It’s mid-May now.
…
I have been trying every day just to be. At least for a few minutes here and there throughout the busy-ness of the waking hours. It’s hard to just be sometimes. My cat, Hecate, is a really great coach on just being. She lays on top of me, in front of the journal I’m writing in, the book that I’m reading, the tea I’m sipping, the words I’m typing on this laptop. With her weight, and her calm but insistent gaze she says, “It’s time to just be now, Artemis. It’s time to be a human being. Not a human doing. Just be with me. Look, here’s how you do it. Purrrrr…” I’m learning. Slowly and somewhat reluctantly.
It’s a new type of spiral to weave, just to be.
Speaking of spirals, it’s hard to write a book. A memoir. It’s a humbling process. Actually, the stories flow with relative ease in my journal. Writing in slow time there is where most of the action happens these days. And with this slow down, I do also want to celebrate with you that I recently completed writing the first 100 pages in the digital manuscript.
!!!
I celebrate. And then I remember there is still so much more of the narrative to search through in the folds of my consciousness. It moves at a humbling pace through my body.
Being humbled in this process is tenderizing, and the tender bits feel quite tender right now. I feel resistance to the tenderness creeping through my limbs, winding their way around my muscles and tendons, stirring in my bones. I try to spare myself these difficult bits, but then the tenderness just finds a new way to creep through.
Last night I finished reading the ancient Sumerian hymns of Inanna, from the collection Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth by Wolkstein & Kramer. Inanna’s husband, Dumuzi, is pursued through every corner of Ancient Sumeria by Ereshkigal’s Underworld demons. You know what will happen… Dumuzi will need to accept that the demons shall not spare him to rest. They will. Eventually. Reach him.
One of my favorite songs to listen to this past year has been “The Way Through” by Deca. It’s been a constant comfort. Messages from a fellow traveler who has seen the way through with his own eyes, and has shed many layers along the way.
I think the way through means unveiling, shedding many masks. Revealing. Inanna had to do the same in order to reach the depths of the Underworld. And there she died. And there she was later revived.
I feel many old selves, patterns, and behaviors expiring. It feels like a kind of dying to allow this process to unfold. But it’s expiring in order to become something new. Becoming…maybe a fuzzy, colorful moth…a creature drawn to the light of the moon.
(The Way Through):
The light should shine through your eyes. The light should be spoken through your words. The light should be felt in your deeds. There is a true purpose of our being on this earth, to uncover the light, and let it shine brighter, and brighter.
Deca’s work reminds me that the only way out of this tender moment is indeed through. I think the way through needs to be met with extreme tenderness. I’ve tried to muscle and battle my way through, but that has only increased the resistance felt from the other side. The other side of whatever is next.
I try not to think ahead too much to what this project will one day become, because the whole point of the book is to allow the becoming to unfold. A bountiful blossom unfurling.
To unfurl. To blossom. To bear fruit. And to accept what takes shape. To just let the story be what it will be. What it is. And what it will become.
I am here for your becoming as well.
May 16, 2024
Artemis Divine