Learning To Deal With Raven’s Bother

Right now, I am pretty angry at the ravens, for one, in my area.  They ate the songbird’s chicks in their nest, next to the house.  I realize it is the law of nature that each must eat and die for higher purposes.  So, I forgive the sight and remember that, sometimes, a symbol will show up for a reason and I seek answers and meanings.  What lesson do you have for me, Raven?

Sometimes things trip me up; that sudden need for Raven’s gifts of change, of courage, of knowing, of secrets of magic and healing.  Just when I think I have it all together, my ‘all together’ is called to attention.  Time and time again, the Raven appears in my life and I am forced to know and adapt.

In past ages Ravens could be fearful, just like, in my own past, something fearful ahs happened and I am thrown into changes I did not want nor ask for.  Ravens were known as fearful because ravens were seen on battlefields, feeding on the dead and dying.  Because of their predatory habits they were given negative symbolisms.  Mystics and wizards and those involved in the dark arts have kept the negative symbolisms alive and well.  We continue to feed into this and the changes that Raven brings (sometimes forces).  I, like most, resist changes and changing.

Ravens are often the dark matters of the heart.  I associate Ravens with fall’s drabness and chill of fall.  Their voices grate the sky with noisy interference within the bare limbs of fall’s strip-down environment.  It is a lonely and raucous sound.  It is the harbinger of cold winter.  Raven, being linked to death and dying, causes angst.  There are times like these in my life, in your life, in all of life.

When raven comes into your environment, your dreams, your thoughts, your reality, it calls for us to be prepared for deep, spiritual, change in the darkness of some corners of our soul.  It means we are to grapple with change that we fear and yet must go through in order to get through a hard time and recover with adaptations.  There is mystery abound.  We are asked to seek out truths within the crucifying.  We are asked to let go of what we thought was peace and happiness and be called to adapt to a new way of being.  It means that your soul is ready and willing to change even though the Ego/Evil Inner witch resists…out of fear.  

At times, we meet the dark night of the soul.  It is there that the magic of transformation is potent.  All we have learned about resiliency is called to bear.  I am not weak; I am being tried.  Each of us have our own battlefields to contend with.  Each of us chill at the raven’s call.  If raven appears, it is your opportunity to dig deep and find our own truths and ways of rising back to the light of knowing.  I pray we enter it with grace and dignity not a sense of ‘bother’.

©Carol Desjarlais 6.27.20

Hush, There are Crows About

crick of crickets  harrumph beneath peonies
blossoms swooning from heat
petals parachuting in wildest winds
i take my love there

so speak wren chicks     carefully      hidden in lace
between shadows and moonstreams
under heavy humid sky

hush    i whisper
there are crows about

Juno delivered mighty blows
riding in on her dark horse
slither of snake in its greens and golds
dark stripe of hiss and curl

Litha tosses colors to four corners
prisms fractured by moonlight
crystallized dew weeps
rock hard diamonds delivered

sage is stirred in air
by lift and loft of ether
to heighten hierarchy of moontime beings
a bumblebee moth makes spirals
in hopes of one last sip of nightime nectar

i rise and come here
hem of white gown stroked
by reflected Luna's luminescent lines
smocked with shades of another full moon
after moon after moon after moon

no bitter sip from sorrow's chalice
a seamed serenity around such wounds
as once felt ominous and growling urge
made silent by years of yearning still

i take my love here and there
where sings night serenades in choirs
when crows have nestled too high
to hear our veritable vulnerability

hush    there are crows about

©Carol Desjarlais 6.19.19

Hmmmm…Me and My Glass Slipper

“Hedonic adaptation is the tendency for humans to quickly adapt to major positive or negative life events or changes and return to their base level of happiness.” - Mike Fishbein

I read something the other day about finding a glass slipper at midnight, on some stairs, usually means the woman wearing it had been drunk.  Well, I am about to shatter your glass-slipper ideology, and hidden meanings, we were taught from the time we could be read stories.

The Cinderella story dates back to 1697, in France, but the story goes all the way back to ancient times in Greece.  Shoes, foot coverings have been in many old stories.  There is a Cinderella story in the Blackfoot stories.  It is called Scarred-face Girl and the theme was the same as Cinderella, minus the shoes.  Sometimes, in retelling, down the decades, things change some.  In French “Pantoufle de verre” could easily been mistranslated from “pantoufle de vair”, which means “fur slipper”.   Think the whisper story we passed around in a circle and got all muddled in the passing along.   Nonetheless, the story changes deeply when considering the ‘fur slipper’.  

Many scholars believe, if the slipper were made of fur, which is logical, that is was a metaphor for female pubic part.  If you think of the story, the Prince fitted something into something to assure the fit.  That is logical as well.  Other scholars believe that it was a glass slipper because that would be ever so expensive but still represents Cinderella’s vagina.    Her virginity would, then, be highly favorable.  In the German story, the stepsisters smash the glass slipper, cutting themselves in the doing.  You do not have to be a scholar to connect the blood with the vagina hymen breaking and their loss of their own virginity that would not make them worthy of a Prince.  Awk!  

So many of us have sought to fit into our own glass slippers and found them crushed and not worth the work it took, the pain they caused, and the disheartened feelings left when they were not what we expected.  Everyone has a point of actuality in possibilities and expectations.  Sometimes we forget our reality and relativistic abilities by seeking that that is outside of us, when, in reality, happiness is internal.  Seeking validation of happiness from things outside us is a recipe for misery.  As well, it is a signal that we are not self-aware in some of our expectations.  I have, many times, sought that that simply was not for me.  I, doggedly, attempted to fit my foot into someone else’s glass slipper.  I, easily, forget what a hero I have been on my own.  I forget to celebrate those things I have gained without attaching it to someone else.  I forget to be grateful.  When I feel bored, it means that I have forgotten to seek new high points of happiness.  I know what makes me happy, so why do I seek something else to keep me happy. My idea on this is that we forget to do the things that already make us happy, have made us happy in the past.  Art makes me happy in a soulfully peaceful way.  Yes, it is something outside self (the actual finished product), but it is in the doing that a peaceful joy comes.  Adding one more technique or try something new, within the arting, adds subtle layers of happiness within.  Having it turn out perfectly is not the end result.  The happiness result comes from within the trying and experimenting.

Let us be aware of our Present happiness so we do not seek someone else’s glass slipper.

Much love, sister-friends.  Much love in the happiness that already resides in you, not the glass slippers of life!

©Carol Desjarlais 6.26.20

Doing the slipper was enjoyable.. I had not focused in on much but portraits.   

Trying to get the slipper to look like glass was challenging to say the least.  I decided to do it in geometric shapes.

Then I worked on getting surprise look on her face.  Of course, it was the eyes.

The next difficult thing I was challenged by, was the hand... I could choose the slipper to be held in her hand, or someone else's hand.  Hands still challenge me. When I got it to where I could let it be, it looks like a feminine hand... interesting aye?