In my life I have seen much damage done when people have been deeply wounded by emotions that could not be handled or words that cut and sliced the heart.
Is it for us to walk untouched but acknowledging the emotions that devastate us and continue to live our lives with no further ado?
Emotions become a burden needing to be understood before they are shrugged. Once understood they become integrated and no longer need to be carried as excess weights.
Emotions belong to Earth life and here they are learned. There are worlds where emotions are an unknown, where to love has to be learned and compassion is an unknown. Where caring must be learned for those of less kind circumstances and must be attended to.
Those of us who have read the Doris Lessing’s Shikasta series or Frank Herbert’s books of Dune know intimately and identify worlds with emotional innocence and sterility. They are a shock to the sensitivities but even harder to live with such persons.
We cannot write a check to feed the world nor bandage its wounds, but we can walk into the mud to lift our brother up. That to me is what emotional understanding does.
The Counselor. . .
She sat across the desk, crisp and sharp
and in charge of who she was.
Emotion is not fact, she said, so separate
what you feel from what is happening.
Then why I ask is my heart breaking?
And with composure she assures me
my heart is whole. She does not see that my world
is built on feelings that shape my days.
I was born to paint my life
with the wide brush of emotion, to teach me to love,
to see, to care and learn to Be. When love
withdrew from me and left me barren,
I knew I would not forget its power to lift
me high enough to touch the heavens
and care enough for this Earth I walked
to sweep the debris where others might walk.
To see the opening of the crocus in the covering
of snow to tell of Spring arriving and of days becoming
longer with light and caressing me with breezes
as soft as baby kisses. She did not know of worlds
where emotions were not born yet,
where facts dealt the cards to be played,
where feelings did not lay color on days and nights
and where learning to live with feelings were reasons
why we asked to be born of Earth. . . . .she did not know. . .
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
The strength of man is in himself and not in an Other.
*****
Knowing what to say is a social skill. Meaning takes the form of action in the heart.
*****
The emotions generated by an event in one’s life hold a panoramic view of the entire life. To dislodge one sacred cow will diminish the whole herd.
*****
What is purposefully discussed is not always successfully resolved. What one says is not necessarily what one has incorporated within one’s fabric.
*****
What is hidden will surface and cannot be forever controlled.
*****
A rock in the head is hard to take. It hurts and leaves a welt. But a heart which is pressed gives not blood but wine.
*****
There is no better place than here where you are now because unless you have earned a better place, the lessons will be repeated.
*****
Civilized man puts order into his existence but not into his life.
*****
In the cliché ‘come hell or high water’, hell is closer than you think and high water is not too far either.
******
If we do not understand the wind, we will be caught in the whirlwind.
*****
May the angels rock your soul with lullabies and the gods listen carefully to your lectures.
*****
And yes, it is time for the world to know that when heaven does not speak to the individual, it is time to ask why not.
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
When appearance is all that reality is for some, that is all that counts. It is a common reality. Illusion is part of the game.
Jesus said that seeing you will not see and hearing you will not hear. There is a world out there they are not aware of and it would take a two by four between the eyes to make them aware, if then.
By their inability to see and hear, they put the responsibility on others and even that they do not see.
There is a physical limit, a mental and emotional one too that frames the question of how much can a body bear.
To maintain an infection free household, the work falls on unsuspecting shoulders. What good to have another sense and a responsibility to make a difference in this world if others can not or want not to share it?
How does one remove oneself and not be pained by inconsideration, obtuseness and senselessness of others? Gaining another sense does not mean separation from self consciousness.
It means you are saddled with what you have been and then given another view of what you can become. The dichotomy is excruciating.
But a gift of supreme value has been given to the seeker, a gift of true contentment in being no matter the condition one finds oneself. The word gift means something of value has been given by a giver.
And hopefully with it will be a sturdy constitution with sufficient self esteem. And also held determinedly close will be the desire to continue to still make a difference in physical life because the dream was worth dreaming.
In the midst of sophisticated personal relations of knowing what buttons to push in this world, the knowledge of ways of sophisticates can make one wash one’s hands of their supposed innocence.Life continues its weights and measures andthere is a consequential balance.
If we learn nothing else, that lesson should bring us up smartly.
It Is Time. . .
It is time to call a halt
to the fatigue already overwhelming
and laying icy fingers upon your blood
and calling for your breath. . .
Too little now and too late,
but soon enough for meaning to come
pilfering through. Lessons learned,
lives are lived without the intensity
concerning the air you breathe,
and bound only by their desire
fed by their anger and what life has denied them.
Life is a balanced judgment.
Next time conscience will lay heavy
on their unsuspecting shoulders.
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
These events have become connected in my life and documented, they stand. I have no credentials attached to my name but because I have been involved in an independent study on a daily basis for over a half century, if I dismiss them I would negate a substantial life.
To say these events never happened is to say I conjure them. I am of 87 years and I ask you to consider the following. I have kept journals when I had no reference books to back my experiences.
I lived quantum theory when it was still an idea. I lived a private life and partnered a public life with all challenges.
This particular experience I share because I have not found in the now voluminous information an experience quite like this, documented. These are related entries to what I call the Ann Arbor Dream.
October 16, 1993
6:20 a.m.
I dreamed all night, interspersed with breaks. The Ann Arbor segment that stays with me but is not the A.A. of today. It was barbaric with points of sophistication. It was uncouth, one of simple inhabitants and it was very dirty.
There were disruptive events happening and people so disreputable that I cringed. I knew I was being discussed and the gossip was personal and painful. (at no point did I feel I looked other than what I knew as me. Possibly I looked like everyone else.)
Some women in a dilapidated building served me some busha (sounded like that) a wonderful gingerbread. I asked for the recipe and was handed a bill for 75.00. I said you did not give me the recipe and they said just pay 44.00. This made no sense so I turned to leave but couldn’t find my way out of the building. Doors were leading nowhere.
Somebody pointed to a door which opened onto a dusty white flour sifted room. I was lost. I would not go in and frantically found my way to the street. I wanted to call my husband but no one would make the call. (were telephones invented?) And I had only a dime on me.
I saw him finally parking his car. I shouted at him but he already was walking toward another car to meet someone else. He did not hear me, I then woke up. What had I wandered into?
…. That layered beneath everything, there are levels in growth. Beneath the beloved AA everyone thinks they know are levels of life still barbaric, still uncivilized, some even advanced. Even portions of the town show vestiges of this; unkempt hair, bare feet or sandals in all weather, living in places shunning what civilization declares the mode of the day.
There are people whose memory bank opens on the sub AA and who wish for life to remain simple and uncomplicated. They adopt manners for civilities sake but yearn for what the old memories hold. If left to their own devices would easily slip back to the time traveled in the dream to be at home.
I straddled worlds. My husband did not hear me because he was not open to where I was. (he may not even have been born.) That AA did not exist for him.
In the June 2017 entry upon rereading the teachers made reference to the 1993 dream and said : The fact that the stomach rolled upon rereading was due to the fact that the details were well remembered and the way you understand the holographic universe you are privy to. Understand it and live it.
In the past we have said that what you were seeing in the backyard on Nona you created was only what you worked at could see. (Our house lot was 50’ by 100’. Postage stamp size) .
You did not see the ghetto and the sewers and the jungle mats that we saw when we looked at the same parcel. That we could see what you could see was no surprise but you could not see further than what you created and focused on.
Just as you could see the mate parking his car and greeting the other. We thought it interesting that you asked if you were part of the world he was in. You were not. You would not be because of the flavor you were. Different.
The levels of the reality seething beneath the AA that you saw are real with every city and place ofhabitation. There is life beneath all life and realities seething with anger, love, breath and vigor in all realms.
People in AA still walk with segments of fashion belonging to a portion of reality that sings its song beneath the parts that roll along the streets of today. This is its charm. For it is accepted and tolerated and loved for its diversity.
It is what makes it rich with meaning and of course it will change in degree at some point but still retain its originality. It is what makes it an ideal college town and why many flock to live in retirement. Rich in meaning. Less is spent on what most consider essentials to be able to spend on indulging the psyche.
People would get indigestion sitting in your head. (Sometimes even me.)
It was decades ago that the teachers mentioned the sewers and jungle mats that were beneath the yard I tended with precision and love as homeowner. I was aware of none of this. The reality we create is what we focus on. We learn what we need to learn.
When I had the Ann Arbor dream in 1993 I had no putting place in my philosophy for that dream. I chalked it up to the bizarre but journaled it. Just as the dream I drew 30 years ago of what I saw as trees but came to realize years later were collecting solar energy. I could not foresee the home in 2018 with solar panels on the roof in California that I live in.
The Nazarene, my mentor, said that seeing you shall not see and hearing you shall not hear. Learning recently that we only see half of what is out there to see, what are we not seeing?
Yet when my world crashed and the psychiatrist asked me what I see when I go down Michigan Ave and I told him, he whistled through his teeth and said you realize that others do not see what you see? I was too frightened to ask him what they saw.
The teachers said that people would get indigestion sitting in my head? Sometimes what I see makes me sick to my stomach. And sometimes my earth is so excruciatingly beautiful I weep.
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
I am like this old house. I have windows that are broken or have shifted in the space designed for them. I have appendages that were once new rooms added on to make space for new dreams or for widening the premises for old forms expanding.
There were so many things added to make space, to make room for adding new thoughts. I felt so full.
Like a banquet dinner, overeating because the taste of the new sent me reeling into ecstasy with renewed energy, exuberance to make new what now was seemingly out of date.
Excited, couldn’t wait for the construction to begin. This is what motivated me to move the furniture to new places in the original rooms. And I did for what seemed like centuries, moved three cushion couches up and down flights of stairs.
Moved furniture around curved staircases and did not sweat and with magic collapsed a wayward desk stuck hard within the frame of a doorjamb to regain its form on the other side of the door.
When the furniture had tried all the corners, all the different positions, we went with the room additions to accommodate the children’s dreams. Eventually the children grew up and left and the funds ran out and now began the simplifying.
Do we need? Whatever we held in our hands the answer was no. We did not need. Just headroom to organize the memories of a lifetime so they wouldn’t decay amid the premises that began to fall apart.
The landscaping was the first to go because there was no energy to care for the feeding and pruning of what went unrestrained. There was no greening of the lawns.
The funds were pared to essentials. The wall paper peeled and the paint faded and then the bare boards loomed in their nakedness. The house once held dreams and saw centuries pass. My dreams inexhaustible, need new frames.
The teachers say that we stay until we use up all the changes, all the additions and all the new houses. Then come the new worlds. And worlds they are because one world cannot contain all the ideas needing to be born.
There are places waiting for the itinerant and exuberant teacher who has in her carpetbag tiles from the Pewabic Natives whose art formed the skyline, solar trees to grow on mountainsides to furnish heat in frigid places and books with magic words that show the love grown in unknown regions. I understand the school stands ready.
Consider This. . .
What makes you think we do not use
a worker who thinks and injects
new thought in old ways?
What makes you think we would
let loose the likes of you in a world
for frolic, for nothing more than waste?
We look for farmers for the vineyards,
for the fields needing seeds for food. . .
for thought, for starving minds as well as bodies.
Where we put you is in a place of value,
of your talents, of your loves, of your sweet thoughts
feeding the children of all ages. . .
How else to sweep clean the Father’s House?
the teachers
photo by Tresy Hallissey
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
where hearts open to each other, where minds are keen on learning and where love intends to see its full bloom. Where beings are intent on growing to their fullness and work becomes a blessing. Do I want much?
I want only what I worked and hoped for. . .where parenting is approached with a reverence bent on new life nurtured. . .
where the talents are perceived with a reverence granted to the giver, where life is held in the crucible of love and needs are cared for when they arise and lovingly attended with appropriateness.
Is it much that I ask for. . . . it only costs of self. . . . .priceless. . . .
The Weaver. . . .
Standing on a shrouded hill, integrating
worlds in a body split, is a woman,
weaving the old and the new
to warm a world gone cold.
Walking and usurping man’s ego,
split from his metamorphic mind,
she knots her splendor with magic.
Jealously guarding the expenditures,
she weaves the woolen mat in metaphysical colors,
unidentified by he who walks.
Marvelously melding with utmost utility,
she embraces the fabric, whole,
with never a glance to see the world
spinning into it. Splendid is she
at her task as she garners strength from silences
filled with howling voices.
She separates them in her mind
and makes more magic. Look up, we say,
look up at the wondrous unfolding!
Rain ponders its drops as they fall
but the woman weaves and weaves
and weaves. She will look up
when it is finished.
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
It is August and there is
a sliver of breath inside the sill.
The deep breath of autumn is, I think,
a matter of time; perhaps only in the memory
of the child anxious for the world
of new books to open.
Anxious for the toys of summer
to be put aside to make space
for new thoughts.
An old lady now I am
but still waiting with anticipation
for the long, dark nights
to be filled with time.
It is necessary. It will take an entire season
to adjust mind, body and soul
to a new way of thinking about who I was. . . .
and now who I am.
artwork by
claudia hallissey
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
It is long past the time for all people to stand and demand of themselves to be infused with a steel core to uphold their wobbly selves.
We have stood by and watched the principles upon which we have built our lives and our children’s heritage broken and by pieces swept away. It is long past the time now for all to take stock and question ourselves and ask upon what is it we stand.
All of us can go far back and some new ones, not so far, to see that we all come from distant shores. We became Americans no matter our beginnings. So many nations, so many cultures have formed what we consider to be these United States. How long can we be satisfied to be less than we once were, faults and all?
Lest we expect less from ourselves, we must all work in what ways we can to restore our respect for our heritage which includes all peoples. There is no partisanship when it comes to bestowing honor and trust and courtesies upon those who differ from us.
Less is demeaning what we are; lowering ourselves to what has taken centuries to build to make our country a leader among people whose ambitions were to emulate what the United States symbolized.
It took dreams that took hard work and thought toward becoming a haven that the statue of liberty was gifted. The world watched us and marveled. And we became the heaven possible upon which people built their lives in this country.
We work now to restore those dreams not only for those seeking to flee despotism but for ourselves now to guard what we have known to be our country. Or our dream will go begging.
The Strange Bequest. . .
There was a man, a slim man,
whose head was bedecked with a white cloud,
and whose eyes saw dreams
he could not articulate.
He sat one day staring into space and
when I questioned him, he said,
‘I am sitting and watching the grass grow.’
I hesitated far too long and have lived to regret it.
I wish the courage had been mine
to have asked him to share his dreams with me.
For he bequeathed to me a mind that does not rest.
I have the thought that his father and father before him
wrestled the same misty vision
which now is mine to set in motion.
I question this strange bequest for I have not
the staunch heart required to lay to rest
my ancestor’s anguish. Papa, I plead now,
to replace my heart with hot ore, inject me with a vial
of celestial courage and fuse my spine with
with tempered steel. . . .
There is so little time. . . .
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
There came a time when man decided to forget his Source and do life on his own. Since then it has been a game of catch up. Our progress has been nothing to shout about but there would be those who would argue with me about that.
But for me it has been a matter of chasing down the first ‘why’ ever uttered by the child in search of a palatable reason for someone insisting he do something. I don’t think it ever is a matter of courage though in retrospect it certainly is. No one knows who will pursue that first ‘why’ and where the journey leads. And I tell you this, sometimes it is not pretty.
Those who observe know that it is a something, but they don’t know what. They realize awesomely, that it takes courage, a kind not familiar. I say it mostly becomes a stubbornness to not falter and be a stumbling block.
Courage is not garnered overnight nor is it stored for all time. It is fought for every morning in bathrooms and bushes around the world. It is worn, with conviction man hopes, into breakfast. I know this and everyone who nurtures and is responsible for others know this. We hope to present ourselves to the new day and convince our loves it is a day worth the living.
The following poem was written in 2013 and is a favorite of mine realizing that courage takes practice.
Found Courage. . .
I ask,
where did you find your courage?
On what tree was it hanging
that you could reach up
and pluck it from its hiding place
to wear as epaulettes
on your shoulders?
The children whisper during the night,
saying their Ave’s to each other,
hoping they will grow into courage
with a red badge to wear.
You say,
they are blinded.
They cannot see their milky courage
like cream rising to the top;
one day to merge
through alerted senses
that call for unthinkable strength.
They have been practicing every day
since they were born.
They will learn that courage
comes with each breath taken
and like the freedom they take for granted
must be won every day.
One day they will find it wears
like a second coat of paint.
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
The miracle of life is that though we all hold different perspectives on everything, each of us, beast or human, we seem to hold an anchoring desire which is survival. And that desire somehow is enough to keep us afloat for however long.
When we fail, we all fail and go down the tube together. And pick ourselves up and begin again.
The differing perspective is matched every once in awhile by another in part or whole and when it happens is met with a startled ‘we know each other don’t we’? thought.
The heavens do not look kindly on such alliances because little work would get done when relief comes with much fun. Which is why isolation is often the state of the differing souls and loneliness the condition.
Once recognized as a chosen state, life becomes a dedicated ceremony. And the celebration often at the end becomes the enlightenment knowing the party just begins.
Forever is Happening Now. . .
Was it a thousand years ago
or just yesterday when you stood
at my front door as a guest for dinner?
My eyes caught your
brown wing tipped shoes that
I recognized from another time.
I followed the path to your face
and there was an electric moment of recognition.
I wanted to say I know you, don’t I?
Followed of course would be to say
good to see you again, yet knowing
we were new to each other.
It was another time in a place
of no name now but it was a time
locked in forever. I knew then as I do now
that time is a happening for this place
with the Earth names we’ve memorized for ourselves.
But it is a happening still
as all things are all the time. We do not escape
who we are. A quantum leap into the present
is our stance for this moment
but forever it is all happening now.
Veronica Hallissey has been writing since the 1960s, with her poetry published in a variety of small press magazines. Born into a farm family in Lockport, NY, and educated at the University of Buffalo and other midwest institutions, she brings and unusual point-of-view to her poetry, combining strong natural images with a deep spiritual language. She lives in Ramona, CA.
