cake or a glass of sherry. It was her husband who watched from over her shoulder, almost as if he pitied her because he knew full well her rampant desire to be loved and the heartache she was to feel by this heartless engagement. The ghost of X did not consummate the act; he withdrew and put on his clothes, packed up his things, and went back to the home he shared with his childlike Japanese wife, unfulfilled. So here he was now, casually walking through her life again, a ghost, a resurrected being from the dark lake of her subconscious where all was myth and mystery--his relationship with his childlike Japanese wife, mystery, his daily routine, mystery, his haunting ghost--myth. But she was an old pro at carrying around that tarnished chalice, and she went about doing her job, keeping the children in line, thinking to herself, consequences, there should be consequences, and then peering up at the clock--3:20--class would be soon dismissed and she could go back to picking up the pieces, tidy up, (she was always, always tidying up) recollect herself. The message came down to the last child and she asked her to repeat it, and she said one word: dauphin. The sentence, the original banal message (whatever it was) was now condensed to this, and she asked the children what it meant and hands went up, and a child said an animal of the water. Parents started to arrive then and mayhem ensued. She was left with the word, a word for a king's son, a word for an animal of the water, a word for a historical mystery.

The Man Who Fell (from Upon Waking)

There was a mattress in the air, navigated by cables and the people atop it were drinking, having a party, looking down and pointing. A strong wind blew and a man toppled down, or did he dive? There was water all around, azure blue stretched wide in rivers' mouths between peninsulas; he missed, hit his head square on the asphalt, and bounced. We swerved around him, aghast. We stopped, turned around, went for him. Time passed, or better, shifted from one frame to another, and I was inside an ambulance now, looking for bandages. The man should have been dead upon impact. The man should have been dead, but he was sitting up with a line of blood down his temple. Another frame shifted: in it my daughter dove into a tidal pool, but she didn't know how to swim. I dove in after her, thinking, what an adventurous spirit! There were barnacled rocks, seaweed softly moving in the tide, friends and strangers perched on the surrounding jetties. Afterwards, we went into a summer cottage with full view of the inlets, the mouths of the bay, the blue, blue, and I was still thinking how he should have been dead, but something in me chose otherwise and death would be postponed.

Winter Moths

Papyrus nymphs
of no certain beauty
but certain lives
not unlike my own
(in certain ways)
color of dust, bothersome
like dust
diminutive and diminishing--
an equilateral triangle
of wings clinging
to the door, the window
a visual staccato-- iterations
in December
welcome themselves in
crash into your face,
spiral up, up, up
seeking
what we all seek
in the end
in the beginning
a portal, illumed.

Vanishing Point (from Upon Waking)

There were zinnias, aligned in a row along his country home driveway, each with a patch of snow in the middle of it--evidence of a climate gone awry. He saw her taking a shower, this young thing with young legs and arms, long maiden hair. He was older now, debonair, some would say; he had made his mark in the industry and was respected for it. But she could feel his desire, his longing to ravish youth, vitality, devour it like a chocolate eclair.

When they went to his flat in New York City as a couple, there were movies on the walls, images so vast they made her anxious. He had every amenity in this haven, this brownstone in a neighborhood where other musicians lived, composers, notable writers, artists with their work in MoMa. She went to the courtyard to make a call to an old friend. The friend had said she was going to visit her in the city, but there was apprehension in her voice now. Curiously, when she looked into the dark pane of a window, she had noticed new lines etched across her face, her hair not as perfect and maidenly. She had told her friend that he had started to notice her flaws, how perhaps his friends saw her dimpled ass, the peek of a varicose vein behind her knee. She was losing it. She told her friend that she was certain she was losing it.

It started to rain and the courtyard became a pool, vast and green. She touched the cement filigrees of the walls. "I haven't talked to her in years," she gossiped, and she said it as an affront, as if it were the estranged friend's fault and she had nothing to do with the severing of the relationship. When she hung up the phone, she had a fever. She went back to the flat and found no one home. Her mother took her temperature while she was lying on the sofa watching the images flash across the walls, images of bombed cities, crumbling buildings, rubble.

It was time to accept it for what it was, she thought, an entity moving toward some vanishing point, where everything that flashes, wanes, then becomes nothing at all.