A Microcosm of the Macrocosm
To see a cathedral in a flower,
to be drunk with its nectar,
under an opalescent sky.
*
“Infinity is our Home. We are just sojourning awhile in the caravanserai of the body.”
~ Paramahansa Yoganada~
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
My Mind is Broken
It is 3 A.M. and it is another night I cannot sleep. I have taken two sleeping pills to no avail. When I am manic sleep does not come easily. I write. I eat. I check email. I pace the rooms back and forth, in and out of bed. Luckily my husband does not wake during my perambulations. The mania is not of the inflated ego variety, though I have had that at an earlier time in my life. Years ago I remember going by Harlem on a bus route home one night when I was flagrantly psychotic and proclaiming, “These are my people!” Why I said this I couldn’t tell you now– sparked most likely from some manic feeling of camaraderie. But, of course, it was beyond grandiosity and just plain crazy (yes, that is a psychiatric term). Perhaps the roots arose out of the closeness I had with my Sicilian grandfather who was not exactly white and who had much spirit– what an African-American might call “soul.” And from my father, a jazz trombonist, who spent his youth sleeping in bathtubs in Harlem when he would come to the city from white suburbia for jam sessions. He, too, like my grandfather, had “soul” hidden under white skin.
In any case, thanks to the anti-psychotic family of medicines I am not grandiose tonight. I did forget to take my meds the other night and, like Karma, that affects everything about my life. I am just raring for the day to start, for the morning to come. I see a drunk sitting outside on a stoop smoking. I want to see, not the people of the night, but the purposeful people of the morning, going to school, going to work, walking their dogs. Two hours and forty-five minutes to go. And then time to wake up, have coffee, pray, make plans for the work of the day. How can fifteen minutes seem like an hour? How can the cool night breeze masquerade as a morning zephyr? I will make one last attempt to go to bed and sleep. First, I will post a video of Jusuf’s, formerly known as Cat Stevens, of a beautiful hymn he sang, “Morning Has Broken.” I am also posting a photo I took of a marsh in the morning light. Enjoy! And Good morning!
This was written a year ago in a mild manic episode. Right now I am fighting depression triggered by Lyme disease and antibiotics. I have zero creativity so resort to rewrites. Hope to be back writing soon and commenting on fellow bloggers’ posts. Please excuse the silence but that is how it is being Bipolar. (Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase, my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
September Transitions
Lazy, hazy, daze
of
fleeting flashes of summer
Creeping dashes of Fall
among the splashes of departing green.
Great Tranquility Of Heart
He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men. He will easily be content and pacified, whose conscience is pure. You are not holier if you are praised, nor the more worthless if you are found fault with.
Thomas Kempis
Starbursts
Starlike
explosions of blue
with an
out of season
dusting of snow
a foretaste
of the approach of winter
a sugary confection
one is tempted to ingest
a similar temptation
(I suppose)
as those tempted by coca.
Instinct vs. Love
(Click on photo for video)
“Instinct”
they say condescendingly
but it is not.
“Anthroprophism”
they argue
but it is not.
Science now knows
animals show altruism,
animals show love,
elephants, dogs, dolphins…
“Love” they say reverently for man
but it is and is not
Science now knows
hormones course through our bodies,
Oxytocin they say,
I say how clinical,
a dissection of love
for man
and
animals.
A Wee Life
Oh wee one
how I envy thee
trudging up and down
the raindrop slopes
of rain and nectar
safe within the confines
of radiant yellow
succulent pink
in a self-contained
world of beauty
however short-lived thy life.
No Trespassing
You don’t belong here
this is my home
and you are intruding
this twig my perfect camouflage
for my stick-like appendages
I searched high and low
to find my home
and although nothing is truly ours
these are my digs
so “Bugger off!”
The Shower of Yellow
The horses are in the home stretch with the school-imposed end of summer approaching, Labor Day weekend, a weekend I look forward to all summer long for love of Fall. It is not a good way to think– the way I do. Religious leaders preach living in the present. This very moment in time is all we have. Literally. I have yet to overcome my hyperactive mind and many bad ways of thinking. And this year for some reason I am feeling melancholic about the summer ending. Perhaps it is because I am sick with a fever and not sure where the hazy heat of the sun ends and the lazy heat of the fever begins. Perhaps it is because it is a perfect day. A breeze whispers through what I call (in my ignorance of its real name) the “penny tree.” When the wind blows, the pale green leaves look like so many pennies shimmering down from Heaven. The sun is so hot it tingles on the skin– yet it is not the strong sun of July that burns quickly. It is a far gentler sun. The angle of its diurnal slant is different. Summer is definitely slipping away.
The bees, wasps and yellow jackets are having a heyday in the Goldenrod, Joe Pye Weed and Purple Loosestrife. The marsh is thick with flying insects. My eyes capture swallow-tails. Happily the monarchs are still here. A turkey vulture circles overhead. He must have spotted death nearby. Earlier I saw two golden hawks fly, sunlit, into the back field. A wisp of a cloud floats by in an otherwise perfectly blue sky. This summer has flown by in the blink of an eye like a fritillary flits by the flowers in the marsh.
The smell of fresh-cut lawn is intoxicating to my raw senses. Soon the grass will cease to grow and the lush green will look washed out. All of its inhabitants in the metropolis beneath our feet will dig deep underground or turn off their bodily systems to “overwinter”– an amazing concept to a mammal. Some fill their bodies with a type of antifreeze. Nature never ceases to astound. This summer I have made my peace with the insects. Terrified of them as a child, I have come to love and respect them, indeed hold them in great awe for the feats they accomplish. Our accomplishments pale as humans, supposedly so superior.
No longer do I see turtles sunning on rocks, nor snakes coming out to bask in the heat of the road. Some species of birds have already left– unbeknownst to me. I just know that some I used to see are gone. The sweet bird song of the spring mating season is a fleeting memory. One lone humming-bird flies around the marsh intermittently, causing great excitement in the viewing audience.
It is the time to dead head the flowers of summer. It is the time of Black-Eyed Susans and Peonies and Sedum. And soon it will be the time of the Mums.
With each gust of wind yellow finger-like walnut leaves shower down on our heads– like large, oddly-shaped, yellow snowflakes– a foretaste of snowfalls to come. The sun’s shadows grow long as twilight nears. Soon the white cloud “lions and tigers and bears” will retire into the black cave of night. And the summer will die, and in dying, give birth to fall. The comfortable rhythm of the changing season beats in our sometimes unhearing hearts.
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
The Consciousness Stream
Look carefully below
to see the stream flowing
in between the tangle of greens
and the landscape of rocks
*
Look carefully within
to hear the whispers of God
in between the jangle of loud thoughts
and the overgrowth of emotions
*
Heaven lies in the quiet
trickling like a stream
through the spaces of the silence
Amphibian Night
It is a summer night, late in August. September and autumn are knocking at the door. The day was hot– the last gasp of a 3H summer day. And then, at night, come the thunderstorms. Downpours of rain hit hot asphalt and steam rises in the moonlit roads. The air cools down by 10, maybe 15 degrees.
We are going out to pick up a pizza for dinner and we hit the road in the middle of what must be called “Frog Frenzy.” Frogs are everywhere, every kind and every size. Hopping here and there. We drive in a hopscotch pattern to avoid running them over. We are hoping no one is watching our car stop and start and swerve left and right. The frogs look silvery in the headlights. Perhaps it is the last mating call of the season. Perhaps the frogs know something we don’t– perhaps this is the last warm day and thunderstorm of a dying summer.
There are long-legged frogs leaping across the road, teeny frogs skimming the asphalt, and giant frogs that cross the road in two to three jumps. Mating can be the only incentive for this frenzy of activity. Driven by desire, they are mating without concern for their welfare. More likely they are not aware of the danger that lurks in the road. Like all animals, we assume frogs live in the present moment, perhaps as we humans do in our twenties, driven by biology to seek a mate in a frantic orgy of activity.
My husband and I on our pizza run, which is no run but a crawl, are uplifted by this affirmation of life. We, who in our 20s, did not think we could die, are afraid of taking what would seem like even moderate risks now. We take delight in the frenetic frog activity as we get our pizza.
But it is a different landscape we drive through on the way home only a quarter of an hour later. The frogs are gone– completely vanished having hopped to wherever they were seeking to go. We only see some frogs who did not make it. A large truck pulled out from the road just as we turned in. Not the type to play hopscotch while driving.
We feel privileged to have witnessed this “Frog Frenzy,” this affirmation of life– this ten minute window of activity that shut down as abruptly as it opened. But the next morning, walking the road, we see mangled frogs everywhere. We can’t blame the one truck we saw for this massacre.
This is not an isolated incident. In the Summer 2008 Defenders, the Conservation Magazine of Defenders of Wildlife, a study by Purdue University is cited in which the number of road kill in a suburb of Indiana were counted over a 17 month period. The number was an astounding 10,500 dead animals and 95 percent of those were frogs and other amphibians. Many of the other amphibians were eastern tiger salamanders making their way to breeding grounds to lay 500 to 1,200 eggs. Obviously this could affect future populations. Sy Montgomery, in her “The Wild Out Your Window: Exploring Nature Near at Hand,” tells us that during the “salamander rains,” as she calls them, so many salamanders are killed by cars, that in Amherst they built special tunnels so the salamanders would be safe from the road, and in Lenox and Framingham they close the roads during the migration. Are a few towns in Massachusetts the only enlightened guardians of this amphibian ritual? Why are there not more precautions taken on our roads all across the country’s wetlands? Why aren’t the fading wetlands being preserved with the reverence they deserve as they serve earth?
We don’t know how long the “Frog Frenzy” lasted but, judging from the number of bodies in the road the next day, we caught only the tail end of it. The unlucky ones, who did not make it, lie in waiting for crows and other carrion-eating birds to come feast in this other, inevitable aspect of nature, the dead frog banquet. This time our hearts are heavy. We mourn the frogs who jumped so wildly to their death in their state of excitation. The “Night of the Frogs– just another sampling of man’s abject inhumanity to those he deems inferior, and, with whom he shares this mystery called “earth.”
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
Abandonata
Abandoned by life
choked by overgrowth of unkempt green
once upon a time
breathing, seething with energy
steaming with the hot breath of cattle
teaming with the tenuous tenure of life
*
Your body long gone
your loving heart now ashes
your caring now a memory
which nothing can erase
and time cannot erode.
*
How I long for thee
though a mere thin veil
separates your spirit from me
small comfort
when I miss thee mightily.
The Intimate Intruder
Je suis tres intime
avec les fleurs
I am very intimate
with the flowers
and fear I am intruding
into their secret
world of silent sensuality
visited by bees and butterflies
and other tiny creatures
seduced by their siren song
of quiet sexuality
seductive to all
who pause to peek
inside their blooms
Twinkling Twilight
As twilight falls, as we approach August, the little sparks of light appear nightly– fireflies, lightning bugs, glow worms, whatever one chooses to call them. They start early in July– one sees a few sparks here and there but as July draws to a close, twilights dawn with a display of tiny fireworks. Why do they hold such fascination for young and old alike? Why do they bring us such a sense of wonder as they flicker on and off in some rhythm unknown to us but titillating in their communication with each other?
Of course I remember, like everyone else, catching fireflies. It was a ritual my Sicilian grandfather reenacted with me every summer. Grandma would save me a peanut butter jar, nicely washed with little holes in the top she made with an old-fashioned can opener. Grandpa and I would go out for an after-dinner walk, a treat in itself. It was an excursion with a purpose, a hunt to catch those bugs whose tail ends light up, on and off, I learned later, to signal mates.
Grandpa always managed to catch one and we would walk home victorious, with me clutching my precious jar with my favorite kind of bug residing within. There was the exciting story we would tell Grandma and she would give me a lettuce leaf in case the bug should be hungry in the night. Then to bed. And then the real waiting began– lying in the dark with the jar on the bedside table waiting for my captive bug to alight. I would wait and wait but no flickering light appeared and before long I would fall asleep in the arms of disappointment.
It was even worse in the morning. The lightning bug did not look well. His antennae would be damp and sticking to the jar in a bad way. He was not eating the lettuce leaf. And this was my first lesson in the perils of capturing and imprisoning a wild creature. They did not behave like they did when free. Finally in a child’s form of despair, I would let him go and he would leave so much the worse for wear. What is this human quest to capture animals for our own pleasure at their peril? Think zoos, circuses, the exotic pet trade. It is awe gone rancid, becoming greed, selfishness, a fetid form of supremacy.
Years later, on my husband’s great aunt’s farm in Ohio, the trees would be filled with lightning bugs mating. It was a sight I had never seen. Whole trees would light up at once and upon close examination one would find hundreds of fireflies. It was a cathedral of flickering lights that inspired reverence for God as we beheld the mystery with our hearts.
And now, living in a converted barn which allows many bugs to enter despite window screens, I no longer want to capture fireflies and put them in a jar. I am happy to see them fly freely inside and outside the house. They bring sheer delight as they light up in the darkness. I am a child again with my grandfather, as I stay awake as long as possible, watching the little flickering lights inside the room and outside in the trees. I think of simpler days and after dinner walks with Grandpa. I think a lot of my grandparents with nostalgia, and the magic of this tiny bug amazes still. But wild creatures belong in the wild. A lesson to be learned from this Midsummer Night’s dream.
Web Wonder
“As the thread is hidden behind the beads of a necklace, and as the dreamer’s consciousness is secreted behind the garlands of dream images, so the Divine Coordinator remains unseen behind the dream lei of creation… It is God’s consciousness alone that sustains all the dream appearance of creation.”
~ PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA
The Backyard Circus
Did you ever stop to think
what it is like
to hang mid-air from a leaf’s edge
or to glide along a leaf
blowing in the breeze–
or crawl upside down
upon veined slopes of green?
or to give’s one’s all
to a loved one
stories high from the ground
hanging onto her for love
and dear life?
*
Such feats go on all day long,
ignored by you–
our talents unacknowledged–
because we are lowly creatures in your eyes
and yet we can do
acrobatic feats
you cannot even approximate.
*
Did you ever stop to think?
A Secret Love
My husband’s look of love scares me,
turns off all emotion,
rendering intimacy hysteria for me
and forces a series of dogged pursuits by my Husband
whom I adore more than life itself.
Can’t turn off the flashbacks
loved Grandpa so
but not enough to do some hanky panky
that even as a child I knew to be wrong.
Bad enough the little sex games we did
when I was REALLY little and knew nothing of right or wrong,
just a fun game we played
till caught by Auntie who pronounced us both “disgusting”!
Why I never knew.
My fear that Grandma was jealous just made her laugh,
“Silly girl” to think such things.
What was there to be jealous of
between a little girl and her older husband?
What indeed!
What a deed!
She told me years later
he never was unfaithful
in all fifty years of marriage
“Ha!” I thought but never said,
“what he did with me
was that not infidelity?”
“You do the hanky panky
and you turn yourself around
and that’s what it’s all about.”
I remember that lewd smile even today.
Will it take me to my dying day to forget?
Oh how I loved him…
Taking me for after dinner walks
to catch fireflies,
silently sitting at the window together
at night after dinner,
watching the neighbors below,
Grandma in the kitchen,
Just him and me
a quiet bond between us,
or telling me bedtime stories of his youth.
My fault–
I was the seductress,
dancing in a hula skirt for him,
with tennis balls tucked into my aunt’s bra for breasts,
Hula dancing
to his songs he played on the mandolin.
Oh how I loved him!
No one knew.
I forgot about the “thing” between us till decades later,
when a friend talked about her incestuous abuse.
Oh how he loved me!
Arm around me always on the living room sofa
watching American Bandstand on the TV
giving me his whiskey-soaked cherry,
teaching me about art
making me the artist I am today.
Preaching the middle way to me
of relevance later, way later,
as it takes me a lifetime to learn the meaning of “I am Bipolar.”
Oh how I idolized him!
He carved the Lincoln Gettysburgh address, you know, in D.C, at the Lincoln Memorial
and many other illustrious statues.
He was a revered lawyer, working with veterans,
a self made man,
knowing no English
when he first came here
all alone at 16
and went to night school to learn English
while working as a sculptor
and then to law school.
He was a hero
helping poor veterans,
himself wounded in the war.
He was a hero
but no one knew
he was my hero.
“Of course he was having strokes,” my doc says.
“Maybe that explains the incest,” he says to me.
Men stick together
To defend the unspeakable
Which I just now speak out blasting loud and clear
in the blogosphere
for all to hear.
Naughty girl/old woman!
Just now allow myself the anger
while preserving the idolatry and Grandpa’s love
for such a love, and not irony this,
such a love is so VERY special!
Animal’s “Eternal Treblinka”
Whales are highly intelligent sentient creatures and they do care about humans. Humans who have saved whales caught in fishing nets have remarked on the displays of gratitude whales have shown in response to being saved. Watch the following 2 minute video to see that innocent caring in action of whales for humans.
Meantime man hunts whales in one of the most cruelest of all animal hunts. Watch this 2 minute video to see how much we care about whales who, bear in mind, have larger minds than ours and obviously larger hearts. The reality of the kill is much more gruesome and hideous than this video portrays. But this is bad enough.
Famous author, Issac Bashevis Singer wrote about the cruelty of man against animal. In an epigraph to a character he had written about who had a relationship with a mouse, this is what Singer wrote: “In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who, because of him, had left this earth. “What do they know–all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world–about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.
–Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Letter Writer”
And listen to the words of the great Dalai Lama on animal cruelty…
“Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures.
–The Dalai Lama
Beautiful, Beneficial Bats
A beautiful Endangered Gray Bat
Photo credit: Dr. Renn Tumlison
This Issue is one that I wrote about some time ago, but recent news has reminded me once again, that the crisis for this animal has not only not gone away, but has gained momentum and appears to now be an out of control situation: Biological Diversity Public Action
The animals are beautiful, beneficial Bats and the disease that is wiping this mammal off of the face of the Earth, is white-nose syndrome.
Many people have a negative opinion of this ” most helpful friend “ and even those who don’t fear it, may have a difficult time feeling any great remorse for its current plight.
Right now, Bats in this country are facing nearly complete eradication from this rampant fungal disease and the prospects of the species surviving, do not look too good.
You should be very concerned about this situation, but…
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Dahlia Dreams
Drunk with
the nectar of you,
I fall into your arms,
helplessly inebriated
and sweetened
by your Love.
The Night Light Show
Tiny, twinkling stars
suffering loneliness,
fall from the sky
and become fireflies,
flickering on and off
among the trees
calling for a mate,
lighting the night sky
and exciting vision
with twinkling
and flashing lights
and one is not sure
which is which
so bewitched are we
by the show of Light.
“Words Can Sting Like Anything”*
Cool clean cut lines
of cold hearted slashes
gashes of color
drawn blood
sweat beads of fear
you didn’t mean
you didn’t know
how far your words
would go
to hurt.
* Title from the poem by Phyllis McGinley on silence.
MOONSIDE 
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