moonstained ::

 ... Now Suzanne takes your hand

And she leads you to the river

She is wearing rags and feathers

From Salvation Army counters

And the sun pours down like honey

On our lady of the harbour

And she shows you where to look

Among the garbage and the flowers

There are heroes in the seaweed

There are children in the morning

They are leaning out for love

And they will lean that way forever

While Suzanne holds the mirror ...

~ Leonard Cohen

::
May your days during this waning, releasing moon bring much rest to you, friends. Lots of changes happening right now. I wanted to share a couple of images that have been restful for me; these are not mine but I would crawl into them if I could:

source

After I wrote my last post I continued working my way through Women Who Run With the Wolves and this passage completely astounded me:

"To eat the pear means to feed our deep creative hunger to write, paint, sculpt, weave, to say our piece, to stand up for, put forward hopes and ideas and creations the likes of which the world has never seen before ...

This is the true nature of the psychic tree: it grows, it gives, it is used up, it leaves its seed for new; it loves us. Such is the Life / Death / Life mystery. It is a pattern, an ancient one from before water, before light, an unwavering one. ... The pattern is this: In all dying there is a uselessness that becomes useful as we pick our way through it all. What knowing we will come to reveals itself as we go along. In all livingkind, loss bring a full gain. Our work is to interpret this Life/Death/Life cycle, to live it as gracefully as we know how, to howl like a mad dog when we cannot ~ and to go on, for ahead lies the loving underworld family of the psyche that will embrace and assist us. ...

...So, the handless maiden is waiting to have a child, a new little wild self. The body in pregnancy does what it wants and knows to do. The new life latches on, divides, swells. A woman at this stage of the psychic process may enter another enantiodromia, the psychic state in which all that was once held valuable is now not so valuable anymore, and further, may be replaced by new and extreme cravings for odd and unusual sights, experiences, endeavors.

by Conversations About

For instance, for some women, to be married was once the end-all and be-all. But in an enantiodromia, they want to be cut loose: marriage is bad, marriage is blah, marriage is unecstatic sheisse, shit. Exchange the word marriage for the words lover, job, body, art, life, and choices and you see the exact mindset of this time.


And then there are the cravings. Oh la! A woman may crave to be near water, or to be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling that wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, weed something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows.

She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she does not dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.

A new self is on the way."

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes wwrwtw, pg 425-433 in my copy

Oh my god, I can relate to this in wild and rabid ways. I find myself being hand-held and led, in my rags and feathers, to that river beneath the river. I fall to my knees, earth-streaked and raw; I press my skin into dirt and I rummage through garbage and flowers.

I am an artist; it's what I do.

I am a fire-eyed gypsy who sometimes wanders with her unkempt hair and rage-rattled bones. I am free; it's what I do. And, as wild-women understand it, I am moon-stained now with memories of Luna Blue, the healer-temptress who wraps herself around me whispering: now. This. Do what is in your heart to do.

So I do. I have. I will.
I take comfort in the promise that a new self is on the way.