Mark Nepo's Blog, page 31

Facing a Demon

A large demon appeared in the village one day. Out of fear, the blacksmith poked its cheek with his hot iron and the demon ate him. With the wound on his face, the demon seemed scarier. All the men started to carry weapons. This made the demon more cunning and more ferocious. Two brothers decided to hunt the demon. One was a dancer. The other, a butcher. When they found the demon, the dancer distracted it with his dance, while the butcher went to slice its throat. The demon ate them both.

In desperation, the mayor of the village went to the old shaman for advice. He was so old that he was losing his sight. While people pitied him, he considered his slow loss of sight a protection of sorts. He said it kept him from misusing his gifts. When the mayor explained what had happened, the shaman said, "The dancer misused his dance. The butcher misused his knife. And the blacksmith misused his iron. Now the demon is stronger and it embodies the grace of a dancer, the skill of a butcher, and the strength of a blacksmith." The mayor and the people felt defeated. It was then that the shaman offered his secret, "You must feed it light and wait."

Fear sapped the kindness of the village. In their growing agitation, they beseeched a gentle young monk, the one who as a boy would cry if he stepped on an ant. They gave him a dagger of light and pleaded with him to face the demon. The young monk, who was privately unsure whether to keep his vows or launch headlong into the world, said yes.

He sat at the edge of the forest, with the dagger of light on his lap, and waited. On the third day, the demon, hungry and frightened, appeared. The demon had been cut so many times by swords that the sight of even a lighted dagger made it growl and rear. To the demon's surprise, the young man quickly swallowed the dagger of light, as the shaman had instructed. It cut him on the way down. He stilled himself and waited. The demon waited. And then, the demon spread prone on the earth and opened its mouth like the gates to another world.

The gentle young man could feel the dagger of light move inside him. Though weakened, he carefully rose and entered the demon, walking through the gates of its mouth down the tunnel of its throat. Once in its belly, he heard desperate voices pleading to be released. Once his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see the butcher in the corner, and the blacksmith, and the dancer. They were trembling. Then, in the center of the demon's belly, a raw and tearful being approached him. But instead of hurting him, the being began to plead, "At last, can you save me?! Please! You must get me out of here!"

The young monk sat before his darker self and said, "I have entered your belly. You must enter mine." At once, the frightened being trapped in the belly of the demon understood and reached down the young monk's throat to pull the dagger of light from his belly. It cut the young monk's innocence and he passed out.

The frightened being trapped in the belly of the demon lifted the dagger of light. And with the strength of a blacksmith and the skill of a butcher and the grace of a dancer, the frightened, trapped being stabbed the demon from inside. The opening let in the light, the unending light, and the demon's body shriveled and vanished; leaving them all as they were the day they were consumed; the same but changed.

What Is Spiritual Healing?

For days I've been walking around town astonished over and over by the humming and industry of the bees that have returned in inspiring numbers to bless our honeysuckle, lavender, and hummingbird bushes with their ceaseless activity.

Walking among them, I think of the builders of roads and monuments, the makers of song and paintings, the organizers of shelters and picnics, the teachers and students, makers all.

In reverie I imagine walking again in Sligo, or meditating across the water from the lake isle of Innisfree. or gazing at the rooftops of Florence after sleeping deeply on a hillside studded with olive trees.

What is spiritual healing? I believe it feels like all of this.

One asks "What is spiritual healing?"

The sound of hazel wood making music

In the wind, or crackling

In the aromatic warmth of morning fire.

It's waking up to a golden mist on the fields,

Feeling joy at standing up in the light

That pours through open windows.

Healing comes from making bread and cakes

For someone hungry you've never met.

It's extending your hand in friendship

And saying your common name—Peace.

For Those Trying Too Hard

Don't be harsh with yourself.

The oar hits a rock and splits.

We find a branch offered by

the storm and carve another.

The tongue hits a falsehood

and burns. We baptize our lips

slowly in the truth and learn to

say yes, one more time. Even

with our eyes closed, the sun

is near. Even with our wounds

healing, the heart, hooded like

a falcon, is ready to fly.

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In the Forest

Build a house in a gorge where mountains meet.

People together are as powerful as the sacred place

Where two rivers become one waterway.

In that place the chi is strong, the people resilient.

Practice the riverhead and the calm, abiding pool.

Practice the sacred air, let the breath grow shallow,

Soft, even cease to be. Let Timelessness blossom in you.

Take the hills as effortlessly as you cross a room.

Meet at the Dragon Points. Gather at the Celestial Gate.

Turn the Key.

Stairs Made of Water

Imagine climbing stairs made of water to

a doorway of light, through which we both

leave ourselves and find ourselves.

This is the moment of unity that musicians

and artists and lovers know when they give

themselves completely to their music and

their art and to what they love.

Echo and Narcissus and the Villanelle

Remember the story of Echo and Narcissus? Echo shadows the gorgeous youth through the forest one day. She yearns to speak to him, to connect with him, but she is not allowed to speak first. Finally, Narcissus hears footsteps behind him. "Who's there?" he shouts. Echo answers, "Who's there?" It goes on like this for some time until Echo, unable to control herself any longer, rushes from the shadows and throws her arms around Narcissus. The vane beauty does not reciprocate, however. He rebuffs Echo, orders her away, and she spends the rest of her life in sorrow, pining for her beloved, for her completion in connection with an Other.

The love of echoes is a love of mystery and the ever-evolving, transfigured voice. It's a love of the big room or cave we just have to explore. It's the love of the soothing racket we find in a conch shell we pick up and press to our ear at the beach. It's a love of old barns and the vast, starry night, and it's the sound of liturgy, of mantra. Villanelles are well suited to a practice focusing on connection and completion, on mystery, listening, forgiveness, grace, and goodbye.

Many poets have said, often ruefully, that a villanelle is an easy poem to write as long as you come up with two great lines. As we all know, that is easier said than done! Yet it is not impossible. It is fascinating that the form, like the couplet, so playfully and defiantly celebrates our preoccupation with pairs. The form mentors us in subtlety and musicality. Given the appalling behavior of Narcissus, perhaps the form mentors us in humility as well.

Here is a villanelle I wrote while contemplating a new decade of multiple wars in my life, in the life of my country and the world.

War

The sun comes up, an eye detects alarm.

The field erupts with thunder, running horses

While men drive us, intending to disarm

The pestilence that bears down on the farm.

The breakfast curdles in its steaming courses

As the sun comes up and eyes detect alarm.

Survivors gather round a hilltop cairn.

The children wail, their blocks all in pieces,

While far below men struggle to disarm

The terror. The undead appear. They roam

The country roads. The scent of apples teases.

The day warms up, a bird detects alarm.

At last, the only sound a windblown can,

Then quiet so sudden the air inside it freezes.

Some men showed up but failed to disarm

The thing that flattened them. A worldly harm

Is the only thing the ticking clock discloses.

The sun goes out, no ear detects alarm,

And none arrive intending to disarm.

I Promise You

I was in a circle of those who

climbed from the sea of their lives

onto the shore of a day like today.

We were tired, alive, aglow, broken.

And out of a sudden silence

a young woman stood and sang

You've Got a Friend and when she

voiced, "You just call out my name…

and I'll be there…" I saw you all.

No vow has meant more to me.

Yet there was the time I couldn't

get there. And the time I was afraid

to come for some dark reason too

familiar for me to understand.

I am sorry for the wounds my

absence has caused.

We try like birds awakened by a

piercing tone of light to fly to the

sun of each other's need. And

always wind throws us off.

I am so sorry not to be

what I promised.

But like a whale whose tears

only add to the ocean that slows

him down, I swim to you.

I swim to you.

What I learned about bears at the North American Bear Center in Ely, Minnesota

Bears have soft, considerate mouths, softer than horses. Bears like eye contact. They have beautiful, expressive eyes. Just don't look at them with anger or meanness in your own eyes. Bears are affectionate. Bears will attack a human for only two reasons. One: if they feel cornered. Two: If they're hungry and you're trying to keep food away from them. Like sea otters, bears will use part of their bodies as a table for food. Lucky, the young black bear, used the back of his forearm to support the grapes he delicately picked at with his other paw/claw, then savored them with what looked like a bearish grin.

I also learned that those commonly portrayed images of ferocious, roaring bears are phonies. They're either doctored on a computer, or they're snapped when a bear has been enticed to stand on its hind legs and open its mouth with food being dangled at the end of a long pole out of camera vision. The fact is, according to Donna Rogers at the Center, bears never naturally make that facial gesture in the wild. It's all a dramatic human concoction.

Why do you suppose we do that to animals? To sell magazines to outdoorsmen and hunters, certainly. But how does that explain National Geographic, whose editors know better, using a "ferocious" bear on a recent cover? Well, I guess to sell magazines, too. It was restorative to spend close to three hours last week with the bears. I was keenly aware of how far their world, even at the Center, was from our own.

We live in a whirlwind of schedules and deadlines, of rushing about. In this culture, we hurry. That's the single word mantra we often run to—hurry hurry hurry. The poet Theodore Roethke expressed it so memorably in his lines, "I run, I run to the whistle of money/Money Money Money/Water water water/How cool the grass is…"

Our hurry is the antithesis of contemplation, reflection, self-awareness, meditation—and yes, the inner life of bears. Back in California now, I miss the bears. But soon I'll be spending three hours with three different fourth and fifth grade classes in Fairfax, and I know I'll meet among them the uninhibited, dancing energy of Roethke's bears. Before that, though, I must work diligently to inhabit my own primal, shaggy body shambling through the wild, big-breathing brush and woods of my untethered, on-this-blessed-earth plane of existence.