The Spring... Ahhh, The Spring...

Here, The first day of spring. The Equinox. The day is as long as the night. From now on it will become longer until summer solstice in June. Ancient Persians celebrated it with the holiday of New Year, the Norooz, Nowrooz, or Nowruz in English. On the night before, they had a large bonfire and they jumped over the flames. The moment of passing through the flames was the moment of purification. The fire burned all evil in the past, all bad things, bad thoughts, bad emotions: the horrors, the failures, the hurts. Sins and regrets. Evil burden of rocks carried in the sack on our backs. The fire strengthened the spirit with new life-force, energy, pure light. It destroyed the evil past of dark shadows and gave birth to the light-filled future. Persians do it now, too. It is pre-Islamic custom, from an ancient Zoroastran religion, where forces of darkness and light always fought in the world, in people's souls and minds.

burn, burn, burn

darkness into light

 white fire

Cherry Tree by Maja Trochimczyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvDxBt9RVKs

Ancient Slavic peoples, including Poles, also had this custom, this ritual of jumping over the fire - only it was held at Summer Solstice in June, on the shortest night of the year. Once I learned about the Persians, I understood why. But I never did that, I'm afraid of fire. I'm not a jumper. Not a sports person, either, except for swimming and sailing. I'd love to have a sailboat on a lake, somewhere. Not on the ocean. I do not like salty water. I do not trust the ocean, I'm afraid of tsunamis. That's why I bought a house in the mountains, on high ground.

drowning

in an ocean of tears

dreams of sweet water

All religions have this element of purification, cleansing the soul, healing in the spring. New light, new life. Freedom and joy. In Christianity we have the sacrament of baptism (I was baptized as an adult, so I remember clearly the moment of passing through from darkness to light), the confession (that one is scary, with so many corrupt priests), the Mass and eating light-filled bread (my favorite), and the yearly calendar of rituals - Christmas, the birth of light at Winter Solstice, and Easter, the triumph of light at Spring Equinox.

sun rises

a round loaf of bread

in pre-dawn sky

Constant Return I by Julian Stanczak (1965)

line follows line
gravitational waves
bend cosmos

In a Japanese religion, or spiritual practice of Sukyo Mahikari, the Carriers of Light, people use light to heal each other. The centers of the palms of your hands emit healing light, pure energy that can be directed at someone's head or body, various "knots" of toxic thoughts, toxins in the body. The light dissolves the knots, purifies. The palms tingle a bit when you do it. I went to a spiritual center several times and was purified in this way. I had lots of "knots" to disentangle, lots of toxins to remove, a lifetime of hurt.

I give you

light filled with light

what else?

If pink wasn't pink

would you 

wake up, still? 

Ambika Talwar, Susan Rogers, Lois P. Jones and Maja Trochimczyk

Susan Rogers, a friend who is a member of this group, is a great poet. In our group, called the Spiritual Quartet and active for a while, we used to call her a "hummingbird" - for she constantly flickers around, is always in motion, always busy. We also had Lois P. Jones, the fiery "phoenix" reborn from the flames of self-destruction, and Taoli-Ambika Talwar, the proud and royal "peacock" (the bird is a national symbol of India, her home country).

birds scatter

feathers dance

on spring breeze

Who am I? My friends called me a "dove"  of gentleness, serenity, and love. I wrote so many love poems, and read them with such affection, I'm just filled with love, or so it seems... But the Dove is also the Holy Spirit, also the bird that Noah sent from his Arc three times to find dry land after the flood. Two times, it came back with nothing, but the third time it brought back a twig of green, for peace, for the end of the flood, for the spring.

above waves

a dove shines green

in sunlight

mirror says

to the sky

I win

orange cup

of nectar 

verdant dream

_______________________

Meanwhile... I went to the Colliding Rhymes Poetry Reading organized by a fellow Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, Joe DeCenzo. It was on March 16, at the McGroarty Arts Center, in Tujunga, a part of their Arts at Play Festival. I heard some of my most favorite poets - Sean Hill, a hip-hop artist with a heart of gold and the most astounding mouth capable of making sound effects and reciting a whole segment of hip hop, without a single curse!

Then, there was the surreal Just Kibbe, with his text-message-acronym poetry book and the ibis portrait, Jessica Wilson and Juan Cardenas, the bohemian lovebirds - a poetess and her flutist - and Neil McCarthy, still straight from Ireland, and still in his torn jeans and sandals... For this reading, Justin Kibbe repainted his car yellow - for sun, for Sunland - and asked poets to write on it. Here's my poem, based on a saying by Britta Muehlbach of Phoenix House.

Britta says:

"I fearlessly speak

my truth with love"

I smile, in silence

And here's another very short poem... that I saw, but did not write. I like it. We are what we do, after all...

Tulips in Descanso (FB Album)

“Healing from the Ashes” - Poetry & Art

When Ariyana Gibbon invited us, the Village Poets, to a special poetry reading at the Healing from the Ashes exhibition she organized in Sunland to benefit the victims of Station Fire on October 17, 2010, I did not have much to show for it. I had written one haiku about wildfires in general and one poem about my experience of watching the danger approach, anxiously waiting for the wildfire to leave the slopes of my mountains, where it just sat for days on end:

FIRE TREASURES

The flames are closer and closer,
the air thick with smoke, dense
with the noise of helicopter engines.

I have never faced such danger.
Pacing around the house, I start
collecting papers, packing suitcases

of photo albums that nobody looks at,
so old, they show us two lifetimes earlier
in an antique glow of happiness.

Neighbors sit on their front porches
with binoculars, watching the spectacle
unfolding, a reality show without a screen.

They laugh and drink, eat barbecued
hamburgers and sausages saturated with
the smoky flavor of California fire season.

I can’t stand the wait. I examine the contents
of my house, gather things I cannot lose,
say farewell to those that may burn.

I give up my claim over shelves of books,
roses in gilded frames, fine china, music boxes –
my treasures become worthless bulk.

The flames shoot higher, the fire refuses
to budge under the aerial assault, stubbornly
dwells on the slopes illuminated in red at one a.m.

Next morning, my car sinks low in the driveway
under the weight of papers I packed to save.
Someone else will burn them after I’m gone.

A neighbor’s little daughter walks by,
looks at the heavy suitcases and asks,
“Mommy, is Barbie going on vacation?”

There was also a small haiku and a tanka based on mosaics from the fire that I found on the project's website:



FIRE HAIKU

wine-red sun
sinks into the ashes -
winter's fire

FIRE TANKA

red flames lick the sky
smoke thickens into darkness
a butterfly soars
ascending into turquoise
my future brightens

Not much to it, nothing tragic. It is not a surprise, then, that the Poet Laureate of our community was not the featured poet at the “Healing from the Ashes.” That title went to Jane Fontana who lived much closer to the fires and eloquently described the experience of loss and recovery. She did not lose her own home, but her neighbors did: only two houses survived on her street. Her poems were compassionate and inspired.

After walking into the exhibit on Foothill Blvd. and touring the wonderful exhibition, I was inspired, too. I was struck by the beauty and expressiveness of artwork made lovingly from remnants found in the fire – mosaics from shards of china, reliefs including burnt clocks and lamps, curio cabinets of little figurines, paintings… Our neighbors experienced real loss, and it was transformed, in that impromptu gallery, into poignant art.

On one wall was a large metal clock, burnt, with markers for the hours, but no hands. “Time stopped for this clock,” I thought as I read the title – Sun Dial by Ruth Dutoit. It spoke to me and in 10 minutes I wrote a new poem. I like the idea of a clock with no hands to show time. A French experimental filmmaker Agnes Varda made a documentary about The Gleaners, talking to those who gather and recycle things, and showcasing her own collection of her own recycled, handless, timeless clocks.

There’s a point to this. I have one clock like that at home, dark rectangular frame with mother-of-pearl inlay in the style found in India or the Middle East, it sits on my shelf to remind me of timelessness, eternity, so I would not rush around too fast, try to do too many things at once. “There’s time, there’s still time” – it tells me… Ruth Dutoit called hers The Sun Dial and there’s a small marker, or dial, on her disc, where time is measured by metal wings:

ENDLESS

The sundial glows
in a sunset of memory.

Time stops.

Dragonfly wings
freeze in a nanosecond

of fiery beauty
before evaporating.

Time stops.

We measure loss
in dragonfly wings,

in crystal shadows,
scattered wine-glasses

filled to the brim
with flames

before breaking,
before our time stops,

it too stops.



Another image that started "speaking" to me was a mosaic of a fames-spewing dragon by Robin M. Cohen. Unfortunately for the auction, it fell off its mounting on the wall and was damaged at the time of the exhibition. Cohen's mosaic was quite ornamental, almost too pretty for its materials of such tragic provenance. It resulted in a decoratively expressive, yet uncomplicated poem:

FIRE DRAGON

burn, burn, burn,
the horizon disappears
in scarlet light
burn, burn, burn
the air shimmers,
incandescent

the dragon’s here
watch the dragon
the creature of change
the beast of renewal
transforms our lives
by pain, by loss, in fear

the dragon sings out
burn, burn, burn
flames lick the rooftops
with fierce kindness
to destroy and renew
burn, burn, burn

Finally, I came across a larger artwork by the exhibition's organizer, Ariyana Gibbon. She made several mosaics on canvas for this project and one of her pieces reminded me of something I knew, both pleasurable and painful. I went home before I was able to write the following poem, stringing a necklace of tearful memories from 1975 and 1999...


FROM THE ASHES

~ to Ariyana Gibbon

The mosaic tears glow
and flow In indigo sky
crystallizing in memory
into soft petals of ash
blanketing my driveway
after the mountains
were bright with fire
for weeks, hot-spots shining
in charcoal darkness
like an ocean-liner’s lights
on the Bosphorus,
on the way to the Black Sea.

The mosaic patterns
measure space in echoes
of arabesques on the ceiling –
the Blue Mosque
in Istanbul made me
dizzy with delight.

Wait, I saw such tears elsewhere –
Oh, it was that lapis-lazuli
silver necklace I admired
in a Grand Canyon shop
He bought too late
to save what was beyond repair.

The mosaic teardrops fall,
ashen, each one shattered already,
made of old pain that does not go away,
or cry itself out. It just sits there,
a boulder on the highway
damaged by rockslide,
a burnt-out shell of a house,
lost to flames.

Shards of broken china
glow against dark velvet –
a treasure found in ashes,
held together by a thin ribbon
of gold paint, a promise of sunrise,
at the edge of indigo sky.



______________________________________________


More photos from the poetry reading at the exhibition may be found on Picasa Web Albums: http://picasaweb.google.com/Maja.Trochimczyk/SunlandHealingFromTheAshes#.

All photos and poetry reproduced here are copyrighted:(c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk