Lisa Anne Lindberg - 50 Rock Gypsies


Lisa Anne Lindberg

- - Early Autumn - -

. . . Reflective . . . the 50's Decade: the 2000's . . .

. . . the fruits are ripe . . . the leaves weather-worn, some a bit crisp . . .
. . . sighs of fullness . . .
. . . "Well, how did I do?" asks the tree . . . asks the bush, asks the strong Summer flower . . .

". . . And how did my Springtime slip by so fast ? . . ."


Lisa- South Mountain - Spring 2002
Lisa at half-century

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A Handful of Writings and Reflections on The Mythic Quest 
-- the Inner & Outer Worlds of Consciousness and the Search for Fulfillment


An Introduction:

"Dream of the Tower"
In late April of My Year of Turning 50, I had this dream, a dream which I think somehow epitomizes what I have been doing at this time of my beginning of my 50's decade:

I was up in the rafters of some very high tower structure -- having been hiding under the eves or or something. I was trying to somehow make my way down, and a man was down on the floor about 50 feet below. The only way down -- other than jumping to certain death -- was by going down an extremely steep set of stairs, nearly vertical and with no obvious handrail.

"Oh, God, I can't do this alone," I called down to him, petrified; "I need help. Please tell me where to put my hands and feet on my way down" -- as in rock climbing when the way is too hard and you can't see where you are going so someone else has to "talk you along."

And so -- with his assistance -- that is what I started to do.

And then I woke up from this dream.

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Seasonal Celebrations

Spring Equinox, 1991 Fall 1993

For me, the times of year of seasonal change are deeply spiritual, but not religious in the way the pre-Christian peoples held the sun to be a god. But rather, I feel these times offer opportunities to experience the essential spirituality of the physical world. Of course, the physical world is spiritual in every instant of creation, but the moments in the year at the instant the Seasons change are reminders for us of this -- these are little gaps in time when we can feel the infinite shining thru so clearly.

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Seasonal Symmetries 

A Winter Garden/A Winter Solstice -- a Story of Turning 50
A story about the magic of the Winter Solstice Night 2001, written -- fittingly enough -- 6 months later on the other side of the year : the Summer Solstice,

 Beltane/May Day Eve 2002
A time of awakening..... a time of re-awakening....

Winter Solstice 2001 to Samhain 2002:  What Fields of Gold Yet Lie in Wait for Me?
Thoughts on the Earth-holiday of Samhain, half-way on the other side from Beltane/MayDay.....further reflections of "My Year of Turning 50" -- My Journey With My Heart.


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The Silk Road: The Power of Art and Spirituality in Human Experience

          
After going to the 2002 Smithsonian's Folklife Festival: "The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust" -- a festival "conceived as as an antidote to September 11, as a giant teach-in for people to keep open the boundaries between cultures, to keep on learning about and from each other."

The hardness of dynasty and conquest juxtaposed overwhelmingly with such lovely softness of fiber arts, music, and spiritual quest.

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Life Goes On -- It Goes, It Comes:
In My Extended Family: One Goes Into the Womb of Mother Earth, One Comes Out of the Womb of My Young Niece

The ceremony my brothers and sisters and nieces did at our father's grave, July 2002 -- a ceremony of loss, of regret for times that were not...... Then late on that very night, another niece of our family gave birth to her second daughter.

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Flags of Life  September 11, 2002


For the 1st Anniversary of September 11, I flew Flags of Life.
I wanted to offer something from our house other than Red, White, & Blue -- for me increasingly a symbol of ethno-centric militancy.

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A Woman's Heart
What do we need to tell our children about primary relationships?
What do we need to tell our children about how primary relationships are the frontier of human experience?
 What do we need to tell our children about the need to be alert to the very subtlest levels of each other in a primary relationship?
What do we need to tell our children about love, about making love, about the masculine-feminine difference in this experience?

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The Outer Journey: Of Heroic Duty, Times of Yore, and Of Our Times Today
Thoughts after watching a film version of J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers. What can we learn from this epic story of heroic times that could apply to our times today?


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 The Inner Journey: An Exploration of the Inscape, of Seeking Inner Resources, Choosing Directions
 An exploration of what people can do after -- or before -- times of great external tumult and change: a re-focusing on the inner aspect of life, the "inscape" -- the falling back on inner self to figure out what to do "after the revolution" -- and before the next one.

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December 4, 2003
A Ceremony for Wholeness and Healing, A Ceremony to Honor and Cherish Both Masculine and Feminine
     
A ceremony performed at dawn December 4, 2003, precipitated by hearing about a message from the Mayan Elders of the Eagle Clan in Guatemala, Central America.  The message:  December 4-7, 2003 was "a time of great significance, of an opportunity to create the force and balance, to access the 'heart of the heavens' to ask for internal strength, strength for the community, for consciousness, and to synthesize balance."


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Reviving Shallot

a multi-modal drama exploring masculine-feminine dynamics and the subtle abuse of power

- - staged 2005, San Francisco Bay Area  - -


"The Lady of Shallot, "
John William Waterhouse, 1888
Tate Gallery, London


This is a drama about subtle abuse of power -- the conscious decision by one person to eclipse another's being.  The focus is on subtle ways of doing this because blatant mis-use of power is easy to point out.  Whereas -- despite the mystifying havoc it wrecks -- subtle emotional manipulation is harder to pin-point: it is within its essential elusive nature wherein lies its great, insidious strength.   This drama explores the great theme of  "If politics is about power, and all politics is personal -- rooted in our own personal emotions -- and if we all possess the choice to either use power wisely or to mis-use it, then on what rests the choice to use power one way or the other way?  From where arises the need to thieve power from others -- to exert power-over in order to feel power-full?"


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The Other Side of Fire

A Story-Writing Workshop on Mythologizing Your Own Life

. . . seeing the mythicness of everyday life,
  of our lives as pageantry, as archetypal drama . . .

 

   
The author of Reviving Shallot at her writing wall beside the waterfall, working on scenes 
for how the Lady of Shallot revives herself and reclaims Life.


Lisa Anne Lindberg - 50 Rock Gypsies