Words weave through
the tapestry of my life.
Travelling within the threads
lies a hidden language,
sanded under time.
It speaks to me
of a story I heard long ago.
History owns the language,
therefore, the storyteller.
To excavate truth I unpick stitches,
learn to interweave words,
revising them to my own speech.
And what of these woven words?
When I am ninety-two
they take me from my bed.
Dressed in my floral nightie,
I am more than ready to return.
Somewhere in the distance
I hear a blast of music,
as the song gathers itself.
It’s been on repeat this past week.
All silver and shining,
I wake to put pen to paper.
Still writing down dreams,
loving these croning years.
At 70 years of age
I give up work on my birthday,
to hold my partners hand
and dance around supermarkets.
Twelve weeks ago, around the start of the year, I made a conscious decision to start something completely new in my life, I call it the Animus Diet. Yes, I appreciate that January and dieting tend to go hand-in-hand, however, this was an entirely different kind of diet because there would be no calorie counting or weighing scales involved. Not even a tape measure, as I attempted to slim down my overweight animus, ‘Brutus’ and build up my skinny anima, whom I refer to fondly as ‘Olive Oyl.’ It was only when I discovered the wonderful cartoons at the beginning and at the end of this article that I recognised the characters as archetypes for my inner masculine and feminine aspects. In the first part of this article Journey of Love: The Animus Diet I wrote about my initial thoughts, reflections and changes that I felt I needed to make and I explored a number of suggestions about how to put these in place. This article picks up where week four left off as I continue to explore my inner masculine/feminine imbalance. And so the animus diet continues.
Yours is the voice on the wind
that travels deep within
the chambers of my heart.
Big round sounds of love,
in poetic silver delight,
move your shepherd’s flute.
Like an opening moonflower
I watch you dear poet,
cast out your infused verses,
scent and sensuality far and wide.
Bathed in the clearest light,
I drink in love shaped notes.
One soft spring day
In middling March
A gentle butterfly
Alighted upon the
Most glorious flower
She had ever seen
Startled by her attraction
To this beautiful flower
The butterfly at first shied away
Not sure of what she was feeling
Having both weathered many brave storms
They danced in delightful words
The butterfly was enchanted
And enjoyed being around the flower
Soaking up the love light & laughter
Of this truly inspirational flower
In childhood I danced to another tune,
so odd, I thought the gypsies had left me.
At nine I awoke to the call of creativity,
for a golden hour or two. Up and down
the alphabet I travelled, eyeing up words,
never finding the same word-flute twice.
Being of two hearts I wanted to be liked,
but secretly I longed to be the real thing.
A is for alcohol not the ruddy red apple
I grasped, while watching in fear as booze
transformed my lonely, introverted father
into a wild, highly dramatic personality.
Elvis, all shook up, drunk on tramp juice.
Mute, I spoke only in hesitant sentences,
for I would rather heed the silences of life
than listen to the cruel vagaries of his ego.
The birds sat in silence
to hear the poet sing.
Each winged note
pressed deep to their soul.
An everlasting call of love
greeting the heart.
Poets love birds
and feathers talk,
word-flutes of desire.
Reddening and rising,
the poet’s lovebirds
entwine all hearts.
Chained until thirty three,
I was a jailbird of the cave.
Where madness and echoes
embraced the ruling darkness.
My dead eyes locked only
onto the lifeless wall ahead,
where deceiving shadows
soon became my false reality.
The seething fire behind me
knew nothing of friendship.
Nor I, until I scurried away
by posting words of protest
to each reviled, hated brick
of that shadowy ivory tower.
The one that separated me
from sun, moon and stars.
Okay, that’s it, I’m putting my fat animus on a post-holiday diet! For too long now he’s been aggressively stuffing me full of sugar and fat and making me feel, well, quite ill, if not tired most of the time. As a student of Jung I simply have to try out this lower inner-man diet. So back to the book shelves I go, to pull out Marion Woodsman’s impressive books that help me study “Feminine Consciousness” in more depth and try to figure out how to curb my invisible partner’s hunger.
In physical terms I don’t have much weight to lose, somewhere around 4.5 kg (10 lb) in order to fit into my jeans more comfortably. I’ve decided, as I usually eat reasonably healthily, that I’m not going to change my diet too much, instead, I’m going to change the way I interact with my “internal man.” Psychologically, however, I know I need to create more of a balance by way of plumping up my skinny feminine self and slimming down my overweight masculine side. When I came across the humorous sketch above, it perfectly illustrated for me how I felt my animus was taking up too much room “on the inside.”
I land in the tin bath
My little hands splash water
Over my beaten body
I try to cleanse myself
Of my father’s
Unspeakable horror
Will the water do well?
Will it wash the pain away?
Will the blood stop flowing?
I am not the body
I am wearing the body
I am dead