heading to the lady camp from Bella & Shirley by pd lyons

(lady camp)

up in the highlands. a small camp once used by shepherds. there was a clean water source and not much more when we started but now? three small cabins, latrines, cooking fires. Do you now there is a way to make a smokeless fire?

really! i said.

they help each other. whatever one knows is what one does. and for those who didn’t know much, look outs were always needed besides a mind sharpened by the promise of safety and food learns quick. there are even a few men. good men. not always someone’s relation but men who had helped or tried to help. men who had proven themselves. one fellow was an expert with  noiseless ways of trapping animals. there are also some very good fisher ladies she laughed. we live like savages but honest savages. there are things to eat from the wilderness. there are people who can listen to any story and be your sister when you’re done. For the most part we get on . Even the men seem able to keep themselves in line. word gets around and she nodded towards the screaming fellow. there is a vow of no romance until this madness ends.

– you think it will? end? asks Shirley

– I don’t know she answers even lower. But if we don’t conduct ourselves like it will, then we’ll just tear and be torn apart .

Why don’t you come? We should leave soon I’m thinking. You should see the place.

– I’m not sure said Shirley, looking over to me surprisingly demure …We do have business.

– Business?

– You know, things to do.

– Yes she said I know. I know the things you do. It is a business that needs doing. But what we do is good too. Besides there will still be plenty for you to do when you leave us.

you’ll be surprised by how many of our ladies you might know…. I can tell you there are many who’ll never forget you. Anyway I’ll promise to have someone show you, how to make that smokeless fire.

night wood

(So We Went)

true. the road to hell.

 

 

 

The road to hell ?

paved with uncounted blessings.

Contemplate This, from May Sarton & Carl Jung and my Good Dad

one of the benefits of growing up with a dad who was an out of print / second hand books seller – or as it was back in the pre computer days , a book scout; was that he would give me little gems that he thought were ” up my alley”.  As a teenager i was given things like Henry miller, James Joyce, Tolkien, Tanith Lee, Anais Nin, etc. these days i am no teenager but i am well blessed with books.

currently i am re reading a beautiful book once given to me by my dad. Of course i no longer have the copy he gave me, one of us may have sold it years ago, or maybe it perished in my own great water in the storage space disaster of 2010 .any way I am reading Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton. She was a particularly beautiful gift to me from my father.

If any of you write or art or deal with solitude or depression  in any way I would recommend her as boon companion. She seems fond of Jung and so my offerings here are her quotes from Joung :

” I have been pondering two passages from Jung. The first is a key to the dangers of sublimation : “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious” The second is:

” Only the living presence of the eternal images can lend the human psyche a dignity that makes it morally possible for man to stand by his own soul, and be convinced that it is worthwhile to persevere with himself. Only then will he realize that the conflict is in him, that the discord and tribulation are his riches which should not be squandered by attacking others; and that if fate should exact a debt from him in the for of guilt, it is a debt to himself.” – from Journal of a solitude by May Sarton, W.W. Norton New York 1977, page110

so I got mine for .50 used paperback in keeping with my dads school of used book hunting techniques.

why not get your own?

imagine  a world where people decide that they are worth persevering with themselves and that “riches… should not be squandered by attacking others!

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/845386.Journal_of_a_Solitude

 

 

pig! your screams are music to our ears, from Bella & Shirley by pd lyons

 

pig! your screams are music to our ears.

they had found him still alive.

they had pulled off all his clothes and the clothes of the dead men too

piled some of the filthy rags on his lap.

they had cleaned the corpse of the woman,

laid on branches of evergreen

bruises and broken skin

a few feet from where he was tied to the tree.

they had taken the rag away from his mouth

they had set the nest of rags on his lap on fire

slow smoldering greasy fire

every once in a while when some bit for some reason burned brighter

or faster the heat would make him scream.

there were a half a dozen women around him.

the youngest maybe 15? the eldest – a tuff old grandmother who spat

when she said again

– Pig! Scream go on scream it is music to us!

she came to speak with us….

and in speaking with us she spoke so all could hear

to thank us

to say she did not know the dead woman

to say that it was good for the younger ones

that we had left this Pig alive

so they could see

so they could know

no matter how much guns

no matter how much cruelty

they scream like broken animals

animals broken by the strength of women.

then more quiet she explained where they were headed…

my birthday present from HH Dali Lama & Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to YOU

November 11 was my 61st birthday. One of my birthday presents from Shelly and Morgan was a book called The Book of Joy. It was a weekend visit between His Holiness the Dali Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu as recorded by Douglas Abrams. It was marking the 80th birthday of His Holiness. I would like, as my own birthday gift to the world, to share a few lines. I can only speak for my self wen i say i found them profoundly helpful , not so much because of my feeling old but because it was just after the presidential elections in my homeland.

Anyway by way of background on the two men this from the front fly leaf of the book:

“Noble Peace Prize Laureates His Holiness the Dali Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have survived more than fifty years of exile and the soul crushing violence of oppression. Despite their hardships – or, as they would say, because of them – they are two of the most joyful men on the planet.

In April 2015, Archbishop Tutu traveled to the Dali Lama’s home in Dharamsala, India, to celebrate His Holiness’s eightieth birthday and to create this book as a gift for others. They looked back on their long lives to answer a single burning question : how do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering? “

So I don’t get past their little introduction note before I found this gem. I share it here to hope it will bring you benefit and perhaps inspire you to look to our own self for the power of joy –

 

” No dark fate determines the future. We do. Each day and each moment, we are able to create and re-create our lives and the very quality of human life on our planet. This is the power we wield.”

 

and i would add it is not something some one can give you, or take away from you. it is something you can find within your self or loose by surrendering your self to others. these guys come from serious oppression and violence and yet they say there is a way to joy and it is up to each person to choose. how much easier should it be then for those of us who benefit from the abundance , security and freedoms in our Western cultures to be living a life of joy?

“Lasting Happiness cannot be found in pursuit of any goal or achievement. It does not reside in fortune or fame. It resides only in the human mind and heart, and it is here that we hope you will find it. “

through the book they speak of their own personal experiences, that of theistic and non- theistic as well as citing scientific research and analysis. there by truly making it a gift to the world.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29496453-the-book-of-joy

Finally the last…. from Bella and Shirley by pd lyons

 

Finally the last….

she came down on him hard

brought her full weight onto his chest

grabbed by the hair his gasping face pulled toward her own

she spit

hauled him to his feet

where he had sense enough to notice my weapon.

she’d shifted around

held him from behind

knife to his throat

making certain he got to see his comrades.

dragged him to the tree

rope she called for

he tried to struggle

she knocked the legs out from him.

we secured him with rope and to that tree.

sitting there in the dirt gagged by a rag from one of the dead men.

I jammed his face with the butt of my weapon before we left.

~

 Leave him.

Let him be a sign  for the rest.

~

we didn’t go far

only into the woods to where we’d stashed our gear.

Shirley slept

immediately

soundly

while I,

exhausted from  bearing witness

unable to escape the running tension of my dreams

dozed in and out

unsure.

They were not difficult to follow, from Bella & Shirley by pd Lyons

They were not difficult to follow

The difficulty was not out pacing them, bumping into them.

drunken men are unpredictable

they could stop, slow or turn back for no reason at all.

Eventually they made a heap of themselves

Slurried, vomited, stupored.

A few still gurgling to finish the drink.

~

We waited until even the sentry was passed out.

~

From the wooded side of the road we came.

She ahead.

Me off her right weapon on full auto.

She started with the closest one.

Hand over his mouth knee against his spine 

 Ka-Bar deep across his throat.

One by one, adjusting for their position,

Holding each as if a lust embrace until the spasms stop.

Tough work

slow work

needing to rest in the middle of hell work.

And me thanking whatever god there was left in this sad world for the effects of strong liquor.

She was exhausted but I was not allowed to help.

Expected instead to keep good eyes and ears

regarding those who still lived

and  for any visitors.

~

general note:

” Always look – know that what you are killing was once human.

Once had pride, dignity, heart.

And those who suffer? Acknowledge them

if you can – touch, remember they are sisters daughter mothers they are our own” – Shirley

the only person who can stop you from being you, pd lyons

you know the only person who can stop you from being you is yourself.

civil rights, human rights – these have been constant struggles through out history.

there is only ever one choice – stand up or give up.

do what you can and do not condemn those who don’t do “more”.

if we all do what we can we will not fall to the oppressor.

right now by simply not surrendering, by not giving up,

you and I

we have begun.

The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany led by a group of students and a professor at the University of Munich. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign which called for active opposition against the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich in June 1942, and ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo in February 1943. They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced unjust trials by the Nazi People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), and many were sentenced to death or imprisonment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose

Take The Ashes ( the color of slavery), by pd lyons

Take The Ashes

~

The color of slavery is not black

It is red raw open wounds

It is bruised swollen rapes

It is salt scald tears

A scarred ripcord sun

A shimmer of shame rage guilt desire

~

The color of freedom?

Is not black

Is not in stars or bars or bullets

Not even white

Or champagne limousines

Tailored suits, custom shoes, inked tattoos

~

The color of freedom is gray

The gray of ashes

Without which the phoenix will not rise

~

Take the ashes

~

RISE

We Made our Way from Bella & Shirley by PD Lyons

 

We Made our Way

deliberately slow through the wood towards the road

– ping ping ping

the noise paused us

– what is that?

– shh

then men, laughter spitting gutter sounds.

then we saw them.

– pig ping ping

then we saw her.

– ping ping

naked bloodied the woman held the steel lamp pole

slamming her forehead into it

– ping

– ping

– ping

I raised my weapon.

lightly Shirley lays her hand on it, a sign for quiet.

~

in various sates the men

fixing their clothes

gathering their weapons

kicking away empty bottles

arguing over those not yet empty.

eventually ambling away

paid no heed to the woman

spilled too,

a heap of silence at the base of a metal pole.

~

Once the men move on , out of sight, and sound

I look to Shirley

– “She is better off now. Come. Let’s go.”

so I follow

we angle off to the edge of the road

where we briefly wait

then cross.

~

the woman was indeed dead

it is hard, to see such things.

But we look.

We always look.

We were witness.

We were the last human contact.

I squat touched her naked still warm shoulder then stand

while Shirley rolls the body over making sure the eyes are closed.

Touches lips to the palm of her hand

to lay her kiss on the woman’s forehead .

– “No time for more.” She stands. Looks down the road – “We’ll follow.”

So we did.