bloodteethandflame

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.” 

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

~~~

I had a strange dream about a crazy, angry zombie-like woman living in my house (which was like a dormitory with many rooms).

She was in a specific room.

And in the strange dream-logic, I remembered that I had met her once before.

I realized that I was afraid of her, and she knew it.

She seemed to feed on that fear of mine, and she relentlessly pursued me. (She carried a large machete-like weapon).

I tried to avoid her….

….but the rituals of my avoidance of her were so ridiculously time-consuming.

I hadn’t time for anything else.  I was losing so much time every day.

I felt so much shame.   I felt so much embarrassment.

I just wanted it to be over.

I was tired.

But once I had resolved to find her and face her, she was very difficult to find.

I kept returning to the room where she was, but she was not there.

~~~~

K and I had an interesting conversation, within in the dream, about how she could be found, and about what must be done when one does.
It was hir belief that you must take her weapon from her by force; meanwhile, I was adamant that I might convince her to put it down/give it up.

Was this a battle between Force vs. Reason?

But then, another spoke to me: She will not be convinced; she is too angry.   She will not listen to reason.  You must find another way.

~~~~

And that made me think of that Louise Bogan poem, titled [maybe not-so-ironically]

The Dream:

O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose. 

Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground
When some strong creature appeared, and leapt for the rein.
Another woman, as I lay half in a swound
Leapt in the air, and clutched at the leather and chain. 

Give him, she said, something of yours as a charm.
Throw him, she said, some poor thing you alone claim.
No, no, I cried, he hates me; he is out for harm,
And whether I yield or not, it is all the same. 

But, like a lion in a legend, when I flung the glove
Pulled from my sweating, my cold right hand;
The terrible beast, that no one may understand,
Came to my side, and put down his head in love.

~~~~

Suddenly, I had an idea.

In the very room where this crazy, angry zombie-like woman lived, there was a door that opened to the outdoors…to sky, grass, trees…to the outside.

It was a Dutch half-door, of inlaid exotic wood, laid in an interesting pattern of X’s and W’s.

The top-half of the door was open, but the bottom half remained closed, perhaps locked.

It hadn’t a doorknob that could be worked from the inside, but in studying the area where a doorknob would be from the out-side, there seemed to be an elaborate puzzle of turning latches that hid tumblers that slid smoothly into the door-frame.

Suddenly it occurred to me that if this woman were anything like the way I am when I am angry — no, blindly enraged —  a latch like this would prove too complex a situation to ever hope to overcome.

Her mind would just be too clouded.   Had she given up?

How frustrated she must feel, I thought, to never have been able to open this door.

~

~

~

Suddenly, I realized that that was the answer.

And so, I resolved and I focused and I opened it

for her

for me

and

I left

it

open.

~~~

Hail Loki, Opener of the Way!

❤

You won’t belong.

You don’t belong.

This concept – of ‘belong’ – especially that of ‘not belonging’ — has been coming up recently for me in my latest shadow work.

What is most disconcerting to me is that some of the meaning of ‘belong’ seems primarily connected to my surname(s).

Legally, I’ve gone by two separate surnames in my life.   It is as you would expect:  I had a maiden name (M____), which I gave up in 1993, when I took on my (present) married name (D_____).

In May 2013, I reached the exact halfway point of the situation:  I realized that I had had each surname for 21 years each.   As well, that had meant that I had known my husband for exactly half of my life.

And due to some recent upheavals and changes, I am faced with considering this:  somehow, it doesn’t feel right for me to continue to ‘be a D_____’ (because of  divorce), but I feel reluctant to return to ‘being a M_____’, because, well…because I never felt like I belonged as a M_____, either.

~~~~~
As far back as I remember, there was a feeling of not belonging, of otherness.  Even though, at the surface of reason, my uneasy feelings seemed foolish: I know that my parents and siblings were my biological relations; I could plainly see them in my own facial features, behaviors, etc.

There was no other explanation.   Was there?

I can remember arguing the point with my parents.  For a while, I even thought it typical — what kid hasn’t secretly wished for that tantalizing possibility in a fit of dramatic anger – who hasn’t wished that hir parents weren’t really hir parents?

(Or maybe I was just simply what I was … a strange, sad child trying to make sense of strange, sad events.)

But still, there was that feeling that I could not place…just below the surface, a deep sense of unshakable unease, the stuff of fairy tales pulling at the edges of my consciousness.

You won’t belong.

You don’t belong.

So when the SITD came along and asked me to come with hir, I had dared hope, or perhaps thought, once or twice, that it might be  because I was being taken back to where I belonged/whom I belonged with.

And that concept – of being taken elsewhere — seemed equally terrifying and tantalizing to me.

~~~

The words you don’t belong / you won’t belong could also have these connotations:

Just the sound of it – you don’t belong here –

whispered in the night

whether I said it:

I don’t want to belong here  [be long here]’

or the SITD said it:

 ‘Don’t worry. You don’t  belong here

[because you belong with Me.]’

Or

‘You won’t be long here, but don’t worry…’

[because I am coming back to you.]
Either way, it’s stuff to think about.

~~~~

Hail to Himself,  Shadow in the Dark  ❤