Under water

Earth, my body.

Water, my blood.

Do the tides of our blood surge when the moon is full, and calm at its ebb? My own feels in need of stirring, a tonic of nettle and rainwater blessed by starlight.

Floods of river water have overtaken the low-lying trails I walk. The cold water at last unlocked from snow and ice, to trickle, wash, rush through the veins of the Earth. 

Kingly trumpeter swans, glowing white pelicans, red-eyed loons, snowy egrets, great blue herons float, stalk, swim and fish where they please, their watery world wide, nearly boundless. 

I watch them, from the landing places.

Submerge me in the cold water, let me become boundaryless, shapeless, thoughtless; clear as quartz. 

I long with an ancient part of me to drink of wild water, as the animals do, without harm. 

Drink at the holy wells, quench my thirst at any stream, river or lake, replenishing my body and blood with that water. 

How much we have lost, we humans. Quietness. Water we can drink. Wilderness. The abundance of wild creatures. The dark sky and its shimmering constellations of stars. The stories of the land. Traditions, rituals, and even a sense of our place in the universe.

In the wildscapes, and in the garden outside my windows, I hear spring's first white-throated sparrow, a yellow-rumped warbler, a bluebird. 

Chorus frogs in the marsh sing loudly to each other, quickly falling silent at a footfall. 

A robin sits upon her precious eggs, in the nest she built under the eaves, next to the back door. From my point of view it is not the ideal spot, as she is startled off her nest every time we go in or out, but it is the place she chose, so we bow to her wisdom. 

Rain falls softly but steadily today. Colder here than in Quebec, but three degrees warmer than in Reykjavik. I am both restless and listless in the March-like grayness. 

I sipped a cup of nettle tea, downed a spoonful of elderberry syrup. Where is my wild elixir, my Drink Me potion? Within a handful of rain?

What once was marshland remembers

I was born under a Water sign, and live in a watery place encircled by lakes, wetlands, a creek and two rivers. 

As a young girl I learned how to swim in the waters of this lake. I did not know then that this was, and still is, a sacred place, where wild rice once grew freely, as a gift to all who would gather it. Where wild, shallow marshlands offered a home for herons and a gathering ground for humans who were here long before my ancestors came to this continent. 

When I was young, mowed turf grass ran down to the lake's barren shores. Once a marsh, with liminal margins, the lake then had an artificially neat edge. It was intended entirely for the use of people, not any wild inhabitants. The plants that had for centuries lived in relationship with the marshy shores were mostly gone. Wildness didn't belong at an urban lake of that era. It was at best an inconvenience, and at worst a threat. 

Fifty years on, frogs at this same lake sing loudly in the springtime. They chorus from dense stands of young willows, habitat for the frogs that also protect the the shoreline from erosion and help filter pollutants from the water. Turtles nest on the sandy beaches. Great blue herons stalk the shoreline under dangling willow fronds, and bald eagles circle high overhead, fishing. 

Now, the waters are allowed to find the shape they want to become...to flood at will into adjacent marshy pools thick with reeds and frog songs, where red-winged blackbirds can weave their nests amid the deep tangle of cattails and sedges. 

And fifty years later, I am thankful to have gained some understanding of what a living lake is, and how it may be abused or ignored or cared for and treasured by the people and culture that surround it.

When I think about this place, I feel gratitude that these waters and lands that I love were always cared for and honored by the Native peoples. They were still honored and remembered for generations after the people were displaced and robbed of their sacred homelands.

I am also thankful for the wise minds in recent history that are allowing wildness to return, even a small degree, to these public lands. Allowing them to be who they are, to do the work they were created to do.

I want to remember that these waters, and all waters — even in the midst of a city — are living and ancient, and that they remember.

That the land I walk on remembers its ancient past as marshland, savanna, prairie, woodland. 

That the land also remembers the original peoples who listened to hear its voice...the people with whom  it lived in deep, reciprocal relationship for millennia.

I want to believe that if I sing to the waters, speak and listen to them, chant my thanks and feel their liquid touch upon my skin, that they may someday carry a memory of this woman, as well.

I want to believe that my deepest self, like the marshlands, will always remember who I am; always return me to my essential wild shape — to the person I was made to be in this life. 

Uisce beatha

purple coneflower

I wonder sometimes whether all the stories and words have run out of me for good. Did I use them up? I feel like I keep trying to refill myself, so I can come alive in some way. 

The fact is, people are more complex beings than that, more sensitive and mysterious. I can’t just plug in input “x” to get desired output “y.” Feeling sad or empty or disappointed isn’t wrong, or a pathology of some kind; it’s part of life, isn't it?

blazingstar

The earth's life force unfolds all around each day as I garden, walk, breathe. But somehow, energy reserves are still low. (How like a machine I treat myself. Do I allow myself to be tired? Discouraged? Encouraged?)

I have been revisiting my life like a tourist, trying to make sense of it. Making stops at all the sights of the past decades: Writing. Dancing. Costuming. Travel. Languages. Relationships. Therapy. Voluntarism. Work. Do I still like this or that? Does it feel right, interesting, worth doing? Do I feel excited about any of them?

meadowsweet

I suspect what I am actually in search of is a sense of purpose. We can all find hundreds of ways to distract ourselves, to spend our days — but are they meaningful?

When I quit my job 18 months ago, what I thought I would be doing now is gardening, reading, traveling and writing.

My status report: 

• In our second consecutive summer drought, expanding my garden empire has been a struggle; nevertheless, she persisted.
• Much reading in hope of awakening my imagination with stories and magic, no noticeable effect. 
• Neither the energy or desire to do much writing or traveling at all. And I feel disappointed about not having that energy and enthusiasm. And a little worried. 

Amid the dry-yet-glowing landscapes of high summer, that is the uncomfortable interior landscape I’m inhabiting.

wild bergamot

Blessed be those who thirst in spirit. On quest I go, through the withering forest. O let me find the spring where runs the water of life, and let me drink deeply.

A quiet voice like water

Thinking about my last post, I begin to notice how often I write about what is calling me (in this case, I am back in dance class after a long time away).

This is the word spell we wrap around ourselves, all unaware.

Do you do the same?



Outside, it is raining, a soft and secretive pattering of drops on the roof overhead.

The house is quiet, the cats asleep, the candle lit.

The wildflowers I planted in a seed starting tray begin their lives beneath the soil.

A day to turn inward...a watery, daydreaming sort of day.





I see how I evoke that which I want to be more present in my life...or I evoke a direction I feel pulled to follow, in order to call the path to me. Sometimes without even knowing that is what I am doing.

I perform that ritual here. Where else is there a space for dreams, magic and mystery, but in our creations?

A web post (or a person) may on the surface appear simple, but is many-layered with wish, meaning and emotion, like a deep network of roots beneath the prairie soil that anchor the sunlit growth unfolding above the surface.

Putting forth a thought...a wish...a state of being, is a kind of spell casting. This is one of the types of magic we practice, whether or not we consider ourselves witch, shaman, healer or artist.

We define and shape our reality, and ourselves, by how we think about and express them: An evocation.

We call something by naming it...then putting intention behind it then releasing it, within and without.

But the things we struggle to express — the most deep and powerful and shape-shifting things — they seem to resist being named and encapsulated.

This may be a vast longing that we can't translate into words...

Or it may be a suggestion of a thing entwined around something else, in such a tangle that we can't tease it apart and examine it properly...

It may be something of which we see only the barest outline, out of the corner of our eyes.

This unnamed something floats in on the pale silk of a milkweed, and plants itself in the tangle of thorns, thistles, whispering grasses, the under-the-surface beings of our inner landscapes.

Such callings are elusive and wild. What wants to be known sends out tendrils, or rivulets. It surfaces from some nameless place within.

We can listen for its whispers as it flows through our lives. With our attention, we nurture and give home to its voice. Trying to pin down and examine it may wither it to silence.

It is like water, this voice. Its source is sacred, a spring deep underground in darkness. Speaking through the language of image and dream, metaphor and archetype, it finds its way to us by secret channels, nurtures life unseen, ebbs, flows and shapeshifts.




It is Mélusine, a freshwater spirit.

It is a Mystery unleashed in spring.

Like spirit whispers, water rarely follows a direct path...it meanders. So the paths to these callings and destinations are intuitive and winding.

We do not know where we want to end up, or even exactly from where we are beginning...we hear only a whisper on the wind. This way.

We have only this signpost.

If we wish to stay connected with our sacred source, I believe we must follow the whisper, the signpost, over and over again throughout our lives.

Sweet season

“We are coming to the sweet season of the year, when the air is mild and the leaves pale, and lemon cakes are flavoured with lavender: egg custards, barely set, infused with a sprig of basil; elderflowers simmered in a sugar syrup and poured over halved strawberries.” 

—Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

Our front steps, earlier this summer....

“These days are perfect. The clear untroubled light picks out each berry shimmering in a hedge. Each leaf of a tree, the sun behind it, hangs like a golden pear.”  

—Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

Yesterday, the fading ginger-ale sun rested for a few moments in the cradle of an elm tree. Stazi Lu and I watched it from the backyard. We listened to a twilight robin sing it down, down, down into the dark center of the earth, where it would dream all night, until dawn. In that suspended moment, all else was quiet, waiting for and welcoming the darkness, the blessing of coolness. Last night and again tonight, there is a fine, fat moon waxing in the southwestern sky, glowy-gold as a nightlight. 

Today, another sticky day in a July of sticky days, I uncoiled the green garden hose and screwed on the spray nozzle with the seven different spray settings (JetSoakerMistShowerConeFullFlat), yanking it after me as I made a sweaty progress around all the gardens in our corner lot. 

I watered the perennial garden. (Shower!) The annual garden. (Shower!) Sprayed out the debris in the stone St. Francis basin and the rusted iron birdbath (Jet!) and refilled them (Full!) with clean, cool, clear water.

Even at 7:30pm, the sun still had enough flame power to make my skin prickle, so I watered myself now and again, as if I were a kind of lungwort in flip-flops. Shock of cold water, momentary balm, biting insects, followed by renewed prickliness. Spraying and scratching my collection of gnat and mosquito and fly welts. Ah, summer. 

Photos from Lyndale Open Street festival in Lyn-Lake, Minneapolis: Sun painting in a store window; street scenes from Lyndale Avenue and Lake Street; Midtown Greenway.