Am I in a dream?
I keep asking myself and the Great Spirit if what I am experiencing is real; and, for a brief moment, I swear I see a hint of movement — an amused shaking of head, a crooked smile playing across lips — and hear an elder’s quiet sigh in the stillness.
But then, a voice arises from the depths of water freed from molded leaves and small twigs.
You are living a manifestation.
As I write this post, I hold gratitude deep within me for surrendering and finding the fortitude to leap a huge chasm with Brigit and Gracie, my two cats, with, at first, no landing point in sight.
Those who know me well can attest to my stubborn ability to dig my heels in and stay put; hence, the surprise of many people when they find out I have recently moved out of my old apartment, and I am now beginning a journey in a new one.
It was time to go. My inner flame had almost been extinguished. I was merely functioning, not thriving; living the same narrative over and over again: breathe, eat, sleep, go to work, perhaps watch TV or read on occasion, and repeat … repeat … repeat. At the expense of being too comfortable, I was losing myself little by little.
If not embraced and honestly faced, depression is a damn steamroller.
, of , describes it best in “Stars in the Water," her 6/24/24 Substack entry:It’s why you’ll find so much dust and cobwebs in the house of a sad person. It’s not about cleanliness. It’s undetectable to the people living with it. Your life has to be in such a great place that cobwebs even register to clean them. You can’t see that stuff when your lenses are dirty.
I needed to clean my glasses so that I could see my life from a different perspective. To do so, parts of me had to die, a few threads torn here and there from the “Primal Loom”:
Decayed melancholy consumes me piece by piece (Tendons and ligaments, bones and organs), until My animal body composts within the womb Of Mother Earth, her heart resurrecting holy, Imperfect fragments from miasmic phantasm. Nornir build primordial loom — my egoic death Wyrd's quantum muse plucking Life Tapestry's silk threads: I am Great Blue Heron standing at Sea Marsh Edge. I am Mallard Duck floating on Reflecting Lake. I am Blue-Flag Iris dancing in Swampland Muck. I am Common Yarrow in Summer Solstice Fields. I am Turkey-Tail Mushroom on Decaying Log. I am Whitewater in Craggy Taiga Couloir. O Dark Night! Anoint me with kintsugi wisdom! Labor’s transition is upon Sunna’s welkin, Gold's epoxy writing my breakage history On the archival scroll of alabaster skin — Its intricate path, the Universe's legacy.
Brigit and Gracie were my death midwives. They also carried within them a spark of my soul fire when I had little physical strength to do so. Just for that alone, I am at a loss for words.
Yet I would not trade traversing this road for another one.
Life is a messy paradox. From pain comes healing; from being ripped open, the deepest love; and from chaos, peace. How else does the light get in?
Scars and openings, those places often illuminated and cradled by light, are experiences and bring balance. Darkness creates shadows, thereby providing contrast so we are not completely blinded by illusions: that we are merely physical bodies living individual lives. No matter how we define a higher power — or even, if there is one — we are all connected, one with the larger warp and weft of life, death, and rebirth.
So, when it is my time to finally cross the ultimate threshold into the next world, I want to be what poet Mary Oliver vulnerably penned in “When Death Comes,” which was first published in The Virginia Quarterly Review in 1991:
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder If I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, Or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
For now, with all ten toes down, I can confidently say, “I PRESSED ON!”