IMBOLC, (Candlemass)

This festival is a power point on the wheel of the year. To our ancestors, one happening (one that only a few of us are today even know about) marked this date with great importance:

"Lambs are born; there is milk now."

 The winter (or at least that's what this season used to be) was in those Little Ice Age Days winding down. There was higher sun. Bare turf patches appeared in the pastures that lay upon south-facing hills. 

Perhaps, down in your valley, the sun sets today in the center of the notch upon that looming crag.

Or, maybe, over there in the next valley, the sun sets at a particular spot, right there in the circle of stone built by wise ancestors.

The sun stays above the horizon for longer every day—and with that and some regular rain and no plague among people or livestock—there will be enough to eat again. If we are lucky, there will be plenty over to get us through the next winter, and enough to leave seed to plant in the year after that. 

Besides the agricultural, there were contracts between men and families which must be made, oaths given, hand clasping hand, in a community where a man's word was his bond. 

I think it's a good thing to remember such times, though long ago.

Our world is different, but aren't our basic tasks similar? Shouldn't we support one another in community? Shouldn't we celebrate the simple miracle of the lambs? Shouldn't we speak truth to one another? 

So, let's suck up our courage and go forth to continue the work which will reshape our society for the good of all of us. Let's give up our fears and rally to put a brake upon those privileged few who sit like dragons atop the spoil of an entire planet's resources. Remember, even here in the 21st Century, "sunlight is the best disinfectant."

~~Juliet 

https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/

Urgent Message from Mother

Poem by ~~

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.  

quoted from Urgent Message from Mother, 

Gather the Women, Save the World

Circle up, sisters! 

The time to save our world -- for our grandchildren, for our fellow species--is NOW.

Untapped source of peace,

The only real hope

Is to draw upon the collective wisdom of women.

Those with direct experience of the cost of war:

The life of child, grandchild, sibling, spouse,

The loss of limb or mind of someone near and dear,

The loss of laughter, the pervasiveness of fear,

The loss of hope for the future.

Untapped source of peace,

Those who have known domestic violence:

Seen the effect of bullying on sons,

Seen daughters become silent,

Seen light go out in their eyes.

Those who know

That when every child matters,

When none are hungry, abused, or discounted,

The world will become a kinder place

For us all.

Untapped source of peace,

Women with empathy

Who live in a world apart,

Are safe, loved, and fortunate,

Yet can imagine

Being helpless, beaten, and raped,

Then forced to bear a child

Conceived in violence.

Women who know in their hearts

That what happens to any woman

Anywhere

Could happen to them.

Untapped source of peace,

Women who see loved ones filled with vengeance and hate,

Hypervigilant, fear-ridden, or afraid to sleep

Because of the nightmares.

Husbands, brothers, sons and now daughters

Home from wars,

Bearing little resemblance to who they could have been

In a peaceful world.

Untapped source of peace,

Women in circles,

Women connecting,

Women together

Bringing the sacred feminine,

Maternal instinct, sister archetype,

Mother power

Into the world.

Poem by ~~

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.  

quoted from Urgent Message from Mother, 

Gather the Women, Save the World

SAVE THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

I cannot believe that this vandalism of an actual treasure -- drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- is even being contemplated. It's time to ask where the souls of the people now proposing this atrocity are, and in what black hole of greed they dwell. 

This is the only planet we have, and so much of what our grandkids' future will look like depends upon our generation's changing our attitude toward Mother Earth. She's not Ours. We're Hers. We're part of a system, a part that's taken to acting like a virus. here, at the bottom of the sky, we are goldfish in a small bowl, where no one's going to come and change the water.  The way we're being taken by our corporate leaders can only end with the human race dying in it's own excrement. 

There has to be a major mental shift inside the heads of a lot of people if we are to protect such places from the "take paradise and put in...." an oil rig tendency of the guys who have made themselves our masters. 

The sad facts are that's it's just another shell game. The money from drilling is pie in the sky. Someone among our complicit legislator needs to feel the stirring of conscience and put unbiased eyes on the numbers. These show that drilling in the Refuge is the usual corporate scam, which ends with one rich guy (Think The Baron Harkonnen,) a lot of busted folks--and with the bill for the clean-up for the toxic ruin left behind-- as well as for the many "subsidies" the industry will require--all the responsibility of the taxpayer. 

If the peasants stopped staring into the daily electronic Circus Maximus and looked around them, they'd see the shackles being locked onto to their ankles--once again--by the thugs who seem to always-- in this and every other human civilization to date -- eventually rig/bully/steal/murder their way to the top. 

  
From The Audubon Society:
      
"The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge supports millions of birds that migrate through our state and all 50 states to raise their chicks in its pristine habitat. Birds like the Tundra Swan and Northern Pintail return year after year to nest on its coastal plain, while caribou undertake one the world's longest land migrations to reach the coastal plain and give birth to their young.


The Arctic Refuge does not belong in a tax bill. Yet the Senate tax bill, which could soon receive a vote in the House, opens the Refuge to drilling while avoiding regular order and real debate. The numbers don't add up. Leasing is unlikely to meet the $1 billion instructions--more realistic estimates suggest it would only raise $37.5M.  U.S. oil production and exports are at record levels while oil prices are near record lows. Further, the bill makes oil drilling the primary purpose for the Refuge's coastal plain, limiting environmental review in a precedent that puts all of our federally protected lands at risk. The Arctic Refuge is one of our last truly wild places and an iconic American landscape." 

The Arctic Refuge is even more--it's a living, breathing World Heritage site, a vital part of the heart-beat of our planet. 

A Visit to the Fey

I was recently privileged to join in a procession of the Fey--behind no less a personage than the Queen of Fairies, as a part of her entourage. This doesn't happen to a human very often, and certainly not often to elder humans. 

Old people remind the Queen of decay and death, things she does not allow within her realm, her realm which is eternal--ever-green--as they say. She and her subjects do not age; they are forever young and fair. Therefore, to sing to her and walk beside her people was a great honor for this old woman, definitely a bucket list item.

(Not to say I've never danced with the Fey. I, in the days of my youth--back in the now legendary and generally misunderstood sixties, back when I was young and fair, I participated in her rites--rites which raise energy, and all that naturally follows after, those encounters in the dark scented forest, where all celebrants channeled Venus and Mars. Never mind, it's all back of me now.)

Bay Laurel

The Fairy Queen is a lover of high fashion, of flashing sequined quirks, tinkling bells, supple bare flesh, bejeweled dresses woven with spider's web. She even loves kinky boots, so her devotees wore them too.

Her entourage was more than ready to indulge her every whim, and upon this high magical occasion, they certainly pulled it off. I wore the best dress I had, long sleeves, flowing in mauve, in blue and green. A generous member of Her court gilded my cheek with a star. I braided my long white hair and carried a wand taken from the Holy Laurel. At first I held an inspirational leaf between my lips, like the Delphic Priestess.

  The Queen of Elphame, by Fuseli

Oh, how these fairies shone as they walked, fairy lights and fairy dust around them, making music with their sweet voices, a procession through twilight, following the glorious Queen and her tasty Year King! Beguiled, I followed after. When they began to sing, I took the laurel leaf from between my lips, lifted my laurel wand and had the pleasure of joining my still true voice with theirs.

And what did we sing in our ecstasy--again and again in an endless spiral--but one of the songs which captivate mortals and carry them into a realm that is fickle, cruel, and totally enthralling, a song which the fairies will sing even as the silver flash of a sacrificial knife pierces their own cool fairy hearts:

We shall be free

We shall be free

To sing 

And dance 

And make love--

Won't you come with me?

~~ Walker

Element of Fire

I wait for sunrise

Beneath the white oak.

Dew bejewels young corn,

Static pillars of fog arise

In the valley.

Morning stars fade.

Birds wake in the prescient glow.

Twilight sublimates into blue,

Ending the unfixed time.

For years I have come to bear witness,

But only in this year of heart-break

Does the full glory greet me.

Now, through a door of silence

Steps Sun,

First, a crescent of fire.

Serpentine arms flourish and glitter,

Reaching from  the horizon

To warm my heart.

I am

No longer solitary, but

Among a rejoicing multitude
In an infinite well of space and time.

A billion souls,

And mine...

Past and Present,
Quick and Dead,
All One, incandescent,
On the altar

Of Sunrise.

~~ Juliet Waldron

Old Falling People

I hate this falling business that apparently goes with aging. Seems I've fallen more times in the last few years than I've fallen in the rest of my life. And, of course, it gets ever more dangerous to hit the ground as bones age.

My Grandma Liddle, may she RIP, fell and broke her hip at 99, which was the end of her life. The pain after an attempt to pin it became too much for her frail self. Her husband's step-mom also fell, back in the more cavalier 'late 40's. This Grandma Liddle lay in the cold--down the dirt farm road where they'd once farmed dairy cattle--until the postman happened along. Fortunately, the smart collie she owned came to lie against her and kept her from freezing during that long-ago upstate New York winter. She too ended in an old age home, bed-ridden; these were the days before hips were routinely repaired. Here, she too eventually died. These family histories have taught me that there's nothing good about falls after 60!

Now, I clean my house. I go to the gym. I do Zumba; I take weights classes and aerobic classes. I practice my balance in Yoga; I take long fast walks. During clement weather I ride my granny bike around town. I've fallen off that, too, more times than from my road bike that I rode constantly for twenty-five years.  It seriously ticks me off when I find myself, once more, sprawled on the darn ground.

Today I fell in the kitchen. I was vacuuming -- inadvisable for bad backs -- so I was being particularly careful (I thought) about not lunging or twisting. As I vacuumed along the ceiling where the cobwebs of winter have been gathering, I forgot to look down, stepped on a part of the wand I'd discarded a few moments before. When it rolled, I did too and ignominiously ended on the nice yellow linoleum, taking a blow on hip and shoulder as I went down.

As you might imagine, a few moments of quiet contemplation followed, while I checked to see if everything was still okay, the trick back, knees, etc. My husband was no help or comfort. I probably fell, in his mind, to inconvenience him--somehow. Don't ask WTF. Old men, that's a whole other subject.

~ Juliet Waldron

 

 

http://www.julietwaldron.com

~~Science Fiction Madonna~~

Hubble, thank-you! 

 

Oh Dreamer, green beside

A quiet sea,

 

Child cradled

Close, flesh to flesh,

Haloed by the infrared

Of your star,

You hug a possible future.

One, together,

Mother and child.

 

 

Though shapes, colors,

Genders infinite,

Your essence

 

Multiplies

On a million worlds,

Out toward

 

Forever.

 

 

~~ Juliet Waldron

How I met Alexander Hamilton

 

In a dim bookshop,

Where a huge, bad-tempered charcoal

Cat with yellow eyes glared in the sepia shadow

Of a fly specked window,

I found you.

 

A worn olive drab

A bold gold title

Antique spine, dated 1902.

Mother must have bought you,

The cost a whole $2.

Black and White

Trumbull in front--and

There you were!

 

You—ecstatic, thin, red head thrown back,

Face shining, 1776 on fire!

No wonder your new friends,

Fellow aides-de-camp to the great

George Washington, nicknamed

You “The Little Lion.”

 

Accustomed to escape like this,

I read and read, oddly compelled to

Struggle through a dense jungle of

Edwardian prose,

The work of a once lauded,

Now forgotten

Lady Novelist.

 

Oh, how well she knew you!

Baby-faced orphan who withstood the scorn of

A world where you were “baseborn,”

Who held on, somehow,

To the God Inside.

 

I started sleeping with you

When I was eleven.

We were both alone and anguished,

Threatened by mean drunks

Who round the clock

Figured chaos.

 

Outside, in tropical night, the

Rum-soaked party, grown-ups braying,

Men fighting, pawing the women,

A grand finale of blows and vomit.

 

*

 

We hugged each other about the neck,

Knobby knees to knees,

Breathed in each other’s breath—

Yours sharp, redheaded.

We tried instead to hear the

Tree-frogs chorus, to drowse at last to

The rattle of palm and

Whispers of Casurina, to let

Lady of the Night bloom

Inside our nostrils instead of

Puke.

 

Together we crept from the hot room,

And stared at the sky, until

Our eyes spilled at

Venus blazing over jet-black surf,

A mirrored path

Across a living,

Phosphorescent sea. 

 

With that old book,

I traveled on prop airplanes,

On ocean liners, and

When the money ran out, on

Tramp freighters redolent

With diesel,

The rounded corners

My creature comfort

In a sinkhole of

Squandered love,

And money.

Across time, we held hands,

Brother and sister.

 

We hid from blows,

From nightmarish demands,

From double binds tougher

Than the Gordian knot,

Hid from the

Stink of last night’s whiskey,

Trays of butts,

Hiding, fingers in our ears,

From assaults which might

Include us,

From the harsh slap and roar

Of violent sex,

From the Beauty

With a black eye, who is

Our mother.

 

Tropic rain,

Sloshing cow’s piss

Splashing the palms, the beach,

Turning Caribbean streets  into an

Odorous garbage-strewn river.

Hurricane weather, gray dragon clouds

Sprawl above snarling surf.

White horses stampede and

Boom, manes tossing on the reef.

We grow up anyway,

Children in peril.

 

We find more books—

Mine in the trash can

Behind the bacchanalian

Bajan bar from whose stools

Inebriated Brits leap into the sea.

 

He finds his in the musty,

Cockroach haunted libraries of

Planters, lordly gentlemen

He fetches and carries for,

Merchants for whom he copies,

Dawn to dusk,

Accounts balanced,

Doors he jumps to open so

They can step right through,

He is just another a cheap

Commodity, this brilliant charity child.

 

We part company.

He goes his never-was-a-kid

Capricorn way, ponders

Philosophy and Law,

Studies Blackstone, Hobbes and Hume,

And the new science,

Economics,

While I, backed behind the bar,

Sit on the floor and imagine,

Along with ETA Hoffmann,

That an aria can

Kill you.

 

Alone now, on the beach,

I watch whales court

In neon water, while at my feet, 

Sea foam dwindles into sand.

 

I am lost

Along with Odysseus,

Groping in the bedrooms of

Murderous Plantagenets.

We grow up separately,

Different centuries,

Opposite sex,

Different books in hand.

 

His ambition seeks

“War and Preference”

A Gentleman’s Honor,

While I roam the brown-sugar

Strand, talking to myself as he did,

Oblivious to the unblinking stares of

Wrinkled old men,

A tan teen-ager

In a yellow French bikini.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                            

~ Juliet Waldron

 

 

A MASTER PASSION

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