Men Are From Earth, And So Are Women

Marion Woodman On The Inner Marriage Of The True Masculine And The True Feminine

Yes, the new consciousness is emerging in a fiery birth, which explains all this chaos within and without. All the selfishness and judgment, the religious posturing that says, “Anyone who doesn’t believe exactly the way I do and have the same God that I do is inferior to me” — all of that is dying a violent death. We are being driven by the earth itself to begin functioning with a world consciousness rather than a national consciousness. We need to consider all the different nations and peoples and animals and plants as one unit, because that’s what we are, and our survival depends on our recognizing this. Global warming, for example, is everybody’s responsibility. It requires a global solution.

Palm Springs

“Hello there, Kenny Rogers,” he says to the maitre d’; then he turns to my stepmother and me and jerks a thumb at the man as if he were made of wax. “Don’t he look like Kenny Rogers?” My father lets out a horse laugh and pokes the maitre d’ in the ribs.

The Marriage Bed

You will have to take my word on this: we loved each other. We were married to other people, we fell in love, and finally we were together and then married, for thirty years. We both expected Bill to die first; I was twenty-seven years old and he was fifty-four when we met, and through all of those years, even from the beginning, I told myself that I could live with his absence because our love would carry me the way a wave carries the light of the sun.

Breathe

For four consecutive Saturday mornings when we were in ninth grade, Brian Henderson and I went to a second-floor office above the pharmacy downtown to breathe. We woke at eight o’clock. We could not brush our teeth or eat.

Under The Apple Tree

When Joe left me sitting under the apple tree and started to walk across the meadow toward my trailer, he looked back and waved, and then walked on, and then he did a complete circle with his arms out, like he was embracing the world. That made me laugh, because he was so happy and willing to show it.

Lavender

As a child I thought of my mother and father in terms of centuries. This man and this woman had lived forever, it seemed, born wholly formed and unchanging, waiting patiently for my sisters and me to come along. Had someone told me my parents were, in truth, scarcely more than children themselves, I would have considered it a lie to rival the tooth fairy.

The Frog Prince

For the first hundred years at the bottom of the well, the frog prince rehearsed his memoir. It went like this: He was born into a sweet life of silks and pastries. Then one day this humpbacked hag of a peasant came to plead her case before the king. What did she want? He couldn’t remember. Something trivial.

Big Breasts

An Hour After Breakfast

He says, “I know your tricks, old woman. / You’re trying to starve me.” / Because he has forgotten, again, / that he has eaten.

Beyond The Glove