The monkey on my shoulder, at this moment, is as tiny as a spider. And magic. But, unlike the surly, and more than slightly rude (and smelly) Monkey King, this creature's limbs are long and elegant with dainty hands and delicately articulated fingers. As if el mono araña could gently pluck angels off the head of a pin or redesign, grain by powdery grain, the iridescent patterns on a butterfly's wings. This monkey shifts shape. It hangs from silvery threads invisible to the jaded eye. It sprouts wings and flits and flutters around my head catching me, enchanting me, in the gauzy web of its teensy tiny voice, singing ancient songs and new ideas into being with a whisper of a breeze, a mere wisp of a breath, barely audible beneath the ever so slight hum of its beating wings.
We all have these most intimate of stories, these tales of hope and desire, despair and horror, that are woven into the fabric of our souls. Sometimes we wear these stories like armor, or on our sleeve comme amour. Sometimes these stories are kept secret even from ourselves, and sometimes they keep secrets of our selves that leak out through the seams of our dreams and the buttonholes of our neurosis.
Rich with magic and meaning, here is a landscape where personal mythologies carry more truth than mere material details. Our blood sings the songs of generations and whispers tales from before our time. These are our secret stories where the mundane world is transformed in alchemical ritual, where reality is stranger than fiction, where ultimate truths triumph over finite facts. A moment when time is of the essence, where the snake swallows his tail, where it is always midnight and the moon is eternally full. Meaning is rarely mundane, it requires the magic of spirit, the grandeur of archetypes and the presence of mythical beings to breath life into the exquisite corpse of the tales we tell ourselves. The blood of the innocent is always spilled to nourish the ancient archetypes that inhabit the fecund underworld from which we are reborn as the heroes and heroines of our own lives. It is suffering that nourishes the roots of the tree of life, the very roots that form the architecture of the underworld where death and life become the flesh and bone of meaning, the gristle and ligament of purpose and place.
If we are not careful, if we never learned to care and have mistaken vulnerability for weakness, suffering can rot our souls. It can make us foul and cynical fools, gaseous and bloated with our own contempt for magic and innocence. Thinking we are adult and worldly in our disdain, we spill onto the threshold the sour milk of dreams and desires curdled by fear and envy. Too angry to cry, we bitterly demand the blood of the innocent be shed to ensure we don't suffer alone. Our pain is spread throughout our world with malicious generosity. For the suffering is never in the sadness, it is always in our loneliness and disconnection.
If we are courageous and reckless in the care that we give and the compassion with which we take, we can transmute our suffering. We can use purgatory's flames to boil our troubles until the turmoil has distilled our tears into a potent elixir. If we can hold within the chalice of our souls both hope and despair, if we can allow the depths of sadness and the breadth of joy, as we once again find ourselves lifted in the small hands of magical creatures and an innocence forged in the fires of hell, we are returned to the world larger than life. To a world larger than death. Where to be mortal, to be vulnerable and human, is the most heroic act of all.
We all have these most intimate of stories, these tales of hope and desire, despair and horror, that are woven into the fabric of our souls. Sometimes we wear these stories like armor, or on our sleeve comme amour. Sometimes these stories are kept secret even from ourselves, and sometimes they keep secrets of our selves that leak out through the seams of our dreams and the buttonholes of our neurosis.
Rich with magic and meaning, here is a landscape where personal mythologies carry more truth than mere material details. Our blood sings the songs of generations and whispers tales from before our time. These are our secret stories where the mundane world is transformed in alchemical ritual, where reality is stranger than fiction, where ultimate truths triumph over finite facts. A moment when time is of the essence, where the snake swallows his tail, where it is always midnight and the moon is eternally full. Meaning is rarely mundane, it requires the magic of spirit, the grandeur of archetypes and the presence of mythical beings to breath life into the exquisite corpse of the tales we tell ourselves. The blood of the innocent is always spilled to nourish the ancient archetypes that inhabit the fecund underworld from which we are reborn as the heroes and heroines of our own lives. It is suffering that nourishes the roots of the tree of life, the very roots that form the architecture of the underworld where death and life become the flesh and bone of meaning, the gristle and ligament of purpose and place.
If we are not careful, if we never learned to care and have mistaken vulnerability for weakness, suffering can rot our souls. It can make us foul and cynical fools, gaseous and bloated with our own contempt for magic and innocence. Thinking we are adult and worldly in our disdain, we spill onto the threshold the sour milk of dreams and desires curdled by fear and envy. Too angry to cry, we bitterly demand the blood of the innocent be shed to ensure we don't suffer alone. Our pain is spread throughout our world with malicious generosity. For the suffering is never in the sadness, it is always in our loneliness and disconnection.
If we are courageous and reckless in the care that we give and the compassion with which we take, we can transmute our suffering. We can use purgatory's flames to boil our troubles until the turmoil has distilled our tears into a potent elixir. If we can hold within the chalice of our souls both hope and despair, if we can allow the depths of sadness and the breadth of joy, as we once again find ourselves lifted in the small hands of magical creatures and an innocence forged in the fires of hell, we are returned to the world larger than life. To a world larger than death. Where to be mortal, to be vulnerable and human, is the most heroic act of all.
1 comment:
w.o.r.d.
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