Marta Luzim’s Writing the Wave: Mama Stop!

Post Date February 13, 2012
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Category Marta Luzim's Writing The Wave, Poetry

I wanted to tell you Mama, as you died, as you sat drugged on anti-psychotic medication, barely breathing, feeding tube up your nose and down your throat, because you refused to eat. I wanted to tell you Mama, as you threw me down the stairs, pulled my hair, slapped me across the face, tried to drown me in a tub of sudsy water when I was six. Mama I wanted to tell you as you held a knife to my throat, stood on the ledge of our window in your bra and underpants, rain pouring down and you wanted to jump and kill yourself. Mama I wanted to tell you, no, scream at you, no, grab you by the hair, squeeze your breasts and grasp your cold hands and say “STOP. STOP YOU CRAZY BITCH. I NEED TO BELONG TO YOU!”

Marta Luzim’s Writing the Wave: Mama, Your Body is Mine

Post Date February 13, 2012
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Category Marta Luzim's Writing The Wave, Poetry

Green, red, sky clouds of swimming blue

Lavender, squirrels, shapes of bushes wave

Huge oaks, roots groping into the earth

Majestic house of soul, large windows, waving blossoms of light

Coolness in the air with warmth that flutters through the breeze

This is life mama, this is life mama.

Mama. You taught me to say, Fuck, cunt, bite, pull, eat shit, vomit, dump explode. Mama this life, all of this

Warm, exited touches of heat, voices calling whispers

Deep longing

Comfort, nourishment, stomach filled with medicine of community

Wild Gods and Goddesses

Gift of unbridled passion

Do you hear me mama?

Touch and ignite the cosmic orgasm

Releasing all hurt, pain, holes of despair, pockets of longing

The love that never ends.

Mama, my body is my teacher. The body you said stunk when I played outside. My body that you reached to when you were in pain. Ran your black rain into my skin and cells. It felt like love to me.

My body awakens me in my sleep.

It needs food, soul food, earth food, stomach food

She whispers go here, go there, go everywhere inside of me

Tiny fingers and angel wings flap and massage me

Say, listen, listen, listen

Healing chants and visions, herbs, nature’s harmony.

My body is my legacy Mama.

Every woman, grandma, daughter and child who has walked the earth

She is the diva woman, dancing, swirling to the orgasmic plunge of the universe

She seeps into every pore, cell, vein of blood

Circular in the moment explodes into the womb, down the uterus, out the vagina

To find my voice…scream out…MAMA!

The moment, the seconds, the generations, the eons of life

Awakened in the Garden, the Tree of Life, Eve bit and it all began

You thought you were sin, wrong, unworthy.

But no more. My body is my teacher. She digs to live in my soul

Belonging to the body is the legacy; the women

Wild and dangerous, soft and compassionate, full of life,

Deeply surrender to the raging energy of love.

Not of violence, Mama

The eyes of the Shekinah: Astarte, Isis, Esther, Sarah, Leah, Rebecca, Mary

Creating the universe where fear and separation is at rest

I see you mama

Arms silent on your heart.

Breath no more

Soul floats away.

Can you hear me mama?

I am left here to continue on…

The past is the past and it still echoes in my present, dances in my dreams

And holds a candle to my present where I see a light in the distance to an

Unknown future.

But your face, mama, is there. Through the veils of time.

And a longing that remains…always.

Marta Luzim’s Writing the Wave: Mama’s Breasts

Post Date February 12, 2012
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I was six when I saw mama naked form the waist up. Mama’s breasts were large, round and fleshy. I stared at them with wonder. I asked, “Mommy, when will I have those?” I pointed to her breasts.

“Later. Much later.” She said.

They became a mantra of sight. The image of her breasts. Mama, your breasts lift out of your cocktail dress. Hang over your skimpy nightgown, stick out in your turtleneck like fat bullets. You wanted the world to see your breasts. But your breast teachings were, “Never let anyone touch your body. Men are like dogs, they go from fire hydrant to fire hydrant.”

I hungered for the nurturance of your breasts, but they were made of mud and steel. You taught me to squelch my orgasms, to hate the smell of my body. So I fucked every bad boy to bond with the hatred you leaked all over onto me.

Mama. Considerable superficial charm and average intelligence

Absence of delusions or other signs of irrational thinking

Unreliable, disregards obligations, no sense of responsibility

Untruthful and insincere

Lack of remorse, no sense of shame

Poor judgment, does not learn from mistakes

Self-centeredness, incapacity for real love and attachment

No true insight, inability to see oneself as others do

Ingratitude, egocentric

Vulgarity, rudeness, quick mood shifts

Impersonal sex life

Failure to have a life plan

Personality disorder – traits are inflexible and maladaptive and cause either

Significant impairment in social and occupational functioning and subjective distress

Intensity

Intensity

Sexual intensity

Sexual release

Sexual intensity and insanity

Intensity of the insanity feels like the intensity

Of the sexuality.

How is this?

I seek…creatively?

How is this?

I don’t understand

Brain scrambling

Attachment disorder

Body feverish

Soul sadness

Life with mama


Appetites of a Borderline

Post Date February 11, 2012
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Borderline Personality is characterized by a pervasive pattern of unstable relationships, self-image, emotions and impulse control. Borderlines are emotional hemophiliacs.

The conditions can manifest themselves through, among other things, “angry outbursts” and/or “chronic feelings of emptiness.”

The terror
The voice
The purpose
The permission
The process

Raw, no skin, emotional hemophiliac
Insanity
Suspicion
Secrets
Signs of trickery
Jealous
Blame others
Take offense
Augmentative
And tense
Responses shallow
Cold
Humorless
Instability in relationships
Mood and self image
Attitudes, feelings
Change inexplicably
Over short periods of time
Unpredictable, irritable
Argumentative
Moods shift abruptly
Impulsive
No sense of self
Remain uncertain with life
Intense one-on-one relationships
Which usually are stormy, transient
And brief,
Evaluates others with no real concern
For them
Chronic depression and emptiness
Manipulative attempts at suicide
Psychotic under emotional stress
Hysterical personality
Overly dramatic-always drawing
Attention to themselves
Emotionally expressive to unusual degree
Angry overreactions to minor annoyances
Quick to boredom with normal routines
Interpersonal problems are frequent
Manipulative
Seductive
Dependent
Constant demands on others
Vain, shallow, ungenuine and inconsiderate
Moral insanity
Lunacy
Sociopath

Client Poem: Refugee

Post Date February 07, 2012
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I’m a refugee
From my land
My body
My mother’s warmth
My father’s attention

I’ve seen the obscene
With my child eyes
My heart slain
My fingers searching in vain
For anything, something to
Hold me

Resident Alien said my card
My country watched me go
My heart is lost somewhere over the ocean
Sinking to the floor, lost

And you mother, dear, threw it into that violent surf
Watched it drown
I gave it you to hold
For safekeeping

Father, where was your net? Your hands?
You turned your back
And I sat on my tiny legs
Waiting for the protection that never came

I believed, in the end, that my heart wasn’t worth it
I wasn’t worth it
I’m a refugee from my own heart
It still sits, among the coral reefs and fish
That look confused at the sight of it
It’s afraid I’ll never come back for it.

But I’m making my own net now
From the broken pieces of my soul
The weeds of people who left me
The twigs of those I believed above me
It’s not a perfect net, but it’ll do.

Client Poem: The Saddest Truths

Post Date January 31, 2012
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When I look at my face in pictures
I don’t see the makeup
The hair
The earrings
The smile

I see the eyes.
The big, luminous eyes.
Pained, unsure, glassy, innocent, questioning eyes.
They speak the saddest truths.
The truths I cannot say
And my heart cannot hold.
The truths that make me break
Standing

That I loved you with every fiber of my being
But we lacked passion
Because you never pushed back, never fought for yourself, for me.

That I envied your own brother for your attention
That sometimes when you spoke, it was like you didn’t see me.
That your words were so careless, it was like the world could have ended, I would have gone with it,
And you would have shrugged.
That you will never make me happy, because you hold nothing dear
That I find happiness so fragile and precious
And you live in a black void that smiles its oily smiles.

That as much as I hate my mother
Her cruelty, her ignorance and irresponsibility
I feel her pain. I know her pain.
I understand it. Even acknowledge its rightness.
It runs in my veins.
And as much I love you father dear, for your guilt-stricken machinations
And good intentions,
My mother and I are much more alike than you and I, I’m afraid.
She’s my mirror. And no matter how far I run, I turn around and see her, see me.

That for all my romantic notions, and perseverance of love
It has hid from me, run from me, rejected me
And so I learned the harder side of human emotions
The softer ones just out of my reach
My need has grown, and with it, love’s appearance has gone from sporadic to never.

That for all my need to save the world.
It’s a selfish, self-aggrandizing notion that I have done nothing to act upon.
Save the world?
Maybe I should save myself first.

Video – Client Poem: Crash by Sonam Hajela

Post Date January 28, 2012
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Crash by Sonam Hajela

Written and read by Sonam Hajela

Crash

it’s coming
like a rain
down my face
slashing
a train hurtling at tragic speeds
a hurricane gone
quiet
I whip my head
my hair floating around me in
slow motion
where is everything?
my hands reach but
I can do nothing but wait while the
tires, rails, winds, sounds
crash into me
and I can only absorb
absorb
the skin too porous
my heart gone still
waiting, gasping
for everything to still
but the stillness is dangerous
I have no cover
from silence

Client Poem – Little Black Dress by Sonam Hajela

Post Date January 24, 2012
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Client Poem: Little Black Dress – by Sonam Hajela

You want me to zip it up
Blend me in
And close me out
All those straight lines
And perfect seams
You see numbers,
Fake smiles and handshakes
Status quos and authority
All I see is a disappeared spirit
I want fire
Orange, red
Painted against the sky
Like the sun leaking
Pouring out its heart
Dripping in flames
Too hot to the touch
I want to be ablaze
Not the tepid little doll
That holds true to the mold
You don’t understand the burn
Of an artist, the hunger of a creation
I want a revolution, not a following
I want gasps, the trees to bend
The sky to tilt
And the grass to turn blue
The chaos painting me divine
In all my humanity
The Gods smiling down at me
Knowing I’m just that much closer.
I wish
just once
You had said
Go set the world on fire
And leave the rest in black.

Why Lying Broken in a Pile on Your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea – Julie (JC) Peters

Post Date January 17, 2012
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“When I lost my faith all I had left was expectation.” Lara Luzim

Akhilandeshvari: The Goddess of never not broken.

Why Lying Broken in a Pile on Your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea ~ Julie (JC) Peters

You know that feeling when you have just gone through a breakup, or lost your job, and everything is terrible and terrifying and you don’t know what to do, and you find yourself crying in a pile on your bedroom floor, barely able to remember how to use the phone, desperately looking for some sign of God in old letters, or your Facebook newsfeed or on Glee, finding nothing there to comfort you?

Come on, yes you do. We all do.

And there is a goddess from Hindu mythology that teaches us that, in this moment, in this pile on the floor, you are more powerful than you’ve ever been.

This past week, I have been deeply inspired by a talk I heard on the Yoga Teacher Telesummit by Eric Stoneberg on this relatively unknown Goddess from Hindu mythology: Akhilandeshvari.

This figure has snuck up inside me and settled into my bones. She keeps coming out of my mouth every time I teach, and she’s given me so much strength and possibility during a time of change and uncertainty in my own life. I wanted to unpack a little bit about who she is for those that might be, like me, struggling a little bit in that pile on the floor and wondering how the hell to get up again.

The answer, it turns out, is this: in pieces, warrior-style, on the back of a crocodile. Yee ha.“Ishvari” in Sanskrit means “goddess” or “female power,” and the “Akhilanda” means essentially “never not broken.” In other words, The Always Broken Goddess. Sanskrit is a tricky and amazing language, and I love that the double negative here means that she is broken right down to her name.

But this isn’t the kind of broken that indicates weakness and terror.

It’s the kind of broken that tears apart all the stuff that gets us stuck in toxic routines, repeating the same relationships and habits over and over, rather than diving into the scary process of trying something new and unfathomable.

Akhilanda derives her power from being broken: in flux, pulling herself apart, living in different, constant selves at the same time, from never becoming a whole that has limitations.

The thing about going through sudden or scary or sad transitions (like a breakup) is that one of the things you lose is your future: your expectations of what the story of your life so far was going to become. When you lose that partner or that job or that person, your future dissolves in front of you.

And of course, this is terrifying.

But look, Akhilanda says, now you get to make a choice. In pieces, in a pile on the floor, with no idea how to go forward, your expectations of the future are meaningless. Your stories about the past do not apply. You are in flux, you are changing, you are flowing in a new way, and this is an incredibly powerful opportunity to become new again: to choose how you want to put yourself back together. Confusion can be an incredible teacher—how could you ever learn if you already had it all figured out?

This goddess has another interesting attribute, which is, of course, her ride: a crocodile.

Crocodiles are interesting in two ways: Firstly, Stoneberg explains that the crocodile represents our reptilian brain, which is where we feel fear. Secondly, the predatory power of a crocodile is not located in their huge jaws, but rather that they pluck their prey from the banks of the river, take it into the water, and spin it until it is disoriented. They whirl that prey like a dervish seeking God, they use the power of spin rather than brute force to feed themselves.

By riding on this spinning, predatory, fearsome creature, Akhilanda refuses to reject her fear, nor does she let it control her. She rides on it. She gets on this animal that lives inside the river, inside the flow. She takes her fear down to the river and uses its power to navigate the waves, and spins in the never not broken water. Akhilanda shows us that this is beautiful. Stoneberg writes:

Akhilanda is also sometimes described in our lineage like a spinning, multi-faceted prism. Imagine the Hope Diamond twirling in a bright, clear light. The light pouring through the beveled cuts of the diamond would create a whirling rainbow of color. The diamond is whole and complete and BECAUSE it’s fractured, it creates more diverse beauty. Its form is a spectrum of whirling color.


Photo: Justin Graham

That means that this feeling of confusion and brokenness that every human has felt at some time or another in our lives is a source of beauty and colour and new reflections and possibilities.

If everything remained the same, if we walked along the same path down to the river every day until there was a groove there (as we do; in Sanskrit this is called Samskara, habits or even “some scars”), this routine would become so limited, so toxic to us that, well, the crocs would catch on, and we’d get plucked from the banks, spun and eaten.

So now is the time, this time of confusion and brokenness and fear and sadness, to get up on that fear, ride it down to the river, dip into the waves, and let yourself break. Become a prism.

All the places where you’ve shattered can now reflect light and colour where there was none. Now is the time to become something new, to choose a new whole.

But remember Akhilanda’s lesson: even that new whole, that new, colourful, amazing groove that we create, is an illusion. It means nothing unless we can keep on breaking apart and putting ourselves together again as many times as we need to. We are already “never not broken.” We were never a consistent, limited whole. In our brokenness, we are unlimited. And that means we are amazing.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Julie (JC) Peters has been practicing yoga on and off from the tender age of 12, and it has gotten her through everything from the horrors of teenagedom to a Master’s degree in Canadian Poetry. She teaches creative and dynamic vinyasa flow, calm and fluid Hatha, meditative Yin yoga, and fiery core strength classes. Julie owns East Side Yoga Studio in Vancouver with Coco Finaldi, and is also a freelance writer and spoken word poet.

Enlightenment

Post Date January 10, 2012
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“I’d would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light.” – Mary Gardiner Brainard

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  – Hebrews 11:1

“Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.” – Paul Tillich

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire

“Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture…Show me a woman who doesn’t feel guilty and I’ll show you a man.”  – Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

Enlightenment

SOME LINES: “Our mother cautions us, every time you turn around certain you have lost something/afraid you have left it behind/you have, you have…”

I peer over my shoulder. I see webs of my shadow life. The past holds the secrets of what I grieve now. It is a dark, murky road. A starving muddy betrayal when life whispers visions of fullness, that turns on you and offers your head on a platter.

Enlightenment.

This time travel trip to an outpost of humanity, where few seem to reach. This perfect Eden, this place where dreams come true– Jiminy Cricket singing when you wish upon a star. And poof your dreams come true.

Enlightenment.

Up against your own self loathing and protruding belly fattening you up for the kill. Feed off this lightness of being. It is so yummy and lustful and ecstatic, this promise for the land of Milk and Honey.

I look in the mirror. I wonder, how did I get here? How did this body take me down into the gutter of despair? I meditated, spruced it with oils, fed it organics, ran like a warrior through the streets, to get a tight butt and a flat stomach. And then, hidden between the tiniest of cracks in my cells, left over trauma and unexpressed rage sunk down deep. I thought I had the answers, and now I don’t even know which is north or south inside of my broken compass system.

Mindfulness, accept, presence, be here now. Enlightenment.

So I sit. My mind races, judgment, judgment, fear, fear, rejection, rejection. I want youth and beauty. I want a long, hard, sweaty orgasm. I want to eat milky ways, oreo cookies and gooey cheese burritos. I want to dance along the Seine, I want to eat pasta in Tuscany, I want to watch the sun roll over the Colorado Rockies. Instead I rock in my arms, sobbing, praying, wondering when my enlightenment packed its bags and said, “I’m going elsewhere, you don’t deserve to be happy.’

Enlightenment – Dark Night of the Soul.

Enlightenment says. “I won’t stay by your side while you go through the dark tunnel. I’m going where the sun is sunnier, where the smiles are brighter and you can’t have me unless you think positive all the time…and you can love everyone. Or I’m out of here.”

I let you go, enlightenment, to find another host that can find love in a war zone. I can’t. My heart breaks and crumples on top of the dead bodies, powerless, unable to resurrect my soul, let alone anyone else’s.

Enlightenment took my head and twisted it around, said you can make this happen, you can make this transform, you can create reality. And then the body caved in, my mind went insane watching the death, suicide of walking souls, and then it said, you did this. YOU…IT IS YOUR FAULT THAT YOU ARE HUMAN.

I dreamt, maybe this will go away, this hurt, pain and body annihilation. I can make this disappear, I can anti-age, I can be physically immortal. I can walk on water and the suffering in my belly will disappear.

Enlightenment tapped its ruler against the chalkboard and said, “Every horrible disease has a silver lining.”

So I dove into the glitter and glitz to find this silver lining and demons ate me alive. Gang wars, rape, and abductions of innocent children. Terrorists beating women into submission. Women who sit in corporate easy chairs, smoking cigars and thinking that they broke the glass ceiling, when all they have is the scars of broken glass that cut their veins.

Enlightenment.

I see the bright lights and neon signs that flash Peace Now, All you need is love, Make Love Not War. I hear them calling to me. But inside, enlightenment has shriveled up into an old lady waiting for the Gates of Heaven to drop down on her head and smash all her dreams. The song still sings in my head. One day your prince will come. I am woman, hear me roar. Then the song dies and beats of wind, thunder, a smack across the head, and wake up you idiot, this is all a dream anyway. You never really existed in the first place.

Enlightenment.

The story ends. And begins. Does anyone want to be saved? Hallelujah. Can I be saved? Hallelujah. Enlightenment even kills the young babes.

Enlightenment.

Your waves of destruction are so huge and big and impossible to swim. I’m first learning to surf, doggy paddle, and maybe, just maybe I won’t drown. I want a new body. I want my body to work. I don’t know how.

Enlightenment, why did you leave me?

I hold a candle, waiting for your return. I am waiting. Waiting and waiting. Come on, enlightenment, I’m hanging on the cross here. I’m fading, going. Blood eyes, fangs waiting for the kill. Enlightenment, what big teeth you have. Suck me dry. Life support. BEEEP!

“Come into my heart now/ I write/ whoever you are out there…” “Substances mixed with water/ fumes, no name for them/ smelling worse than a sewer…” “How many are moving/ not in belief/ only in homelessness/ not in communion/ only in blood and woundedness.”

Enlightenment is human.

A woman hungry on the side of the road. A child reaching for a hand. A smile that comes from heartbreak. A long road to heaven. Enlightenment, I see and feel you in the dark.

 

The Death of Goddesses
by Erica Jong

It used to be hard for women, snowed in their white lives, white lies, to write books with that fine frenzy which commends genius to posterity, yet estranges it from its closest friends.

Women were friends to all, & being too friendly they could not command the unfriendly prerogatives of genius, though some were geniuses still, destroying only themselves with the torment of the unfriendly ghost trapped in a friendly form.

Oh the women who died dissembling friendship for the world! Oh the women who turned the dagger inward when it wished to go out, who impaled themselves on Womanhood itself!

No vampire could be as greedy for blood, no father or husband as bullying. A woman punishing herself with her own pain is a fierce opponent indeed.

It is self against self, dagger to dagger, blood of her blood, blood of her daughter, blood of her mother, her menses, her moon, all pooled together, one crimson sea.

It is the awful auto da fé, the sublime seppuku, Sante Sebastiana as archer & victim too.
The arrow flies from her bow. She runs, fleet as Diana, & stops it with her breast.

Enough! cried the Women-Who-Cared. Henceforth we will turn our anger where it belongs. We will banish the whitest lies. We will speak the black truth as it is. Our father– we spit back their sperm. Our husbands– we spit back their names. Our brothers– we suck back our love.

The self-righteous inherit the earth, & anger speaks louder than love. Love is a softness the weak cannot afford, & sex a Darwinian bribe.

But who wants the earth as a gift when it is empty as space, when women grow hard as bronze madonnas & Diana loves only her stag?

When Persephone stays in hell the entire year, then how can spring begin?

© Erica Mann Jong

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