~
Buddha said to the Deer…
“It’s time to poke the Tiger”
~
Painting © by Jana White
Instagram @ Jana_H_White
The Aquifer and the Wheel
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The Aquifer…
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The Wheel…
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“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been; but I can not say where.
I can only say, how long, for that is to place it in time.”
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Excerpt from BURNT NORTON
{No.1 of “Four Quartets” by T.S. Eliot
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Paintings © Jana White
Instagram @ Jana_h_White
Under the Radar
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Under the Radar
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Softening their intelligence
they meandered
through the maps of their minds
transparent as water and air.
~
While walking deftly
under the ladders of hierarchy
They circumnavigated
the solid grid of references
unwinding the edges of illusion.
The flight of their passions
exploring the complexities,
of new insight.
~
Their cadence syncopated
by raindrops and birdcalls,
they resonated as bells ringing
weathering the storms
of this new vulnerability.
~
Each of their words
now flesh of their hearts
their ageless spirits
carrying loss
as kites in the wind.
~
While planting bright seeds
in fecund dust
Where some may grow
under the radar.
~
I often consider that poems are like messages in a bottle washing up on the shore….whether a new poetic reflection or an older contemplation returning.
This one is an older poem, but its contemplative energy remains ageless for me, a reminder and impetus for the coming new year.
There is a “layer of being” I address here. It is a prayer encompassing the word
“WITH”
and the verb words
“We ARE…WE ARE….WE ARE”
~
Painting and poem © Jana White
Instagram @ Jana_h_White
Winter Solstice
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Ouroboros
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The moon shivers silver and stirs
As the branches of Life’s Tree, kiln dried,
Spark and Ignite in the cauldron of a Dragon’s exhale
As still holding the Center
The Dragon pauses before its first next Breath before Flight
As the Vesica Pisces, resonating through eons
with the Triangle of Light’s Blessing,
In quantum symmetry smiles
And Mycelium dance in prayerful delight!
~~~~~~~~~
” There are two ways of sustaining something. It may either be carried, or enfolded by creating an unbroken circle round it to prevent its falling apart.”
The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols 1996 addition… by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant under the category “Serpent”.
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(Adieu to the Chinese “Year of the Wood Snake”)
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I was a child with dreams of becoming
Now that I am older
The same dreams of being hold
Like a snake shedding it’s skin
While spitting out it’s swallowed tail
Returning and turning
Always the same
In all ways transformed
~
Happy Solstice!
~
Painting and poems © Jana White
Instagram @ Jana_h_White
Enigma
~Rooted in the Greek word for riddle
I steady myself
in the middle of the stream
So much rain
my toes search for purchase
as I move along in the strong current
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But I’ll not wander in the side eddies
where the slickest algae
coats the surface of the stones still idling there
passing time as if singular
feigning reflection
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An intoxicated accumulation
of over fertilized organic matter
girdling themselves
as if they could hold on to the ground
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My days have been emptying
full of the feeling that I’m living in two separate realities
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More than a waiting game
too much hard evidence
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Carrying a pack that needs to be cleaned out
and made into a traveling case of essentials
fit for traveling in even faster flowing water
~
I’ve been carrying these stones around with me for decades. The one with the impressed shells is from the Northwest Pacific coast and was gifted to me. Its partner once dwelled further south, somewhere along the coast by Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.
They traveled with me when I returned to the waters of the east coast, after my sojourn with the Pacific. The stones always hold a corner of one of my gardens, along with a bowl of water for the critters and birds.
The poem inserted into the photo arrived out of the blue, as many poems tend to do. It came as a puzzle and I chuckled as I considered who it could be referring to.
That is until…. could it possibly be “water”? And partner with the poem “Enigma”?
~
Poems and photo © Jana White
Instagram @ Jana_H_White
Perfect Landing
I step lightly between the landing of the animus
The muse that comes lifting honey from the hives
Pollinating words penetrating through veils
Boundaries permeable by light
Still feeling the sinew and bones of intention
Smiling around dark corners
Unabashed!
Painting and journal entry © Jana White
Instagram @ Jana_H_White
Dengue Diary
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Becoming
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Even substance
can not slow to definition
The holiness
of momentum
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Weather
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It’s called the “Bone Crusher”.
At the end of 2019 and five days into a month long artist residency in Mexico, I fell into a deep viral vortex known as dengue fever. As the virus rummaged through my physiology, the microscopic mutants concentrated in my skull. My brain swelled with a pain so focused that I couldn’t open my eyes and for days I lost all sense of whether it was day or night.
All I remember of this time is literally having no other choice but to surrender to the pain. Finally, within this weird dark place I “saw” what I remember as an image of the archetype of Mary, which I held on to with the thought that perhaps I wasn’t being swallowed whole afterall.
Shortly after the pain subsided, and other than the bones in my head being tender and my lungs congested, I slowly re-entered the day to day world of the rest of the residency.
The canvasses I had prepped were all ready and hanging on my working wall. My paints were arranged on the table, but I found that I could not tolerate color! Light also bothered me and I was unable to look at a phone or computer screen without feeling some internal wires were being crossed. My original intentions disrupted, I sketched instead in black and white trying to express the experience and make something of the residency.
Even more disconcerting was how it felt simply inhabiting space. When walking there was the feeling of riding up and down an elevator. For months afterwards I would have to stop to steady and ground myself….in a panic. Since this feeling was this side of actual dizziness or vertigo, it took months to understand my eustachian tubes had been permanently altered. Finally allergy testing confirmed this and also that my body remained on high alert. I continually exhibited allergic reactions, and I became a human barometer of weather and environmental and seasonal changes. It took years to convince my neurology that neither hard wood trees, nor a new weather front, would upend me.
I was finding that I was having to come into perceptual relationship with everything around me…in a deeper way. This relationship wasn’t a new experience. I had been relying on nature for a sense of wonder and relationship, but also emotional regulation, since a child old enough to wander alone in the wildness of it. This is where I found true beauty in the rhythms of life, sometimes death, and learned to trust change.
Considering the archetypal image of Mary that I saw during my dengue episode? It has become clear to me that this was the Earth herself….in one unbroken seam.
~
Drawings by Jana White ©
Instagram @ Jana_h_White
Fragile
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Fragile like smog shadows rifling valleys
the mountain holds its breath
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Fragile like feverish water
the ocean aborts the moon’s children
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Fragile like bees losing direction
and stamens playing their last hands
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Fragile like children born overwhelmed
by viruses perplexed
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Fragile still
like a flower
self-sewing in the garden
in blooming will make no mistakes
Intelligence in its unfolding
~
~
“The Sky is falling. The sky is falling”
Painting and poem by Jana White
Instagram @jana_h_white
Helene
Among the hills, when you sit in the cool
shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and
serenity of distant fields and meadows … then let
your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.”
And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind
shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning
proclaim the majesty of the sky … then let your heart
say in awe, “God moves in passion.”
And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a
leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason
and move in passion.
~~~~~~~~
Excerpted from “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran
Painting by Jana White
@jana_h_white
The birds alight
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Firmly rooted in the strength of grace
the birds alight on the stiff raised arms of poets
balanced on one foot in the spaces left standing
between the tenuous structures that remain
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Insubstantial and vaguely reminiscent
~
The flooding waters begin to recede
as the detritus of the displaced
live on in our frightened prayers and their own cardboard hollows
carrying the burden of our collective magnificence
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The sun arrives late as the dogs and donkeys
shiver in the new light … in the heat
in the washed out fragrance of urine and slowly drying fear
their familiar trails erased how will they find home?
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Tree limbs with radial fractures leaves crushed
a chaotic maze of leaching chlorophyll
roots holding to rocks waiting for loosened soil
to settle the wail of a child
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The water heavy with suffering, eddies in wrong places
weary from the seizures of epileptic unbalance
made other and reduced to an inventory of unfamiliar relationship
to wood to concrete to flesh
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the eye looks for one familiar thing in its place with another
a chair and a table, a table and a glass, a glass and a pitcher,
a single glass and a pitcher the thirsty eye raised
to rest for a moment on a recognizable sky
~
the sun comes up
and the birds continue to alight
on the stiff raised arms of poets
~
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The Poetics of Light 