Happy Fall! Hello September! It has been a busy couple of months,
with a family trip to the UK and Ireland behind us that was beautiful--albeit rife with travel delays and unexpected weather delays--that has left
my heart full and eager to return for more.
Here are a couple of my favorite photos
from the trip—despite many setbacks, we made it to Glastonbury Tor which is a
heart-connected site for me and one I featured in the Guinevere section of November Butterfly.
It was so very beautiful to
walk the spiral path up to the Tower carrying the poems and Guinevere in my heart
as the wind swept across our faces, sheep grazing in the glistering green
fields below.
Another heart joy is that I’m finally offering a Deck Makers
series of Tarot classes. Whether or not you have already been on Tarot
pilgrimage with me through my prior Wheel of Archetypal Selves courses, or have been
studying and playing with and working with the cards in other ways, I invite
you to join me to make your own Tarot-inspired Vision Deck.
Artwork and photo by Robyn Beattie |
We start on
September 12, 2016—you choose your medium or even mediums (watercolor, sketch, collage, photography,
sculpture, you name it) and we write together, draft together, and meet through
video call to inspire and encourage our decks into being. Please pass it on to anyone you think might be interested. For a full course
description, visit my main site to sign up and read more about what we will have the opportunity to accomplish together:
San Diego Writers,
Ink: Theme, Set, Go Monthly Poetry Workshop
Artwork and Photo by Robyn Beattie |
My first Tuesday of the month workshop in San Diego needs a
few more participants—drop-ins welcome. Animals are our focus for September. We
will read aloud from Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” Jim Harrison’s “Barking,”
Pablo Neruda’s “Horses,” Jayne Benjulian’s “Nutmeg” from her newly released Five Sextillion Atoms, Michelle Wing’s "Anthropomorphism" from Body on the Wall
and "Bee Song" from Lisa Rizzo’s forthcoming Always a Blue House (Benjulian, Wing, and Rizzo are authors from my Saddle Road
Press family; SRP published November
Butterfly in 2014). Bring a friend and your favorite animal poem and come
write your own poem with me this coming Tuesday, September 6, at 10 am. We meet
at Liberty Station. October’s theme is Music.
Sign up here:
Tarot for Two: The Chariot and The Queen of Swords
So you’ve heard me talk about my friend and co-blogging
companion at Tarot for Two, Mary Allen. What a blessing! Mary came to visit in
August; so Mary and I threw cards together in person this month. Usually we
read over the phone, hang up, and write to our cards of the month. Then call back
and read to one another again over the phone. What a treat to read in person!
This month at Tarot for Two Mary wrote a bit about her
travels in relation to the Queen of Swords:
It was the next to the last day of a seven-day trip so I was in
transit. Nothing in that moment was particularly stable, and my trip home
couldn’t have been more unstable, driving in the middle of the night from San
Diego to LAX on those much-bigger-than-I’m-used-to highways, getting lost
midway there, being terrified of the trucks and traffic and being late when we
got closer to LA.
Then flying into Iowa in the middle of a possible tornado,
roiling clouds outside the window, turbulence like I’ve never experienced
before. The Queen of Swords sits high in the blue sky on top of a bank of
blue-tinged clouds, and maybe the cards were talking about that trip home,
making a sly little comment about it, when they gave me her as my card of the
month.
And I wrote more about poetry manuscript process in relation
to the Chariot:
How blessed I am to reflect on the Chariot card and realize that
yes, that thirty-one day challenge was the perfect vehicle for hearing the next
layer of the journey out of child’s view of the commune. Sure, the leader was
one of the Fools in the Corn, as were perhaps my parents and other followers,
initially duped, but what of my own adult self, who had to find her way out of
“Fool-dom” and into reality, sorting the True from the Not True. I see now that
structures of religion can give us a false sense of security—the answers laid
out as if we can somehow magically forego the threshing and sorting of
experiences that being human affords us by birthright. As if we won’t have to
learn to use our internal compass, regardless of outer chariot.
Read the rest of our post at Tarot for Two:
The Chariot and The Queen of Swords
Photos at the top of the post are by yours truly and Kallista James; the example collage card and the clay walrus are both by Robyn Beattie.
Photos at the top of the post are by yours truly and Kallista James; the example collage card and the clay walrus are both by Robyn Beattie.
2 comments:
Beautiful photographs of this sacred spot!
Thanks Elizabeth! I long to return already!
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