Imaginal Journal
Imagination is Medicine
In Wonderland
I had the tremendous privilege of attending the LACMA exhibit In Wonderland, The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artist in Mexico and the U.S.
I could not help but be deeply impacted by the images that reflect the inner world experience of these women. I attended several times, taking friends, my parents, and my husband. My mother remarked "Mujeres audaz," meaning audacious women. Indeed.
Otherwise by Jane Kenyon
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Pilgrimage: London
While on our way to spending the holidays with family, I had the chance to make a pilgrimage to Freud's London home, the Keat's estate, and Shakespeare's Globe Theater. I cannot convey the potency and legacy still resonating in these space. I was particularly blown away by Freud's collection of objects of anthropological and mythical significance. Whoa!
However, the whimsical side of me left her heart at The Book Club - what a delightful community space chalk-full of magic!
Shadow Lessons
A former Spanish professor of mine, Dr. Alicia Partnoy has been a true inspiration for me. She has dedicated her life to sharing her story as a survivor of the Disappearances, kidnappings that occurred in the 1970s in Argentina.
Here is some of the background from wiki: "Alicia Partnoy is a human rights activist, poet, and translator. After Argentinian President Juan Peróndied, the students from the left of the Peronistpolitical party organized with fervor within the country's universities and with workers, were persecuted and imprisoned. There was a military coup in 1976 and people began to disappear. Partnoy was one of those who suffered through the ordeals of becoming a political prisoner. Partnoy became an activist of the Peronist Youth Movement while attending Southern National University.
She was taken from her home and her two-year old daughter on January 12, 1977, by the Army and imprisoned at a concentration camp named 'La Escuelita' (The Little School).For three and a half months, Partnoy was blindfolded. She was brutally beaten, starved, molested, and forced to live in inhuman conditions. She was moved from the concentration camp to the prison of Villa Floresta in Bahía Blanca where she stayed for six months only to be transferred to another jail. She spent a total of two and a half years as a prisoner of conscience, with no charges.
In 1979, she was forced to leave the country and moved to the U.S. where she was reunited with her daughter and her husband. In 1985, she told her story of what had happened to her at The Little School, in an eponymous book. The world began to open its eyes to the treatment of women in reference to the disappearances of Latin America."
Her book, The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival in Argentina was first published in 1986 and just published for the first time in Argentina in 2006, 30 year after the incidents ensued.
With both a sullen and awe-struck heart, I have listened to Dr. Partnoy read her works. It is so unimaginable and incomprehensible that such injustices occurred and continue to occur in the world. She shared stories of the moment she was first taken away from her one year old daughter, of her outspoken girl friend giving her a pair of earrings before being killed, of pregnant women birthing in camps and prisons and children who were taken and given to military families to be raised unbeknown who the real parents were. She spoke of the years and years of trials, episodes of what she called 'Magical Marxism,' in which social justice magically plays on synchronistic events, (a play on the Latin American literary term of magical realism,) a generation of mobilized youth dashed.
Dr. Partnoy's resilience, sincerity, passion and skillfully written craft shines so brightly, making her such an inspiration. She reminds me of why its so important to write, to share our stories and brood creativity and awareness and shed light on the dark aspect of humanity. With kind regard, I thank her for sharing her powerful poetry, mind and heart with us.
