a signpost reading: go no further.
and how it Might, Just Might mean- i belong. {follow the white wolf} ...
This tune was composed by Spencer the Rover
As valiant a man as ever left home
And he had been much reduced
Which caused great confusion
And that was the reason he started to roam …
there is something of me in these words, something i can barely touch. something i never wanted to be Me.
i watch john martyn, closed eyes with a bead of sweat running down his cheek as he plays. the delicate churning-ness of the melody, steady in his hands, the guitar.
In Yorkshire near Rotherham, he had been on the ramble
Weary of traveling, he sat down to rest
By the foot of yon’ mountain
Lays a clear flowing fountain
With bread and cold water he himself did refresh …
With the night fast approaching, to the woods he resorted
With woodbine and ivy his bed for to make
But he dreamt about sighing
Lamenting and crying
Go home to your family and rambling forsake …
this room is cold, as ever— my table is filled with multicolored buttons and plastic rhinestones. yarn and a few pots of paint.
the white wolf comes, to remind me. my broken-mending-broken-mending understandings of Home.
i feel like i could listen to this song Forever, such is the Nest of it.
i find myself not wanting to say much, but something in the vein of prayer.
‘Twas the fifth day of November, I’ve reason to remember
When first he arrived home to his family and friends
And they did stand so astounded
Surprised and dumbfounded
To see such a stranger once more in their sight …
And his children come around him with their prittle-prattling stories
With their prittle-prattling stories to drive care away
And he’s as happy as those
As have thousands of riches
Contented he’ll remain and not ramble away …
**
i have associated my journey so much with upheavals, letting go’s, heartbreaks, giving up’s. and like one always emerging from ruin, Aflame, i Continue. i Continue. i Have found Home in myself, but what has also fallen through the frame of the painting, somehow? slipped through the cracks of the landscape, onto the floor. something, Here— in the crayons and the paper, the crafting a craft i’ve never done, fumbling with my still-child-fingers; reminders of my Valiant Spirit, my want to be the Best, to Compete, to Know How. the beauteousness of my impatience. my Bravery. even then.
i’ve adhered to my cosmology— that my body always tells me the Truth. it is how i’ve known when to Go. when to make that heartrending or difficult decision. i’ve said recently, i don’t remember what it’s like— to be able to keep something (ie: a relationship), to fight for it against all odds, to will a Staying that feels apparently in odds with ‘what spirit wants for me,’ what my Path wants for me.
what if my Path wants This for me—?
i posted in an instagram story that i’d much rather contend with an abyss of demons than be with what my body has been raising for me to Be With since this past sunday evening. i finally broke in a way i didn’t anticipate— going to the new hospital/hospital-like setting my longtime doctor had moved to, to get bloodwork done (long one of the Biggest Scariest for me). i was back on staten island, suddenly— hand in hand with my ex boyfriend, going in to see his sister in her process of dying.
there is something Telling Me— i have Gone As Far As I Can Go on this path. as far as i can go into the darkness, Right Now. as far as i can go into the deathscape and my unflagging explorations of it. john keeps weaving his guitar-nest around me, keeping me safe.
What If, What If— this being who is so oriented to Sacred Warriorship, to valiance, to gallantry, to the Heroics of helping and healing and holding. what if what my Path wants for me now is a Different Way of being that i— continually— haven’t realized is Completely, Utterly, Difficult for me..?
when i hear this song, when i hear spencer the rover coming back home. lamenting and sighing— go back to your family and this rambling, forsake. i left my job. left america for the UK. when i had to return, fought and fought and fought against Being Here— back in my childhood home, the bricks and mortar of our family cosmology, all the brutality and intensity and— All of the Comfort— i had Completely lost touch with.
it is what makes me feel so On-Edged to try to live into the ‘other direction.’
in 2022 i fought and fought, almost leaving for another neighborhood; wouldn’t work. leaving for upstate, physically having moved— then fell apart. living last year at this time in brooklyn with my ex fiancé, being loved back to life by the city i tried to forsake. i’ve found that i’ve stopped counting the months i’ve been back here, now— god, how is it even possible?— it will be a year this easter. back Here. exactly Here.
**
my heart, my fingers are exhausted. i want to make something with clay. i want to get glue all over my fingertips. i want to laugh and be held by someone i love. i want to swim. i want to be frustrated and learn something new. something that makes me fumble with my hands like a child. that makes me get crayon on the wall, and want to move things around in my closet so i can sit inside it, and feel safe, like i did when i was little. sit rotating myself on the big green gym ball in the middle of the room. feel the strength of sticks from trees i remember and forget. the smoothness of rocks. something other than the phone. the keyboard keys. the Fight. the familiarity of the sword-handle. the pushing On, and Onward. john’s melody still weaves.
i wanted to write about the white wolf. how i am staggered by how little i still know about her— how i felt in summer ‘22 hearing my friend jen tell a wolf story in the now-defunct roundhouse storytelling community— how when the little boy in the story asked his mother, Are You The White Wolf? something saw Straight Through and Into Me. that bead of sweat slipping down john’s face again. my body swaying. my fingernail that has held some kind of candida or other fungus, since spring 2018, aching in ways it hasn’t in a long time.
bloodwork numbers sitting in the virtual chart. cardiology appointments made and upcoming. ‘to see such a stranger once more in their sight.’ the little girl in my mind’s eye, making me cry and eliciting a precious kind of terror in my soul, not unlike the first time i saw my daughter’s spirit before me, in my bathroom in 2018. the little girl holding the little wooden sword. Tired. Tired of Fighting. Tired of me not hearing, when she is asking, through my body, for me to Stop.
what can these hands do?
holding, comforting? making? drawing?
doing nothing, nothing that the internet or the world needs to see— yet simultaneously i understand that This is the next layer of Balance i am being called to live into— still sharing myself without Emptying myself, without needing endless lists and litanies of things to do?
**
part of me feels stupid for writing this. for living into The Plight That So Many Of Us are going through— how to find our simplicity, our tenderness in an overculture bent to destroy us, eating itself alive.
but i think i want to live into that ‘feeling stupid.’ the Not Knowing, the Can You Show Me How by stumbling, fumbling, Really, Really Awkwardly, into and through it?
i turn to my left, see the new drawing on the wall— the saint of the sword, the child warrior, the whale holding the nest-egg, and the white wolf, walking up and towards the Great Gate tipped with fire, surrounded by the lushness of the trees, the words written in capitals, all green:
MAY YOU TRUST THE PATH THAT LEADS ONWARDS.
and that it Could, Can, have— things i get to keep instead of give away. a banquet-table overflowing of gentleness instead of just the kinds i get after i have Proven or Overworked. none of these words seem to catch at the Heart of it; can’t be bothered.
maybe it’s okay to stop wrestling the Angel, and ask it to Hold Me in its loving white wings.
thank you so much, john. <3 {and my april for bringing him into my world in 2020}.
Tornerai.