DREAM VESSELS #39: The Whole World is a Very Narrow Bridge FIRST DRAFT

DREAM VESSELS #39: The Whole World is a Very Narrow Bridge  FIRST DRAFT

     —From a collage by Marsha Connell

Sea gulls and fairy terns wheel and turn 
over the bridge and its reflection

the river, a sentient being, skin of mist,
the pale mauve at sunset.

The vessel of our ancestors, the Anasazi,
has borrowed wings and the birds all point to the unnatural nest

where an egg glows like the moon, or the earth, or the sun.

The water near the dock is restless, wanting to move on,

the birds hold formation.

Is the porcelain egg a bowl to give birth to a winged pot?

Does it dream of flying over more peaceful waters

at an undeterminate time of beginnings or endings?

Everything depends upon how you read it.

A flat plane? Horizontal or vertical?

A trinity of birds has broken past
the imprisoned sky of the winged vessel

So many bars, the bridge, the nest, the dock—all to confine us

The pot is full, round, fecund as a nine-month woman,

decorated with the symbols of life,
the Greek key, the labyrinth.

The minotaur is asleep,
the legs of gulls like small brush strokes

against their fanned tails, are they guarding their eggs

or are they opportunistic, about to descend
upon an unguarded nest for a meal?
Cannibalistic creatures.

Nature is non-moral, yet we are shocked by such notions

as if there were some significance
buried there for us to glean from.

We are only repelled by the notion
because the metaphor is too obvious,

too potent, this is why it repels us.

But birds are the messengers, they know the density of air.

Only in rare dreams do we join them, testing our wings.

I remember finding a baby bird on the garden path

of an obscenely decadent hotel, the Waikaloa,
the Disneyland for adults.

An immigrant starling too young to leave the nest

the distress calls of its mother, real enough.

I was caught between contempt
for opportunistic non-native species

who do so much damage to our crops,

but then it struck me that we too, are opportunistic immigrants

plundering the nest of something infinitely more fragile.

So many paradises succumb to corporate taming.

We are the ones responsible,
the ones who wander through massive hotel lobbies

in order to quench our unending thirst.

The egg is not in a nest, it is the illusion of a nest,
circular, familiar, the egg is suspended, perhaps rising, 
or falling down the bottomless mesh tube,

a flume, a conduit churning to the ground in arabesque formation.

We are flooding other countries with our technology.

It clings to us like opportunistic burrs
brushed off in a likely spot to colonize.

The ascension of the vessel into the sky, a resurrection.

Perhaps it rose out of the tomb too early
searching for a rushed spring,

the mesh tube, the opening to the tomb.

But it is not Christ seeking the trinity above our heads,

the pot, by nature, is female. The ascent of She,

winged into the cacophonous air, the crepuscular air.

The underworld is of our own choosing.
We invented it to appease our guilt.

I read about a curious notion that we cannot see the parallel

between the religions we were raised in

and this is why we must read the myths from other cultures.

We tend to think of our own upbringing as fact, not metaphor.

Yet here it is again and again, the metaphor
rising from the underworld

called Persephone, called Inanna, called Demeter,
called Isis, called Astarte, called Christ.

The egg must be rising because the pot is ascending,

free of the underworld at last, it metamorphoses,

or did it give birth to the egg? Completeness of evidence

and the procreative urges to further the species at any cost.

The starlings who rob the nests of others,

like the missionaries in Hawaii, governments—

each with a vested interest to further the self.

Group ego and fear of the void
that is sure to follow death and extinction.

Surely there must be more to life
than the nest, the starling thought to itself,

before it plunged to the earth, pinfeathers still sheathed.

Surely there must be more to living
than this death, this ceasing to be,

early people thought as they placed flowers on the newly dead.

Surely this is a metaphor for something else

Surely ours is the enlightened path,

each tribe proclaiming, uttering the first “I am”

but as each proclaimed their identity,
they separated from the larger whole,

thus spontaneously developing creed and dogma.

The multiple “I am’s” echoed around the world

shattering the dawn,
self-expulsion leads to the center of things,

the feeling of either being on the outside
seeking the center of the universe,

or making the center the place where you stand.

You conceived it into being.

I am, therefore I am, came long before the Cartesians.

Every revolution has its own prison
because of the nature by which it was construed—in extremes.
Action/reaction nether being the center of things.

I am/ I am not.

Thus the maws of the void open up
to swallow us whole before our time.

“Is”ness.

And so the birds wheel and turn like dancers,
or do dancers mimic the birds?

And what of the snake who listens
to the ground with its whole body?

Ear to the ground with its ribs,
listens to the dark wisdom of the earth?

Of life and death, of zygotes and blastophores.
Hot ash bonfires, cremation, and hidden fecundity.
The pot rises carrying its precious burden to the sky

so the air will know another kind of kin,

seeks union with the great unanswerable void,

and the questions that will never be answered.

This is the way of things. Monotones,

the black lip of despair, the pot speaks to the air.

I resist the notion of Ariadne but she’s there.

The mesh becomes the web, the bridge leads to the other side,

the first egg, fallopian tubes spider, reptile,
human, fish, all arise from the egg.

Symbol of Christ, the web, Peter’s net,
in ova, in the egg, unprepared.

 Summer 1992
DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell

DV files 40-46; 48-51 

were never transcribed from freewrite
DV files 47 & 52 empty.  Hope I have hard copy.

MARSHA NOTES: This piece is pivotal, the appearance of the first egg. Bridges, eggs. She says ‘spiderwebs’ twice personal sources of inspiration. the title comes from a prayer. The bridge, separation (see # 12) when I was in Israel on Reba’s birthday we put it on a poster a bridge with wings joining the US with Israel. Reba wrote words in Hebrew to the song. Means Don’t be afraid.

It’s so visceral, the thing in the center is like a hanging  bridge on the tip of New England reaching parts of my life, some are known, the one in the middle, unknown, precarious bottom of bridge  the known world, the middle is more ancient, more scary,  it represents an inner psychic peace, not a storm  I put an egg in the middle. Nest/egg/bridge

OTHER NOTES
Lapis, symbol of Christ, prima materia.  The age of fishes  The sins of the world are the cause of suffering. Who is responsible? fisher king wounding & healing Anima mundi Zeitgeist equinox into the sign of the fish Pisces  krater transformation  “I noticed no Ariadne had put a thread into my hand.”

“Without history there can be no psychology, and certainly no psychology of the unconscious.” “What does one do with the unconscious? The relation between the ego and the unconscious” —Jung the concept of the self  analogs physics transformations of energy process of change individuation

Marsha did several more Dream Vessel collages after we'd made a book, and I was onto other projects by then so I never finished them.
Summer 1992
DREAM VESSELS —from collages by Marsha Connell