Beyond Myself III

The boys are back in school. I am alone again, trying to collect what is left of me after those hard summer months of fear and fires and dry, cracked roads and riverbeds. Flame licking at the boundary of my husband’s store. The tourists leaving. Him trying to sell what he has spent years building. I can’t shake the feeling of the earth opening beneath us, ready to swallow whoever can’t keep moving across her skin and into whatever comes next. Some go. The rest of us keep walking across what is left, marvelling at the strange miracle of being here, of eating ripe plums from a tree while being pushed against the invisible wall that lives inside. The wall of unknowns and fears of collapse and questions about who I am, or can be, in the face of what’s here and what’s to come. I blink and the rains return. Those dry, fissured roads smooth over with swollen, wet earth and the birds come back slowly and let out their usual upbeat songs, though now they seem different. We all do. There is a lingering sadness, and the relief that comes from no longer having to feel so threatened. But you know the hard seasons will come back. They return to each of us one by one, in different octaves and succession, and we will all be there again, pushed against walls of all kinds. Inside and outside of us. Seen and unseen. I am struck by the intensity of these times, and by how I am moved through everything just like the seeds I see now drifting across and over every field. I am no different. Only I fear so deeply where I will land. I fear whether those I love will have enough. Whether my children will get to grow in joy and sunlight and gentle seasons. I shield myself from believing in ruin, yet deep within me, the earth breathes heavily in its weariness, shaking the dirt beneath our feet to make us open our eyes. When I am afraid, when I do not know when the smoke will clear, I withdraw and sour and turn against life and its endless stream of surprise. I become knotted and stiff, and with a shaking finger I point at whoever enters the room. You there, in your loud truck and with all that noise. You on that mountain. You must be to blame for this. I get angry, and in anger I warp my vulnerability into protective rage. Fear grows jaws. It grows teeth, as if it could somehow shield what it loves. When the thought of loss becomes too vast to carry, I turn against whatever is closest. I have never fully understood this instinct in my heart. Fear compels me to bite at what I am most terrified to lose. At times, the people I hold dearest become the landing place for my blame. I blame my husband because it renders my helplessness tolerable. Outside of me, that helplessness takes on a face and a body. It stands there, broad and breathing, and I can face it and tell it how wrong everything is. At least then, something answers me. Otherwise, all this anger and fear and sadness has nowhere to go but in and in and in, toward the softest, most tender places inside me. I keep watching the seeds. White as cotton and light as silk, they drift across the fields looking for somewhere to land. They do not seem afraid of where the wind is carrying them, or what the next season will bear. They only need some small piece of dirt willing to take them in and call them home. The earth is still so busy receiving everything. Even now. She takes what falls and folds it into her body. She stirs with new breath through every season, in dark caverns, dust-bitten days, and against rough stone, wherever something living can find enough ground to begin again. I wonder if one day my anger and my fear and all the threatening voices and thoughts will be allowed to land on my earth without bringing some kind of war to my door. Something to defend myself against. What do you do when the hard season comes? When everything in you wants to grow teeth? Can you, with all your will, choose love? Where my questions end, my night dream takes over and lays down a trail. I am following a man and woman carrying two small children on their back, through trails over clay coloured earth. They are wearing only loincloths and their skin is the colour of walnut and cinnamon. They teach me about the land, and the plants to eat, and where to find our water. We come to a large wall of stone that reaches into the bank of clouds. Its pitch impossible to climb, I think, yet they move forward, with their bundled young ones, instructing me where to put my fingers and feet. What cracks I could use to inch my body upward. I pause, and retreat. I find the nearest hotel, and ordered rooms service. I choose the soft bed and the warm room in the world I already know. The dream has ended, but its message keeps poking me in the ribs. If I am to love this earth, if I am to love you, I must love it as it shifts beneath my feet. Love is not flat, safe ground where we can retreat and order what we need. When the fires return, as they surely will, I want to keep watch for the guides and the footholds. For whatever wisdom offers itself in the hard season. This prayer is my attempt to summon that courage. Dear boundless heart, dear ever-giving love, dear one who makes so many winged beings, silent beings, beings that float in great circles around and around this one slow, stubborn body, with all her ideas of what life should and should not look like. I wonder why I move between such tenderness and such coldness. Why I so easily forget that the love around me is the very force that keeps this world turning, and still believe I can punish it, deny it, or withhold it. Who is the one inside me who believes she may choose when to see through the eyes of love, and when to turn away? Who wakes in the morning and decides whether to give herself freely, or to ration love into such careful portions that it barely survives? Who in me grows frightened and reaches for her armour? Who grows teeth and bites at the very hands of life? I wonder, dear Mother, if you might undo this habit in me. Set me straight about the few essential things I must never forget, no matter how convincing the wounded, fearful voice becomes. Teach me that time is too brief to waste inside the lonely kingdom of self-protection. Could you replace my coldness and my armour with the wise and urgent knowing that what I love is always disappearing, and must be tended while it is still here? The hurt that has hardened inside me, wash it with clear water. Each morning, please hand me another glass of light through which to see. Take this broken heart and mend it with warm wind, with the winged one singing from the tops of trees, its round and endless music telling every living thing there is still so much to praise, and so much to love. Would you place in me an expectant wonder where fright has made its home and where my heart has learned to grip instead of trust? Would you teach me how to lean gently? Would you teach me how to surrender my fight, my ocean of disquiet, to your ever-miraculous stirring? And while I sleep, would you quietly rearrange my cells, so they forget their old patterns of foreboding and remember the delighted witness, the one who has sat still long enough to know that everything changes, and everything changes again. And if none of these gifts can be given, then let this day’s bright sun split me open down my centre, an opening that never closes despite all your terrifying wonders. Leave me leaking in the softest, most available way, so I may stand weeping in the theatre of your fire and your light. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahblondin.substack.com/subscribe