Imaginal Journal
Imagination is Medicine
Phone Call by Tony Hoagland
Maybe I overdid it
when I called my father an enemy of humanity.
That might have been a little strongly put,
a slight exaggeration,
an immoderate description of the person
who at the moment, two thousand miles away,
holding the telephone receiver six inches from his ear,
must have regretted paying for my therapy.
What I meant was that my father
was an enemy of my humanity
and what I meant behind that
was that my father was split
into two people, one of them
living deep inside of me
like a bad king or an incurable disease—
blighting my crops,
striking down my herds,
poisoning my wells—the other
standing in another time zone,
in a kitchen in Wyoming
with bad knees and white hair spouting from his ears.
I don’t want to scream forever,
I don’t want to live without proportion
Like some kind of infection from the past,
so I have to remember the second father,
the one whose TV dinner is getting cold
while he holds the phone in his left hand
and stares blankly out the window
where just now the sun is going down
and the last fingertips of sunlight
are withdrawing from the hills
they once touched like a child.
~ from What Narcissism Means To Me (Greywolf Press, 2003)
Taking a Chance
“You know, love is a very strange thing. The way I see it, love is a willingness to take a chance on the other person. It’s not really a feeling; it’s not really some kind of conviction that the relationship is going to be around tomorrow; it’s not some sort of mutual guarantee on both sides that things are going to be a certain way. What I think love is, is that we’re more and more willing to take a chance on each others realities.”
Begin by Simply
“ When the body is frozen in the midst of strangulated affect, when there is no palpable heart or mind or spirit, begin by simply going through the motions. Lift your feet and dance or a lift your arms, even when each limb me feel as if it weighs 1000 pounds. The living moving spirit may awaken, spreading itself throughout your body until it reaches the mind and heart, infusing every cell in your body and every body part and eventually everybody in the room.”
Summer
Love at the start of summer is a full English breakfast, learning to play chess with the eleven year old inner child in my husband, a film that lights your imagination, diving into the depths on dreams and meaning with friends over guacamole, listening to great music driving up HWY 1, eating local farm food on the ocean pier, cracking open summer reads, napping on the beach, running along the coastline with my pup and seeing my beloved smile fully satisfied at the end of the day.
Upheavals
“Judgmental creatures that we are, we don’t often think well of our upheavals, but freak outs are really good news because it means the ego is losing its ground. And the reason we judge things — situations, people, our own experience — is because we are trying to regain control; the ego is trying desperately to maneuver back into the driver’s seat.”
Call Me by My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
- Thich Nhat Hanh