all i want to do is Record This.
record the golden sunlight and the stillness and the movement.
the sound of the wind and the crow caw-caw-caw’ing outside.
the sound of the fly that woke me up.
how i feel when i look at My plant and see that she is continually growing her New leaves; but only because, But Only Because, i cut off the other part of her that had yellowed, that was browning, that was— as much as i didn’t want to see it or accept it— beginning to die. needing to die.
i didn’t know about baba yaga, back then, when this all started.
i didn’t know about ‘death in service to life.’
it really was nowhere in a claritous [i just made that word up and i love it— comes from clarity] state. all i saw, Still see, is— hold on and hold on and hold on and Hold On. even if it hurts you. even if it is not aligned. even if you need to erode most of yourself to keep it; give yourself away; abandon yourself. as long as you have The Thing; that’s what matters.
[…]
it’s been a long and hard and very bloody road. out and away from What I Learned.
[…]
i woke this morning to the image of two green shoots and a quote about ‘a new chapter’ in the fifth direction weekly digest. it is a little bewildering to the remnants of my sense of time but there is something so incredibly poignant about being a part of an australia-based community in which They Are Just Breaking Over Into Spring.
right Now. as we are a week to the fall equinox. they are Beginning. We are beginning. in the same and different ways.
this was the month my teacher danny died, 5 years ago. this was the month i came back from ~vacation turned ancestral pilgrimage to~ italy and reentered the throes of full-on, dangerous-for-me emotional tumult with the partner i had and the home in which i was living. the month that, on the day my teacher died, the teacher i didn’t even have yet— i found out my books would not arrive in time for the in-person book launch. it was the month i cancelled the book launch, and made one of those Choices i would come to learn, i would Have To learn, how to make and make and make— death in service to life. a life, a home, a future-marriage, future-children, laid on the altar of good-sacrifice so that i could literally Continue To Exist. i remember all the pain of that time. i remember all the promise of that time. i remember that after the pandemic summer, the next fall in 2020 i was doing a ceremony right around this time for a ring i had especially made— For Me. i was starting a certificate-course in ecotherapy. i was going to be headed up the mountain to claim my second adulthood; unbeknownst to me, to hear my future-self’s Name.
we need these points of Return and Return and Return. i will say it over and over— we need to reweave ourselves to ourselves. we need to come to the Same point— not the over-stuffed, stress-wrought, pressure-bursting Usual Calendar Holidays where there is no fucking space— at least for me— to sit with myself and deepen and observe. we need to put our own plot-points on the metaphysical map of our own self-terrains. like yesterday— standing in the east river with the collaborators-turned-friends we created 36.5/a durational performance with the sea with, in 2022. sarah sunde, the artist/performer, has chosen to observe the anniversary date, each year— of the project which actually began (again!) in the fall, at somewhat-of-this-time, 2019.
we have to Re-Member ourselves. we have to Revisit ourselves. or else we are so perpetually in the constant thrumming of the to-do’s and the rushings of the Current we actually fail to Really exist.
[…]
Time Passes.
and if we are lucky, we are here to see it. to Notice it.
there is a post-it on the kahlil gibran tome and the found-notepad-paper that says FREE! and the two burned-out virgin of guadalupe candles that says:
YOU ARE NOT A TEMPLE OF PAIN
YOU ARE NOT A RELIQUARY OF GHOSTS
i was thinking, Again, of the piece i made in 2016 called reliquary: the body, which i explored and included the performance-video of, in my early substack explorations, here. […] in briefly re-reading it, i actually love the questions i am asking, the fucking Difficult, tough questions i am asking.
yesterday when i saw my collaborators again— some of whom i hadn’t seen since the year before, or in many months, or not since the project itself happened— one woman i had never met— and as i laid out the ground of my story, one of the things i said was: i’m living in my childhood home and i’m on food stamps but i’m the richest i’ve ever been. what does it mean to break the image of collectivity with your Otherness, and still belong? the woman i had never met, from england who does mental health work, asked me— if i view myself as sane. and i said No. there’s not enough poetry in the word; it’s flat, like a piece of paper. i’m more interested in mad pride, and madness, and … on and on and onwards. i sat on a brick in the east river while everyone else stood, like sarah the artist was standing— that was the Container that held everyone, the original durational performance— standing for twelve or thirteen hours, a full tidal cycle. and i tried to stand, i tried to do what we do and did, i tried to be still, and not move— but i couldn’t. and i didn’t want to. and i realized in that moment— that even if i wanted to, i would not physically be able to do what i had done for sarah in the physicality of being her full-day event manager and support back in 2022. i would not be able to do what i had done for 5 years at socrates sculpture park— as director of public programs. the one folks still hail as the one who carried speakers on her shoulder and jumped over shit and did whatever was necessary to do.
as i stood and then sat in the east river i thought, i have traded outward ability for inward ability. this outward apparent-ness of prowess, strength. for interiority. for the beneath-the-ground-Roots. for the Depth.
it has brought me so much pain, bewilderment, and grief.
but i think i am getting used to it.
this Me-ness. this What I Have Become— and how perhaps it is what i always wanted to be—?
[…]
i re-watched martin shaw’s online storyteller course a day or so ago, and at the beginning cried that kind of big-crying. i hadn’t watched this— all of his teller-advising talky-bits— since late 2020/early 2021 when i was first trying to ‘complete’ the course.
i had no idea i would be leaving my 5 year/full-time job in a few months. i had no idea i would be moving back into my childhood home. i had no idea my brother would be suddenly cross-country fracturing our nuclear family for the first time ever (and all of the grief-turned-emotional violence and turmoil that would ensue). i had no idea i would be flying to england on my first-ever solo flight (though it literally, literally terrified me). no idea i would be meeting in the flesh the gentle and earthen poet/storyteller i would spend the next months falling in love with. i had no idea i would be sitting so close to that teacher, martin shaw, in devon, in the waking world— so close to him and his drum and his voice and his body that i could see the tears shining in his eyes. i remember feeling so bereft and broken-open that i just sat in front of him, eyes locked with his, tears openly streaking down my cheeks; not wiping them away. i just Held.
[…]
what does it mean, for me Now? that in these 4 years since beginning that journey— since finding the trails my storytelling teachers— one alive, one dead— left for me all over the internet in words and recordings. that i somehow Have Become— that One Thing i wanted more than anything in my heart, or world, or conception— to Be.
i remember looking at that word— hand-written in all caps, in the imagery of the online course.
STORYTELLER.
even typing it now, i feel the gravitas. feel the tears coming to my eyes.
this thing— as presented by martin in the dually most Earnest and most Impossible-Seeming manner— the utter Truth of it, shining darkly and brightly. it seemed so impossible, then. i remember i was thrown with such intimidation and overwhelm i actually had to stop the course. i didn’t know how i would trust myself like that; i didn’t know how i would remember the stories; i didn’t know how i would speak like martin spoke— and be so comfortable, and be so eloquent, and be so— Real.
i tell the story all the time of being on the moorland, those months later, in dartmoor, with martin and our school of myth cohort. you are loosed unto the land with a map, in a four-hour span— go where the landscape, your Vision, takes you.
i wanted to go to the top of the mountain. i wanted to walk where i had seen others headed.
instead almost immediately, and within earshot of martin clapping the others over the threshold-point of his grandfather’s sword, in the car-park/parking lot— i was veered to the abrupt left and pulled down to the ground. over these years i have been training myself to yield to what the body is doing/saying and not override it. and i could fucking tell that as much as i wanted to get up, as much as i wanted to keep walking and head up the mountain— i couldn’t. and i wept bitterly in the dirt, to myself and to Everything. more bitterly and more sorrowfully than i could’ve anticipated whilst crossing the sword and entering the experience, martin’s blessing on our heads, some moments ago.
but that was The Place that the adventure opened. the story opened. the depth opened. the place of not-what-my-mind-wanted. but this Other Opening. this unexpected, Other thing.
that night after remarking to my two new scottish storyteller friends, is this worth the excruciation?, after trying to lay down on the moor my being-a-storyteller— it was too much, i was tired of words, i was tired of my constriction and fear; i was going to be a dancer instead, surely that was it. // and then martin proceeded to Do A Thing i will literally never forget— right after my utterance about worthiness and excruciation. he Showed me, embodied, what a storyteller really is. he changed the molecules in the room. he left everyone in a state of that utter bereftness, that utter prayerfulness, that no one moved for a long time in the flickering candlelight and the dark. still Now, it Fills Me. it was wordlessly communicated to me— how this man was pouring his own Personal Life Experience— into the container of the old story. and they mixed. and they Made This Thing beyond comprehension. he was disclosing to us the most difficult and most beautiful and most triumphant and most levelling parts of his Own life— without telling us any explicit personal details at all.
after awhile i left the hall and went out onto the road in the dark and with the moon and i cried and cried and cried and cried. it was danny’s essence that met me on the road when i asked to seemingly no one, who the fuck do i think i am? what the fuck am i doing here? how did i get here?— it was him leading me again to the story i had told to myself, to the moor, for the first time ever— No-Song. it was the story i would tell in front of martin and the whole group— my first time standing as A Storyteller literally in front of my hero. in front of these now-friends and colleagues, some seasoned tellers, i so admired.
i will never forget that moment. it is making me cry as i think of it, even though i have written and talked about these occurrences many times.
i will never forget how i took off my hat with the feathers in it and laid it on a chair and made a prayer before i started, and quoted those juan ramón jiménez lines both danny and bly have uttered. i am not i. i am this one walking beside me whom i do not see. the one who will remain standing when i die.
[…]
i am the richest i have ever been.
my life does not look Anything like it did in 2020, or 2021. and i am a different person from fall 2022 audrey, and fall 2023 audrey.
in our despair we feign Stuckness but it seems that it is Never, Actually, True.
all one needs to do is Look. to Re-Meet the self. from a point in time, to another point in time. even if the changes are tiny, incremental; it is Change. standing in the river yesterday, even for a little less than an hour— i saw how the rocks i found in the sand and then laid on top of a seaweedy brick, were pushed off and away by the tide coming in, the ferry’s movement. how more brick-chunks were pushed in by the incoming waves. how that little landscape i was staring at, running my fingers through— Changed. even in a relatively ‘small’ or ‘short’ amount of time.
i am a person who is Turning and Re-Turning. even my re-turns to my past relationships, the long-stories with Those Ones of my exes— i can see it in a purely punitive lens. or i can see the incremental Changes. i can see the Courage It Has Taken. to learn from baba yaga. from the underworld. to Go Where I Needed To Go. to begin to have the gall to actually fucking Look At Myself. really Look at what i was doing, and Why, and how it was contributing directly to my self-hatred and my worldviews and my suffering. and to— Keep doing that. to Keep Turning and Re-Turning. to Keep learning. how to open my hands that were trained to clench shut. how to trust the movements of energy and bodily processes.
just the fact that my relationship with my digestion and digestive system— one of the Biggest, Most Calcified, Painful Old Stories i possess— has been C H A N G E D over these past 2 years, and especially this year.
it has been one impossible thing after another. and that is what this life Is; i am seeing. my beeswax turtle woman all in gold on one side of the laptop, the little coyotito all in blue and pink and green flowered hues on the other. the two little smooth dark rocks i have saved since i was a kid who found them in the town of margaretville upstate— why did i pick those rocks, back then? they are exactly Me.
a triple goddess spiral. and a jackal.
the road and the Return and the journey. and the psychopomp. the guide. the underworld. the preparations. the Death and Re-Birth.
[…]
i find sometimes i don’t write enough about These Moments, more pristinely. so often and so furiously i am wrangling and sorting-through. but These are the moments, stacked up and Reassuring, through time— that give me the will to Keep Going.
Keep Going— not in forcing through. but in yielding to What Is. and bringing more care, more rest, more presence. more understanding. more death in service to life, when needed. more standing-down and letting-go. and when i say ‘More’ i mean ‘Exactly Enough,’ exactly what is possible in This moment.
[…]
she is Different than what she thought she’d be. that one jumping over things and running cables and slinging chairs and tables and tents and holding the energy of hundreds and thousands of people, in that magickal waterfront park i Still love, and am so grateful for.
life looks So Fucking Different— than having that title; doing that work; having, Finally, my Own apartment with a door i could lock and a place i could consistently breathe a sigh of relief, in returning to, after i fully let myself settle in, and Nest.
it is Different than what i thought it’d be. what would be possible Here; not having worked full-time in 3 years; living in my childhood home; and this year, especially— having a radius ‘so small’ i couldn’t go Out, and Away, to the places i would usually go for health and solace and escape. i’m being Held— To, and In.
and i want more of that— the more of the depth-full-ness of this ‘small radius.’ not that i never want to travel again; not that i don’t want to return upstate and to my forests and mountains that helped raise me.
but that there’s something Here. in my continuing Otherness to the overculture, to who i thought i’d be; this continued camaraderie with the ones-on-the-edge, with the spirit and more-than-human worlds. with everything that is literally Free, and ever abundant, and perfectly Beautiful, Radiant in Is-Ness; exactly what and how it is.
[…]
just let it trail off, now, audrey.
there’s no end to this, anyway.
*******
fotos/media: graff at mother cove in astoria/LIC; the kin to the cove sign we made on the waterfront, rewritten yesterday; little excerpt from the ‘storyteller’ course; dartmoor and the moon from the road in july ‘21; grandmother tree and la invitada in brooklyn, friday the 13th this year. <3
*******
i will share the same link-sprinkling as the last entry. :)
a sprinkling of links:
** new works on northern spirit house substack:
knowing your own mythology: the life-saving act - essay
living your legend: how a myth could save your life - podcast convo with chaise levy
** a week from today — 9/22 11am-2pm EST join chaise and i for growing your wings on the way down: a personal and mythic exploration of suicidality and madness.
i LOVE these beautiful words judith-kate friedman shared about/for us:
Dear friends - two of my dear colleagues in myth are offering an important gathering online Sept 22nd - where they'll bring their own tender and fierce life experience as survivors of suicidality together with their passionate and devoted studies in myth and story. […] Please share it with anyone you know who is seeking kindred tribe with those who know about walking on edges and risking the kinds of flight that include ways of return. The poet Theodore Roethke said "What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?" Which, with much gratitude for the liberating power in his question, led me to ask: "What's health but willingness to face circumstance with presence?"
** and of course— speaking of judith-kate! :) <3 — helping to steward the legacy of my beloved late great storytelling teacher daniel deardorff is one of the greatest honors of my life. <3 we hold an online storynight 4 times a year and the next one is later this month on odin’s day, 9/25 at 11am-1pm PST and 6-8pm PST. all info is here.
thank you for reading / being Here. <3 this page holds more about my heart-work in the world including 1-on-1 sessions and storytelling.
"what does it mean to break the image of collectivity with your Otherness, and still belong?" What an amazing question to sit with... ❤️