the howling bones ::

:: Part I ::

I love my gypsy soul but she strangles me these days. Look at her flinging things around our gypsy wagon. She punched a window out this morning, cut her hand, got blood on our dress. I think she might leave me. She's flushed and frizzy-haired, restless feet plunged into vintage boots ~ “made for wandering” she snaps sometimes, as if I didn't know. I bought her those boots. Right now they clomp, angry, on splintered pine as she scoops dresses, lipstick, books, crinkled silver tubes of paint into weary, frayed satchels. Tucks our faithful french press between soft and lumpy paisley pillows. She's tight-lipped, on fire, feels betrayed, smolders. I watch her hands smooth down velvet drapes ~ faded purple, mind you ~ and tighten latches, buckle shutters, close up. Close in. I see her crying. She won't talk to me right now.

kate moss editorial. original source unknown.

Thing is, I'm tired. I love wandering. I'll always wander; it's kind of my thing. I love exploring, lostness, discovery. The thrilling unknown. Mystery. I am mystery. I am a luminous, enchanting secret in a vast earth of unparalleled wonder.

But I found a new gray hair today ~ a whole handful of them, I mean ~ and I'm achy in places I didn't know existed. My energy wanes like a deflated moon. I've pulled up my roots so many times that they're getting limp, sparse, scraggly, and the whole timber of my body grows withered, gnarly, dry. I want to be succulent. I want to be vibrant and shimmery. I want light to glimmer along my lines and find my roots again, make them dazzling and strong. I want to drink deep from the river beneath the river, the rio abajo rio they call it, the water of life, that nourishing nectar which drenches my bones, reminds them that life is worth living and we are born to move in harmony with it.

So dry bones, listen. You are built for leaping. Springing. You are wrapped in luscious, intoxicating earth, me, and we are meant to blossom like the cherry trees of Germany, late April, '99. Voluminous. Billowing. Allured into a rapturous frolic with every sensual breeze.

Dry bones, find your voice again. You will be stronger than ever. You tell your fearless stories, release words so startling and true that brave piles upon brave and you emerge shining like a polished sun. Gleaming, radiant, steady, an undeniable force of risen Being.

Listen, bones, the roots of me: be planted deep. Swell with rain and light. Stretch down, down, down into the darkest black earth, where life is, and up, up, up to the glorious sky. Lift my flowerchild soul to the stars, let her rise, free, and wander among the northern lights. Send my gypsy to the moon while you, loves, make yourselves home.

marissa nadler | ballads of living and dying | fifty-five falls

Dry bones, let my blood sing to you. Feel the joy-warmed stream surge along the white of your curves, seeded with a magical, prophetic lullaby embodying our mystical entanglement with the eternal Divine. Know. Be known.

Dry bones, feel it? The rush of breath, that urgent voice which resonates you live, you live, you live to the rhythm of our heart. Feel the vibration, the thrum of life, our own holy drum sounding out a faithful constant chorus. Count it, that space between beats. In this cellular orchestra of living, this great symphony of Being, you hold the notes, you rumble forth truth held deep. You are the center, the strength, the frame. Contraltos trail laments across the iliac crest of you and sopranos turn somersaults down your malleus, laughing like children. Respond deep, bones. Unpack your stories.

Love. Be loved.

Because you are.

:: Part II ::

"Writers block = having the words but not wanting to say them. It's like a back-door (subconscious) rebellion." @eloranicole #story101 via @Tanya_Marlow

My friend Elora asserts that a form of writer's block happens when there are words that need to be said and we don't want to say them. I've wrestled with words for months now, forming new soul-languages and choking on a heady brew of desire and sorrow and hunger, stories, and voice. I've given my words enough space, loads of respect, some coaxing, and a bribe or two. My words are bound up in my gypsy soul and she's stomping around mad, threatening to leave me, closing up like an unloved orchid. 

life/death/life

But it's true for me, too, what Elora wrote. These particular words have never been said before, at least clearly, by me. They are raw, extra vulnerable,  and I'm scared of them or the repercussions of them, and so I choke myself silent by coughing up words in my lungs only to cram them back down, mouth clamped closed. 

I'm caught on a giant cresting wave, a maverick, suspended high above the frothing sea. Only I can break the spell, spill over, crash forth to attack the shore with unleashed stories, furious longings, unfamiliar languages. I'm gripped by choice: remain lifeless, ineffectual, frozen through inertia, shame, or fear ~ or become shot through with life, struck by the lightning bolt of life. Ironically, either choice means death for me. Either choice means a break, a cracking open, a sacrifice of something. Only I can choose what that something is, and the worth of it.

Isak Denison tells us that “All sorrows can be born if you put them in a story or tell a story about them.” I agree, yet this is also a huge question of trust. Can I bear the sorrow of continual rejection? Of endless disappointment to or from others? Can I bear the grief of sorrow itself? Can I maintain healthy boundaries and grace? Can I survive the pain it takes to be an artist, to be awake? Why would I want to?

Maybe life ~ bear with me ~ is a real-time life/death/life story and these choices are our conflicts, our turmoils, our adventure. We all die. But why and how? And what makes our dying, even our unseen everyday dying, meaningful? What about our sacred living? These memoirs we weave with the ordinary threads of our days ~ choices, feelings, experiences, regrets, mistakes, triumphs, agony and buckets of heartsoaked love ~ how do we honor them? How do we stay awake? How do we keep from getting stuck, tired, and old ... and when we do, how do we become unstuck, energized, inspired?

I think whatever makes our death meaningful is the secret to a fulfilling life. Can I write stories about my living and dying, find a portal for words to jump out of my heart like salmon leaping upstream? What do these words look like, sound like, taste like in my mouth? How do I lay them down: like a loving gardener pressing seed to earth, a tender servant in the process of life? Or do I wrestle with angels, clinging on, desperate for consecration, determined, exhausted, the salty warmth of blood and sweat and tears, holy communion, on my lips?

:: Part III ::

elements of earth. to remember. a wild woman creation by roots and feathers.

In the introduction to her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa P. Estes writes,

“

The Creation Mother is always the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live. You can dent the soul and bend it. You can hurt it and scar it. You can leave the marks of illness upon it, and the scorch marks of fear. But it does not die, for it is protected by La Loba in the underworld. She is both the finder and the incubator of the bones. People do meditation to find psychic alignment. That's why people do psychotherapy and analysis. That's why people analyze their dreams and make art. That is why many read Tarot cards, cast I Ching, dance, drum, make theater, pry out the poem, and fire up the prayer. That's why we do all the things we do. It is the work of gathering all the bones together.

Then we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will use to sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn. And the truths we tell will make the song. There are some good questions to ask till one decides on the song, one's true song: What has happened to my soul-voice? What are the buried bones of my life? In what condition is my relationship to the instinctual Self? When was the last time I ran free? How do I make life come alive again? Where has La Loba gone to? Go back and stand under that one red flower and walk straight ahead for that last hard mile. Go up and knock on the old weathered door. Climb up to the cave. Crawl through the window of a dream. Sift the desert and see what you can find. It is the only work we have to do. You wish psychoanalytic advice? Go gather bones.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes Ph.d | Singing over the Bones | WWRWTW

This is why I need my gypsy soul. I must remind myself sometimes. She keeps me free. She keeps me alive. She keeps me reaching deep, finding my creation song. She needs me, too, even though she gets angry on occasion. I keep her grounded, present, awake. It's a wary dance between us, this being alive and awake. Sometimes the biggest temptation in life comes not from the big seven, but rather from the seductive whisper to just close your eyes.

Soul Prompts

And so I gather up my skirts, the strewn petals of my shredded flower heart, the rusty old keys I've tossed away. What is it I don't want to say? Why? What aches to be said? What peels the scab off, invites fresh air to sting deep wounds? Can I handle another day of dying? Why do I look for ways around it? How do I make life come alive again? What happened to my soul-voice? What wants to be written; what words slip out between coughs, scatter across the floor like seeds? 

They are seeds. Secret messages from my sulking little gypsy flowerchild. Mine to cultivate, crack open, cover with earth, water.

:: Grateful for my soul tribe. You know who you are.
I'm planting myself here for awhile.  

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