Following the Black Panther

I grew curious after writing the poem and also having other synchronistic encounters with the Black Panther. It was surfacing in my life in a very visible way and I felt that there was still a lot to learn from her and that she was still hunting me but now in a different way.

I had recently done some shamanic work and had discovered two very powerful animal totems; the stag and the wolf. I was aware that the wolf had been with me for all of my life, since I was a little girl in fact. And I found comfort and delight in looking back and discovering all the different signs of her presence in my life. It was in this spirit that I decided to look into the Black Panther as a totem. What I found was not surprising to me, in fact, it made perfect sense.

From wisdomportal.com, Ted Andrews, "Animal Speak" http://www.greatdreams.com/panther.htm

"Nietzche once said 'that which does not kill us makes us stronger'. It is this same idea that is awakened in the lives of those who open to the power of the panther totem. Those things of childhood and beyond that created suffering and which caused a loss of innate power and creativity are about to be reawakened, confronted and transmuted. The panther marks a new turn in the heroic path of those to whom it comes. It truly reflects more than just coming into ones own power. Rather it reflects a reclaiming of that which was lost and an intimate connection with the great archetypal force behind it. It gives an ability to go beyond what has been imagined, with opportunity to do so with discipline and control. It is the spirit of imminent rebirth".

So, with the above idea in mind, I follow the Black Panther. She has already greatly influenced my life and I cannot turn my back on her because of scars that I have from the past. Besides, life is like this, the "good" and the "bad" all mixed up together and our interpretations of them based purely on how they make us feel. So, I will follow the Black Panther and see where she takes me.....

After the poem.....

I knew that I had to do a painting after I wrote the poem. It is not necessarily one of my best and I feel like it still needs work. So far though, I haven't had the desire to touch it again. It's possible that it will just exist in its raw state and I will make more later.

I was a bit shocked at how much emotion surfaced for me around the concept of grief. And, to some degree, I have been unaware of how I have internalized my own experience.

When I lost my partner I was devastated and felt as if I had been split open. To be torn apart in such a way was violent and excruciatingly painful. The flip side (and yes, there was a flip side) is that it tore things down in me that needed to be torn down. It opened me up (to myself) in a way that nothing else could and left me transformed in a way that I could not ignore. It was necessary, no, vital, that I have that experience. It is part of the path that has led me to where I am now....following my dream.

HUNTED

I.

That kind of grief

never leaves you alone

Once it's begun

it tracks you

Hunts you

like a Black Panther

Stealthily

keenly

Hunts you

It sniffs the air

Its long pink tongue

lolling out of its mouth

like a dogs on a hot summer day

It sniffs the air

and finds you

Finds you, finds you, finds you

by the sweat that is beading

on your forehead

Beads that are always there

because you know

You are being hunted

And you must run (run, run, run, run, run.........)

and ever be hunted

or stop

and be its prey

II.

To be its prey

Is another thing......

To be eaten alive

slowly

torturously

as the Panther delights

in your suffering

feeds off of it

as much as

it feeds off of your flesh

It will take a big, big bite of you

its giant ivory canines

piercing your skin and muscle

until it hits your bone

And when it hits your bone

and has a big chunk

of your flesh

in its mouth

It rips

rips hard

and lightening fast

tearing screams

from your belly

as it tears flesh

from your bones

It throws its head back

and gulps down

that chunk of flesh

like a Toucan

eating a grape

Then it smiles at you

blood dripping from its whiskers, fangs, chin

Your blood

and then it leaves you there

III.

It leaves you there

to wait

to moan in agony

pain throbbing thru

your whole body

like a pulse

'Til you pass out

from the exhaustion of it

After a while

you come to

and realize

You are still alive!

How did you live

thru such a horrible thing?

It makes you wet yourself

feeling the fear

all over again

and you think to yourself

"Now I have truly seen Evil"

You assess your weakened state

can I move?

how weak am I?

how much blood have I lost?

You try, with your muddled mind

to make a plan

of just getting up

But then,

there is a rustle of leaves

and you turn your head

and see the Panther

sitting off to your left

Framed by wild Orchids

and looking as innocent

as a house cat

as it grooms its right front paw

It puts its paw down

and looks at you

A friendly look

like it would like it

if you scratched a little

behind its ears

And you think to yourself

"Was it all a bad dream?

Did I imagine that horror?"

The Panther trots lightly over

sits down and stares at you

with those big wild eyes

It flattens its ears back

and growls low

in its throat

It growls like you are an enemy

like you would attack it

as you lay there

in your helpless, bleeding heap

The great cat works itself

into a frenzy

and attacks

You can't believe it's happening again!

You go into shock

blood, your blood

is gushing everywhere

This time

the Panther has pulled off your left arm

and lays a few feet away from you

gnawing on it

like a dog

After a while

it trots off

into the shrubs

All the muscle-meat is gone

from your arm

that is lying a few feet away from you

your hand still attached

at the wrist

Hyenas come sniffing

making that eerie

laughing-bark

that they make

They grab the bones

of your arm with the hand attached

and run off

fighting over it

as they disappear

into the underbrush

You know the Panther

will return again

This goes on for years

Black Panther and Me

My relationship with the Black Panther is, at the moment, strained. Though I feel like it is very slowly improving. The work I have done this last quarter has helped me tremendously though I feel like she and I have a long ways to go. She is patient and even somewhat indifferent to my process (she is after all, a cat). So it is up to me to open to her, to investigate, to be curious and explore what it is that she is bringing to my life (and in fact, has already started in my life some years back). I know this is all sounding very mysterious....I will explain.

Last year my supervisor/co-worker J. lost his partner M. of 22 years. It was a freak accident. M. had been working at our facility part time. On his way to work, crossing the street, he was hit by a truck. He was in intensive care for a month before he passed. The facility that I work at is small and the staff is all very close in a strange sometimes dysfunctional sort of way, very much like a family. It hit us all very hard when the accident happened. Mostly I was very concerned for J. I know what it is like to lose a partner. I lost the love of my life 15 years ago to a terminal illness. I still miss him. It changed my life forever and dramatically....some of it good, some of it not so good.

When M. passed I knew what kind of grief J. had in front of him. It brought me back to my own excruciating process of trying to heal from such a devastating blow.

One night coming home from work, I was thinking/feeling very deeply on J.'s situation and feeling very, very, bad for him and also knowing that there was a limit as to how much I could actually help him. This would be a road that only he could travel and much of it would be alone.

As I was thinking all of this a poem came out of me and I furiously wrote it down on bits of paper as I sat on the BART train.

The name of the poem is "Hunted". I will write it in my next post.

Why SHOULDN'T we lie????????????????

Do people have positive experiences when they tell the truth?What's the payoff?

What about work, when I put on a professional front? Is that lying? What about therapists withholding information from their clients. Is that still lying by omission?

Perhaps the worst kind of lying is self deception. But then how can you not lie to yourself when you don't even know you are doing it?

Isn't self deception a defense mechanism for when our psyche can't handle stuff? You can't force that. You can't force someone to raise their consciousness. It has to evolve in its own time and under its own conditions. Maybe all lying is a form of self deception.....

THE LYING PAGES, part 1

• Perhaps I am focusing too much on the negative....but lying seems to epidemic, so, I'm curious.....

• C. telling me today that he will call me later when I know that he won't.
• I lied to K. about being in a relationship with a woman. I let him think that she was a he and even referred to her as 'him' in our conversation.
• I lied in class last nite about my 2D assignment. I said that I forgot it (which I did) but I did not mention that I had also not done any further work on it.
• K. just lied to me about not having any phone reception. In truth, he hung up on me.

Lying is all about appearances.

Lying is about trying to control what other people think about us.

Lying is about our own judgements that we have.

Is not saying anything lying? Lying by omission?

C. said that lying is part of human nature.

In an ideal world, we could be fully who we are and 'process' with each other all the things we lie about.

I envision that this would all help us grow in consciousness as a species and help us to love and accept ourselves and each other. But there is no guarantee that 1) we will be heard 2) encounter someone who is willing to go thru that process with us.

So, it is a big risk. More often than not it is painful and disappointing when we are honest (even with ourselves). Why go thru that when the odds aren't even 50/50????

The Beginning of the Lying Pages Part 2

I wonder how much M. has lied to me? I think that he lies a lot. To me, other people and himself. He lies to get what he wants and to not deal with other peoples emotions. He lies so that he doesn't have to take responsibility for himself.

Do men lie more than women??

How much do I lie?????

Maybe I should start a lying page...........

The Beginning of the Lying Pages

Sunday January 17, 2010

I am sitting at the Metreon Mall in a Taco/Burrito 'restaurant'. Across from me is sitting a man eating. He is blatantly lying to the person he is on the phone with (girlfriend?????). He is telling the person on the phone that he is at an Oakland mall. He even goes so far to describe it specifically, "across the street from the Mens Warehouse". I know he is lying because we are both in downtown San Francisco. I want to go over to him after he gets off of the phone and ask him why he lied. What is his reasoning? What is his motivation? But it is none of my business. It is upsetting to witness someone lying.

Orange Love

Yesterday I went to Judi's studio for my weekly Sunday session. Ellen picked me up and we shared some horrific stories and laughed like hell out of the ridiculous situations we are sometimes presented with in life. We met Nancy in the parking lot and we all trudged up the stairs of the Macaroni Factory to Judi's live/work space.

We all know that we are there to work. It is a serious business doing artwork and every week I am reminded of how blessed I am to have this opportunity to share this creative space with such wonderful women. We shared some stories of the week and then got down to the business of making art. The creative wheels were lubricated by strong black coffee, ginger snaps and homemade croutons to snack on.

I am continuing on something that I have started in my Artistic Identity class. Robbyn had us sculpt our family of origins in clay. It was a powerful and emotionally charged exercise for most of us. It is great that our class is small, which allows us time to explore and go deep with each critique. After the initial sculpture we were to take that idea home and create a family of origins piece of artwork that represented what our family would look like if it were healed of all the dysfunction that we grew up with. I did my healed family of origin out of cloth and stuffed small shapeless figures to represent different family members. I was struck with how difficult it was to imagine my family in a healed state. It bothered me how much resistance I had about it. What is that about???? I've had over twenty years of therapy (seriously, I have), shouldn't I be farther along than that????? I was bothered by my resistance and the lack of direction that I felt in making the finished piece. But I was also curious about my blocks around it. In fact, it was kind of fascinating to me, like discovering this new aspect of myself that I didn't know about.

So, it was with all this in mind that I decided to work with the piece in Judi's class. I at least needed to have some sense of completion with this piece even if it were to be something that I came back and work with again. I wanted to stay working with fabric and I had lots of 'fat quarters' at home to use. I also found a pattern on the internet that I wanted to work with for these cute stuffed birds. The birds would represent myself and my family members and they would be somehow placed in a 'tree' which would be made out of dried branches.

This is the point I was at when I stopped to talk to Judi. I had brought in some branches and was showing them to her with the birds. After talking to her for a few minutes I realized that I had neglected to tell her all the background information!! So, I told her about the assignment and all my feelings about it. It was kinds amazing to share that kind of personal information with another human being. It was like reaching deep into myself, pulling up a glob of emotion and then talking about it. I turned it over for us to see all the different aspects and sides. I didn't hide anything. Afterwards Judi was better informed and she could help me with forming a direction to go in since I felt like I was completely out of my element with no road map and just putting one foot in front of the other. I also felt very vulnerable having just gone through this process of deeply digging around in my psyche and then sharing it with another human being and also acknowledging it to myself. As I turned back to work Judi asked the room if anyone wanted toast with jam. I piped up that I would have some. I looked over a few minutes later and she was making the toast and buttering some of it. I was waiting for the 'it's ready!' call. Instead, I turned around and she was standing there before me holding a plate of toasted french bread thickly layered with apricot jam. She stood there looking down at the plate telling me how the jam was from Italy and really good and that it didn't have any added sugar. To be honest, I was completely stunned by this small gesture of being delivered this plate of orange love. I am always the one who is nurturing others and delivering savory tidbits to people to please and soothe them. It was an amazing gift to be on the receiving end of this small token of nurturance. She gave me the gift of receiving my story and my process and then she gave me orange love.

Family of Origins exercise

Bill B. snoozing on my floor and Miss Ebba

I am just now realizing that I am a little obsessed with dogs. Probably because I want one of my own so badly. What keeps me from having one? Busy-hectic-crazy schedule; dogs, like kids need things to be stable and consistent. On a deeper level, I am hesitant to get my heart broken again. Is it possible I am still recovering from losing (besides other things) Sabrina and Tiger??

The two redheads I used to call them. Sabrina, a golden retriever that I shared with my Mom and Tiger, my (then) partner's orange tabby. Damn, I loved that cat. He died right before Sabrina. Tiger was always trying to make friends with Sabrina but she wasn't having it. In her mind she thought, "who the hell brought this damn CAT into the house?". Can't say that I blame her.

Why the sudden animal reflection? Three things, watching Avatatar last nite (another separate post), the Family of Origins exercise in my Artistic Identity class and this cute guy I've been dating lost his dog just a month ago.

The Family of Origins exercise was surprisingly hard. After 20+ years of therapy it is still a sore spot. As I did the meditation, traveling back thru time to when I was a little girl with my parents, it was all amazingly fresh and vivid. Certain scenarios are etched all too clearly in my mind. One of the most graphic; sitting in the kitchen at our small round table. The three of us, Mom, Dad and myself are supposed to be having a 'family' dinner together (??????). It is dinner time, and my Dad who no longer works, has made dinner while drinking all day (from the time he has gotten up). Mom has returned home from work. I've been home since school let out in the afternoon. The three of us are at the table, Dad is very drunk and ranting and raving at Mom. Mom is drunk + tranquilizers. I am sitting there...kinda watching it all.

During the meditation I am in two places; I am myself as a child and I am my adult self watching the whole thing. I am aware that my parents are oblivious to my presence. How long did I stay there pretending to be their daughter? I was not their daughter... I was no one. Which in a strange way was very very good. Because it left me the freedom to invent myself. But for years and years I was lost and searching; thru my teens, my twenties and even into my thirties. I feel like only now, at the age of 44, am I starting to get a clue as to who I am and actually having a small amount of self acceptance.

As I left my Mom and Dad at the kitchen table, locked into their twisted dynamics with each other, I wandered thru my childhood house. I walked thru the hallway and found Sasha!! My beloved black labador who was my childhood companion and stable source of love, encouragement and stability. We immediately went into the backyard to play and left my parents to their own sickness.

Both Bill B. and Ebba are regular sources of joy in my life. I see Bill B. every time I go to work. Our R.N. nurse brings him to work every day and he offers love and wonderful stress relief to staff and clients alike. He also kinda snorts like a pig which is seriously cute. When I first met Bill B. at 4 months old I immediately felt and 'saw' his huge open heart. It kinda floored me to encounter another creature that was that loving and open. He is still that open and loving, just a little more macho about it now that he's a 'big dog'.

Ebba is just a little angel puff. When I first met her she was small enough to fit on the dashboard of her owners car. She then grew a little and became quite delightfully (to me) wild and mischeivious. It was a little much for her owners but if they had just given her to ME.......I took care of her for a couple of months during her wild phase while her owners were away and yes, she was a handful but also VERY smart and easy to train if you were consistent. Whenever I see her now she does the same thing that she used to do as a puppy with me; she stands on her hind legs with her front legs on one of my legs while I'm sitting down so I can pet her and kiss on her.

Some day I'll have my own.