Humanity

awkward naked feather

I just wrote the line: he put her down like an awkward, naked feather.

i’m so in love with that line. i really am. (i’m sure it will get edited out.) sex and nakedness and people, are all so damn messy. Like a pig in mud, we’re supposed to revel in it, the muck of life. if failure is our biggest teacher or our death, shouldn’t we be running towards it?

“Let me make all the mistakes!” she says as she runs through the field.

Right?

But we don’t do that. Certainly not once we’re out of our teens. All the fear and the ‘i’m just not like that.’ or the ‘i like it like this’ or ‘i’ve worked very damn hard to get to this place’. all that. those things that keep us from running out into the wilderness to fight the bears. There are people who LIKE BEIGE, people.

I mean, I don’t actually want to fight a bear. I am aware that i would lose. Utterly. But I know there is a lot that I have not done. And I’m curious. And yes, I’m a mom to three and a daughter and a sister and so on, so I have ties to the earth.

But I do think about taking a shaman’s journey. Running off into the woods or the desert for a week, and seeing what I find. Not as an escape, but as a journey. A visionquest. I’ve wanted to do something like that for a long time, though I know it would be much harder than I understand, I want to rely on myself utterly for a time.

This is partly in reaction to imminently losing someone i love*. it is also something i’ve wanted for years. I’ve thought: is there a way i can gather this sensation, this feeling of ‘journey’ within my own life, my own space? Could I somehow alter my house? live in a tent in the backyard? I shake my head at these, I know they don’t cut it.

So I’m wondering.

and… when i go look at pictures of tents in wild places, i think maybe a cabin would be better. 🙂 i mean, i REALLY don’t want to fight a bear. ok?

tent with fence on dry land in daytime
No ‘roughing it’ in this tent. Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.com

*I keep trying to get my mother-in-law on the phone. I can’t. I don’t know if they’ve hooked me to an empty room by accident, if she is asleep or if she’s forgotten what to do with a phone. I don’t want to spend any time wondering if the last time I saw her will be the last time I saw her. Fucking humanity. I’ve been losing sleep again, burping what I call ‘grief burps’ through the night. I just want a fucking phone call.