“I think I’m about to lose my job.”
Another pixelated face, another voice from computer speakers, another person living the level-ground of life – unwilling to dive into the demeanor of a world on fire. Now, I understand we must all handle the day-to-day aspects of our lives, and the stresses that can surmount from that reality. Having income, security, and being able to live a stable life is a demanding faculty in our era. Yet, I am here to give people something deeper, more meaningful, and perhaps a bit more “on-fire” in the realm of our burning Earth.
In a world of plastic-eating fish, old-growth forest uprooted or burning, genetic alteration for “better humans”, brain-implants, lab-grown meats – the world in my face one of corporate greed striving for the perfect utopia. A one-way ticket to ‘neutrality’ for the masses. There must be a change. I want my clients to feel that their lives play larger in the scheme of the Universe than they have ever been able to feel before. The desecration of the Earth belongs to the hands of Us becoming – and I fear that we are forming ourselves to be nothing but a mechanism in the machine that we want to call ‘society’.
No connection, no conduit for individuality – all one ingredient in the stewing pot of uncertainty.
I close my eyes, breathe – a long ribbon of air from the base of my spine – up, out of pursed lips. My clients copies.
Eyes – open. I secure a quick glance at my screen – hoping to drive an intensity through the webcammed pathway that separates us.
“And, feeling into this situation – that you may be losing your job. What emotion do you feel?” I respond.
“Could be fear, more along the lines of panic – future worry for sure…” stated calmy.
I breathe now, a spark of thought, a way into the deeper reality. One question that I’ve yet to consider. And so, with authority and the deep curiosity of my own way of life, I ask –
“And, feeling into the possibility of losing your job, what would this mean for our Mother Earth?”
Asking this question, her body takes a quick jolt – as if energetically struck by the sheer irrationality of such an idea. Eyes still closed – searching, she shakes her head.
I sit still, staring, worrying for myself that this derailed everything I have built towards with this client, my career. Over our four sessions together, we have never breached anything beyond the skin-deep lifestyle of a mother – not raising her kids to her parent’s standards (one in juvenile hall for a car fire in a protest), having to manage appearance over the holidays, making sure she is eating right. Real stresses, yes – and each one ever present for Her – and each one resolved into a state of orderliness and understanding.
But, never have I just thrown this question into the air before – not even for myself. I don’t know what to expect. The Earth could quake itself in anger towards my transgressions. I could develop a stare that would instantly drop all leaves from any tree I glance at. Slugs, worms, maggots, beetles could start seeping from my very pores. I could bleed sap – bitter and ever flowing – clogging my heart in puddles of syrup.
I can feel myself growing horns, fingernails curled over boulders as I gallop through the forest on all fours – a gun shot in the distance echoing off every tree for miles. A branch or two has wrenched patches of matted hair from my back in my pursuit. I can already feel pebbles of blood and puss forming – eager to heal. My eyes, yellowed and slitted, screaming to cold wind, focus on the patchwork of each stride, rushing on towards sanctity. Within every rooting grip of earth, I begin to propel myself faster and faster – becoming the bounding demon these huntsmen so dearly crave to clear ‘their’ woods of. I start to fly with each twisted direction I launch myself – lurching every which way to become a blur. An ever more a distorted figure in these distorted woods. I lose them to a darkness they would never be able to face intentionally.
I know this land better than any huntsmen. I was born by its hallowed dirt, wrapped by the roots of ancient pines. A birth more sacred than blood.
This home – bone caves cool and dark. Deep within the mountain. My sacred home.
Yet, those men, they know children better than I.
Yet, I know their taste. Flesh before corruption. Flesh before one realizes they are separate from their God. A flesh born of desire and lust versus a flesh born of love and union. All the wonderful subtleties of soul, lingering still within the shrouded recesses of bone.
This child though, this child lives by a bargain. By the honor between the King’s crown and my beastly defecations. This child shall live under my watch, until the princely balls have dropped into maturity. Only then shall he return. Until then, a kingdom lost of a prince; a mother lost of a son; a sister lost of a brother; the next sun set until his wild radiance learned. The way of life under moonless nights and blood-soaked teeth. He shall learn to use his body as the earth allows, as the land wants it to move; a direction lost by the cobblestone dictation, stiff rigged and manufactured. He shall lose his mind to the constellations above, stories irrelevant, the true power in being witness to their presence. He will be an animal. Nurtured under the moon-song, drinking milk from the elk teat, digging through the miles of wet earth for nutrition. There is a purity here that he shall live, not knowing comfort. The perverse overwhelm of survival, the one that is cast out; this is what this bastard son will learn.
Settling home through corridors, and deep corners into the bone-cave. Hunched over myself, I lick the dirt from under my fingernails. Skewing my teeth under each crevice, scraping out the peat, moss, a pebble or two. A dip in the stone floor before me, bones become powder under my toiling and crushing with stone to stone, ready for this moment. A wetting and dipping of my finger, running the bone-powder across my teeth. Rolling the sustenance around the corners of my mouth, salivating, and wetting the pulp into a luxurious mash. Refined, and ever delicate. I get to taste the land’s health, and often, how much it has lost.
Once more, hands and feet, nails cleansed, swashing the mouth, saliva paste. I reach over the infant before me and squeeze his cheeks to pucker those little lips open. I swish and swash his first wild meal around my gums, over my tongue, to slowly drip from my mouth down to his. One long stream of his birthright, his land, his endowment; gifted by my own. The first union.
A meal, fit for a King.
“I would have to say, fragile.” I blink, arms before me, resting my chin. A screen before me, reflecting my humanity. I am here. Wherever that is now. Somewhere caught between some sensation that is and isn’t me.
“As if, I don’t really matter in the scheme of…” a trailing off as more thoughts collect themselves. “Earth… on its own?”
“Uncertainty, good.” I project. Let’s start there. You and I both.
…
That night, in the darkness and cold of a moonless sky, I stand barefoot in the grass patches of my backyard. I close my eyes, breathe – a long ribbon of air from the base of my feet – up, out of pursed lips, losing myself to the constellations above me, the raw air biting my flesh. I can feel a oneness rising within the natural environment of me and surrounding me. I imagine each cell of my being merging into the ethereal wind pushing the chill into my body. I lose myself to memory. One that which may be mine or belonging to a “me” long before. I do not wish to know.
I have never revealed myself in the stars, or the shifting clouds. Only through my loss of fur and ragged horns have I been generous, surviving as the civilized one.
That blood-bearing voice lives in my heart – gazing out through tired eyes.
____
Authors’ Note:
I have always dreamt of being torn asunder by some animalistic, primal sense in me that only becomes clear in the complete ravishment of my modern life. As I navigate chronic illness, I find that this modern world perpetually gags, bounds, guts, and bleeds the animal from me in consequence to the ‘normalcy’ we all strive to live for. It is in my health, and the chronic healing journey, that my whole life is continually transformed and merging the two realities of my belonging.
We are marred by the territory of our perceptions. The truths of our connection to this Nature – the elements abound around us and the unknown language seeping through – can be told within the stories we find in our deepest connections. Connections to the changing “progress” in the name of what is and isn’t holistic from our extrication of self.
In short:
Stories are wed to the land and the ‘elements’ that inhabit it.