(Stormy over the mesa this afternoon. Here’s my writing “sketch” of the day. Enjoy.)
Sitting down to other writings, all that comes is the lonely haunting of a woman. Not a fragile willowy woman. A glimpse of powerful grace in the darkness of a foggy night, beyond the edges of firelight.
She has been watching me for months.
She is strong as a yew tree, lips pressing down on a knowing smile. The half-hidden rugged lands of granite boulders and twisted bracken are familiar to her. She knows the names of the knolls and remembers the grandfathers of the sapling groves. The fog curls around her, affectionate as a loyal dog, ready to hide her from sight.
She’s here with a story she wants me to figure out. She won’t tell me outright. It’s a mystery that must be pieced together from a time and landscape far distant from contemporary urbanity. But, it haunts us, this lost story. It may hold an explanation for our madness, a mourning tale hidden under the rabid chants of progress! progress! progress! that scream through our upbringings. We aren’t allowed to know this story . . . otherwise, the empires past and present would crumble in their self-proclaimed glory. The pretty masks would fall from the ghastly flesh of twisted human souls. We would reject the trappings of our world like a bowl of fruit suddenly writhing with worms.
And when we turn to another way, she will be there, waiting. When we walk to the edge of our internal wildernesses and leave landscape of certainty behind, she will be waiting with her knowing smile. When we swallow on the edge of change, her ancient eyes watch us. As we scan the secrets of the fog, looking for an easy safe harbor, her head will slowly shake. There is no destination to this embarking. You step off the dangerous familiarity of the known. You leave the burning comforts of the fire. You enter the hard and exquisite ecstasy of the story we’ve forgotten. You give up the dull inertia of normality propelling humanity toward disaster.
You step with this woman of the untold story into the darkness of another way. The thud-thud of your heartbeat thunders your revival. Your aliveness roars in your blood as you step into the deep unknown.