Mighty Waves

“Go ahead and cry” they say, an oh, do I feel those mighty waves, oceans of wisdom and healing, pushing and rolling against my breast. But today, like yesterday, I’m  afraid. Like so many, I am afraid.

The torrent though, the healing howl of winds let loose, the monstrous rush of those great and mighty ocean waves, are timely now.

But I, like so many, am afraid. To start.

C Villeneuve

Mighty Oceans

    

 

The planet is alive, and always, even if it is buried ancient and deep within us, we know this to be true. We crave it, we strive for it. From beneath the stones of hateful worldliness, we know we are the same, that we are alive, like the planet, that we are always in motion, always breathing. We are always searching for this, though many don’t remember, the aliveness, the motion, of being like the trees or the toads that sing there throughout.

We feel intense grief when we know that the bees may be leaving us, that many awesome and wonderful species of plant and creature have gone before them, by our own hands we have sped their departure, but we let it go. Growling forward, believing that we have failed beyond repair, we let it go. “Too late” we think, but our soul mourns like an abandoned child. We know we want them here, those bees, those lions, those birds. We know that the mighty rolling ocean is us, and that the mountains and creatures are our friends, our commune, our life. They are our family, our guides, and our children. They are us.

We have become so disconnected, that crows are harbingers of gossip, and feathers, always a message from, maybe, our ancestors. We go along, our faces upward, trying to disseminate, understand, connect. Meanwhile, the birds flit by, and the chipmunks scurry all around us. Dogs chase the squirrels and out where it is wilder, fish, salmon, dolphins, whales, burst from the surface of waters teeming with sound and color and life. Amongst the trees and all about and deep beneath our feet, life is the “sign” we seek. We are already transcended. We are here.

Our feet are meant for this place. So are our hands, our breath and our songs. Even our hair can remind us the gentleness of a breeze, the joyfulness of dappled sunlight, and the wildness of the tallest trees and deepest oceans. Our senses are cleansed by the scent of pine and fish and seaweed on the shore. Our skin is washed by the sand and the sun. One eagle soaring wide in the sky can lift our wings and the tiniest flower can bend our knees.

And we, the people, prowl like feral wounded beasts, ever seeking comfort, ever seeking healing, ever seeking home.

C Villeneuve

 

Anarchy

Yes, actually, anarchy is the opposite of obedience, but that anarchy, again assumes garbed and positioned authority figures as a given. Anarchy, in this sense, implies rebellion, but true anarchy isn’t rebellion nor is it the opposite of obedience.

True anarchy takes place when individuals recover their own minds, hearts, and souls, and make that their governing compass. So, anarchy in that sense, is the only means to freedom. It is not an opposite then, because it does not assume any outer authority figure as an immovable or inevitable given.

True anarchy is the experience of self-ownership. That is the experience that makes anything possible because it makes all outer authority transient and illusory. It is how true freedom takes place. If common individuals expressed and interacted on the planet from that starting point, no outer authority figure, corrupt or otherwise, could hold the kind of power that has caused so many atrocities on our planet.

True anarchy is the journey to and experience of self-ownership. It is the basis of all sincere human rights activism. To thine own self be true.

Clean

Do you think that we win by leaving our brains on a slab in Dr. Phil’s lab?  Do you think that the rocket ship boys know where we are going?  Do you think the bees care who the President or Prime Minister is?  As the man sinks deeper, the dung heap melting into landslides and oblivion, will the hologram come?  Will we be saved?  Can his robe stay clean?

C. Villeneuve

 

My Mother and Diamonds – Boats, Boys, and Song

When I was a child, and our families and friends would get together on the weekends to play music around cluttered kitchen tables or by roaring campfires on hot summer nights, I didn’t know it was a sin.  I didn’t know then that men, not just women, were jealous of my mother’s ability to play guitar and sing.

I did not know, as an adolescent perched on the counter by the sink moving my fingers as fast as I could to learn and keep up with the country tunes so enjoyed by the circle of folks around our kitchen table, that it was frowned upon by those who preached the suffering and sacrifice of brimstone and fire.

My mother was beautiful.  Slim and petite with dark, soulful, dancing eyes and long brown hair that fell to the middle of her back.  I was skinny and scraggly and I hated my hair, but I loved the music and I loved my mother even more.

Our relationship, though, was fierce and it was from her that I learned passion and depth and strength and love.  It was from her that I learned to move my fingers in time to play the tune.  It was from her, and my father and family and friends that I learned to love the old songs that told of hardship and heartache and simpler times in greener fields.

We ran free in those fields, my cousins and I and our neighborhood friends.  We had runny noses and cuts on our knees from playing hard all day in the sun.  When it rained we donned bathing suits and ran whooping into the street barefoot and laughing, enjoying the warmth of the soggy pavement.

Summer weekends were spent by the lake at a campsite with unmanicured lots and propane stoves.  Our feet were toughened by the gravel roads and pine needles that grew cool in the early dawn.  Often our hands were spotted with the gum from those trees and I loved the smell of it on my fingers.

At night we would roam spying out fires and our summertime friends so we could show off our jeans and our slick city smarts until the country air and endless stars gave way to bonfires or hide and seek amongst the trees.  The country is different from the city.  You can see the sky in the country and when the moon is full it sheds a blue light so bright that you didn’t need a flashlight to travel around.

There were times when the stars didn’t arrive and the moon stayed hidden, in bed, I guess.  The nights were so dark that you could put your hand inches from your eyes and still not be able to discern even the vaguest outline of its shape.  I still remember how thrilling it was on those nights to be able to stand perfectly still out in the open and hear your friend walk past not two feet away and know that they couldn’t see you.

Curfews still held up at the campsite and eventually we would have to give in and head back to our own tents and trailers to roast weiners and listen to the songs and the laughter of our moms and dads as they shared stories of antics and times gone past.  As I grew older I would join and play guitar and show off the harmonies I loved to sing.  My sister and I were nicknamed Pebbles and Bam Bam because we harmonized so well together.

The adults often stayed up well into the wee hours drinking and shooting nonsense and there was nothing better than lying in that tent trailer, falling asleep to the sound of my mother on her guitar with her soulful voice and my father and uncles and aunts singing along as the water from the lake drifted up on to the rocks around the two boats tied and rocking in the waves.

Tomorrow would be a new day and the first thing I was going to do was put on my bathing suit and run from that tent trailer down onto that dock and off the end of it straight into the air, landing with a splash that would send diamonds of water sparkling up against the wide blue sky.

Later, when breakfast and dishes had been put away, my cousin and I would rev up the 40 horsepower boat and bounce upon the surface under that sky in search of mischief and boys and stories we could tell when we got back home.  Maybe we’ll jump from the rocks at the island naked as newborns wondering if passing boaters could see.

We were young and time had no hold on our hearts.  We were young and could put off knowing the rules of brimstone and fire and ravaging wars and suffering the scars of jealous eyes that scan the world from mountainous heights tearing like vultures the songs from our mouths.

Passion and depth and strength and love could still move my eager fingers to play the tunes of my mother and father and family and friends.  Rain and sun meant barefoot days on gravel and pavement warm with summer heat.  Bright blue moons and starless nights brought hide and seek amongst the trees and mornings brought diamonds and boats and boys and stories.

I swear back then I did not know that those days were a sin and neither did my cousins and neighborhood friends and I swear we didn’t know that people were jealous.

C. Villeneuve

Honest

When I started this blog I didn’t know what it would be.  Well, actually, that’s not true.  I knew that it would be a mish mash of things.  There would be some poetry, some recipes, some music, and I knew that there would be rants.  I knew this and I warned you.

I’m writing this post to let you know that there will probably be more rants and that they will be scathingly honest.  I have found that the world has changed a lot in my lifetime and one of the changes I’ve witnessed has been this relentless demand from people to always be nice and if you are not nice, be polite about it.

Passive/aggressive politeness is not “nice”.  Maybe I’m old school but I grew up believing that honesty was more valuable than a smile with knives behind it.  It seems that people have been lured into this idea that if they smile and pretend to be nice then everything will go their way.  I think the saying is “smile and the world will smile with you”.

What this really is, is people hiding their nastiness behind a veneer of happiness and goodness and then basically demanding, because they are smiling, that the world smile back at them.  Nasty people do not deserve to be smiled at.

There comes a time when nasty people need to be brought out from behind their passive/aggressive smiles and dealt with for who and what they really are.  Why should I have to go around smiling and being polite to people who are being nasty to me behind my back?

Why should I have to breathe in their nasty and backstabbing energy while smiling at them and then swallowing their bitterness.  This, for me, amounts to violence and I’m being told that it is rude for me to defend myself against it.  It is toxic and abusive.  It amounts to an abusive relationship and it is a rampant phenomenon taking place in the world today.

Truly, this world needs healing and healing, true healing, does not take place in an environment of dishonesty.  Dishonesty fuels and nurtures illness.  Honesty releases illness.  This is why honesty often begins sounding pretty dirty and dark.  It is usually something that has been withheld for ages and has become pretty ugly by the time it hits the light.

This kind of healing takes courage for exactly that reason, but this kind of healing will eventually reveal to you that all of those old, dark, ugly shapes were just like the monsters under the bed.  Once you summon up that courage and look under that bed, that monster shrinks and usually runs away, often leaving kind of a sad, pathetic residue.

Healing allows compassion for those monsters and an instinct for tenderness and love towards the sad, pathetic residue left behind.  Healing washes away that residue and leaves one feeling refreshed, new, and able to take in real sunlight, real happiness, doing away with the need for false niceness and passive/aggressive smiles.

When I started this blog I stated on my home page that some of my posts may get your goat, that some may make you cry, and some may make you just want to shut me out.  As you may have noticed, this has proven true.

If I have stirred you somewhere below the surface then truthfully I am glad and maybe if it initiates or inspires a healing process for you then, that is for you to take credit for.  I am not a button pusher.  I will not try to piss you off just because I get my jollies doing that.  I am real and real is often messy, doesn’t follow some linear, ordered, and neat path.

You will witness me being and becoming real in front of you and you will witness me reverting to superficial passive/aggressive niceness but it will be real, part of a process, not an attempt to do violence to you while scoring points for how wonderful I am.

Every now and then I may even be happy and if all goes well, maybe even infect you with that happiness.  We can dream.  I hope so.

This blog, though, will primarily attempt honesty because I believe honesty fuels healing, brings evil down to size, and ultimately allows love to rule the day.  That is really the goal isn’t it, that love, therefore sanity, rules the day.

C. Villeneuve

The Wizard’s Demise

And when they saw what he was his spell lost its power.  He grew small before them though his frame loomed large.  They were no longer afraid and they no longer believed.  They did not need to anymore.  They had regained themselves.

They reached up and pulled the thorns from their heads and with this the worm was released and they spit it out.  He railed but his wild thrashing tantrums no longer impressed.  His large club smashing upon the ground, his thunderous roars and large stamping feet no longer could move them to tremors and bows, not a shovel nor plow, not one rifle or sword.

He postured, he emanated, he flung his eyes this way and that, implying and threatening.  He curled his mouth into menacing grins and he spewed bitter breath from his darkened insides, but none of this could influence.

He creeped and lurked and projected and whispered. He sent wild arrays of light from his eyes and his staff and waved his hands to heavens high.  He summoned below and bellowed above.  They could not be moved.

He was done and they knew it.  The sun was shining the Earth was warm and though he tried to whip the wind into tornados and storms, the breeze was soft and the sky remained blue.  The battle was over and nothing had been won though much had been lost.  “Years” they thought “so many years” as they surveyed the ground and the mess thereupon.

C. Villeneuve

Hamlet and the Ophelias

 OPHELIA :  There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.  (Hamlet, William Shakespeare, Act 4, Scene 5, Page 8)

When I was in high school we studied Hamlet by Shakespeare.  When we were finished reading the book we were all expected to write an essay.  Excuse my language, but I titled my essay “Was Ophelia a Slut or Not?” because I noticed that Hamlet kept saying pretty nasty things about her.  I went through the whole book to find every incidence where Ophelia appeared or was spoken about and discovered, as I had suspected, that everything that she was portrayed to be doing never took place.  It had only ever been Hamlet projecting his own thoughts onto her.  As you know, if you’ve read Hamlet, Ophelia becomes crazy and becomes obsessed with keeping track of flowers and their significance.  This, to me, is a representation of the role that superstition has played in our lives throughout history and how those superstitions have shaped and defined, in particularly, our perception of women and how we expect women to behave.  Her obsession also reminded me of how many women are delegated to the role of “crazy” because their behaviors or opinions slight men.

As we know, the story of Hamlet is what is called a “tragedy”.  When a character is considered “tragic” it means that the character exhibited possibly heroic traits or potential greatness but could not overcome some integral flaw and ultimately did not “make the change” that would have fulfilled that heroism or greatness.  The story of Hamlet is one where Hamlet could not step out of his soliloquy and see that Ophelia had been, in fact, a fine woman and that he had in fact, projected his own sense of inadequacy onto her.

I feel that this book is still extremely relevant today as women are still held to the same silly and superstitious standards of old and still fall prey to men using rumor and superstition to muddy or make disappear any women who makes them feel slighted at all.  I believe that it is still happening for the same reasons it always has – a puffed up idea about manhood that is actually premised in shame and many men’s severely awkward inability to function as human beings, especially in relation to women.

The following poem is not flattering to men but it is the truth as I and many women I have known have experienced it.  The result has been scores of us women trapped in prisons created by rumor and lies fed by superstition and projected shame.  Many of the women I have known have lost their lives to this tragedy and many more are walking around “crazy”.  My experience of this is that these women have “disappeared” and I miss them.  I miss them everyday.

Hamlet and the Ophelias

Rumors spread

by boys

who since childhood

spent their lives

hiding around corners

spying

and touching themselves

they heard us there

our thoughts alone

they listened

and touched themselves

and told

rumors

spread

to hide their own

smelly fingers

and dirty shame

jealous when they saw

us dance

and sing

living beyond

their size

bitter when they knew

we weren’t ashamed

rumors

spread

boys projecting

their embarrassed adolescence

their dirty little stories

onto us.

C. Villeneuve

Scared Blog Bookmarks

I have been looking over a few of my recent posts and have realized that they are, in fact, not posts, but the beginning of posts.  It is as though I’ve placed a bookmark to a possible future post.

Hmmm, this blogging thing can really kick you in the butt, really cause you to think about what you want to say.  Unlike a cool little quip or heated ranting burst on a social media site, blogging actually requires content.

Yes, unlike posts on social media sites that want the quick and dirty shiny thing with no context, no messy bleeding heart shreds or supporting historical setting, blogging wants the goods, soul.  Story counts.

You know, truly I have a confession to make.  It has actually been many, many years since I have really written.  Oh sure, in moments of angst or railing response I have hurriedly scattered my pen across a page or two, but venting isn’t writing.

Yes, maybe a few good poems have emerged through those years, but luck maybe?  No craft, no painstaking molding and hair pulling or trashing the mess to the floor to begin again.

I’m scared.

I could have said “afraid” but that wouldn’t have been honest.  I’m scared to tell, to say, although I thought that this blog had been motivated by a desire to tell, to say, and to share.  I thought I knew.

I am scared, folks.  Yes, I am afraid, but more immediately, I am scared.  I am scared to tell you that I don’t know how to write yet.  I am scared, shaking, because I am here, even now, smack up against the naked truth that I have to take this journey in front of you all.  All of you will be witness to my shaking, fearful journey through my misspent past and life and open, not as yet known, future.

I am scared of the now that wants to run and hide behind social media quips and rants to keep you from witnessing my horrible messy raking through my own guts to bring the truth to the surface for you, and worse yet, for myself to see.

Story is hard.  It is complex and lives in dimensions we rarely dare acknowledge.  Every nuance, the red hat at the bus stop, the purple flower weed alongside the road, the song on the radio that morning, is a possible nightmare threatening to awaken, or long supressed grief for a reunion that never took place.

I’m scared, folks, and truly, I hope you are too.

Here’s an old poem I wrote,

Whistle –

At a loss

and words

are defeating me

standing I am then

self-battered

and ridiculous

standing

in case

one hope remains.

C. Villeneuve

Pacing the Cage with Bruce Cockburn

Okay, I’ve foraged up some coffee and I’ve gone to youtube to click on a Bruce Cockburn playlist.  Music is on and I’m here with a “new post” window up on my screen.

Why Bruce Cockburn?  Well, I’m here in Canada plowing and slushing my way through what is always the first true month of winter every year, February.  Oh yeah, I know, by the time we Canadians arrive at February we’ve all had enough of winter already and the relentless, silent dump of snow feels personal, like a deliberate attack, but I’ve been here my whole misspent life and I know that winter doesn’t really start until February.

I also know, from lifelong experience, that March is not the beginning of Spring, it is not the ending of winter.  March is the final throes of winter’s tantrum.  Like the over-tired child who absolutely refuses to take a nap, March sulks and drifts, then riles, rages, and howls, if only to stay awake.  It is the storm before the calm, the fury before the final sniffling, healing drift into Spring, April.

April, as well, is not Spring, not yet.  April is hope and that hope brings relief.  Here is a poem I wrote many years ago.  It describes April,

Filtering April – C. Villeneuve

Soft

down

in April,

snow,

wind

fresh

in springtime

cold,

coat

drawn

closer still

need,

sun

streaked

through branches

hope.

Yes, winters are long here in Canada and summer is the dream we carry with us all year long.  So, why Bruce Cockburn?  He is Canadian, tough, folk, poet, musician, dreamer.  He is a Canadian winter that carries the dream of summer all year long.  He is one of us.

He is aiming rocket launchers at the meanies who bleed freedom from us, but only in his mind, his songs, because he is a peaceful Canadian.  He is a lover in a dangerous time wishing I was there “on the coldest night of the year” and he is a lion pacing the cage.  He knows what February is, what it is to pace the cage of a Canadian winter with that endless dream of summer railing against the cold, the wind, and the confines of artificial warmth.

The ruler of his spirit is the “Lord of the Starfields”.  Like me, his hands are cold but his heart is fiery warm, his posture hunched against the grey and his face held upwards toward the sun.

So it’s February and I am in Canada.  Like Bruce Cockburn, I built igloos as a kid and threw snowballs at the crush I pretended to hate, and when summer came I ran laughing, kissed and favored while I could over as many green wildflower hills as the short dream of summer would allow.

I, like Bruce Cockburn and all of my fellow Canadians, carry that endless dream of golden summer in my fiery warm heart knowing, like April, that the sun is there, streaking through those branches.

I, with my trusty cup of coffee at hand and this “new post” window open, know that there is still a long way to plow and slush until we feel that golden honey, the sun, opening us and setting us free to outstretch our arms and run as though we were flying over those green and laughing wildflower hills.

Here, take Bruce Cockburn with you.  He is one of us.

To help us all keep that endless dream of summer warm in our fiery hearts.

C. Villeneuve