rising
It’s been just over a month since the disaster of Hurricane Helene.
Before a phoenix can rise from its ashes, I imagine it spends a long time stinking; a composting thing that once was, transmuting.
After the rot, it catches fire — more unpleasantness.
I know the smell of burning hair well from throwing floor sweepings into the woodstove or catching the odd tendril in a campfire. It’s awful, that burning smell.
After the fire has long burned out and cooled the air fills with ash, irritating eyes, red and constantly crying from the stink, then the fire, then the particulates; a mouth full of ash, gritty hands and hair, a film of soot on everything.
Then. After all of that. Finally, our beloved, mythical phoenix rises and everything is good again.
But it takes her awhile.
She doesn’t just rise because we want her to, because we turned a light switch off and then back on again, because it’s what she does, or because we’re waiting and lost without her, hopeless.
She’s got to break all the way down, unceremoniously and with all that unpleasantness.
That’s why her rising is so monumental, such a mascot of miracle and hope.
As you can imagine, “rising” is a seriously fucking loaded word around these parts right now.
We sat all day that Thursday with the rain, watching water rise. Then we woke up (but not all of us, remember) on Friday morning to water that was rising so high and so fast it’s impossible to describe.
No video can capture that roar, that feeling of nature unleashing, seemingly betraying every atom of life on any elemental level other than its own — water.
And, it’s all happening during Mermaid season, a detail I have intentionally not uttered aloud so as not to sound dismissive, reductive, or trite. Or rude.
But damn if this isn’t the season when I teach Water element in The Darkwood School.
And damn if my (our) beloved island, the namesake of river island apothecary and home of the Marshall High Studios where I’ve held bazillions of rituals and where The Mermaid archetype made herself known to me, didn’t practically submerge.
That dear friend-of-a- building filled with water 8 or 9 feet deep on the first floor. And downtown Marshall filled too. Flow, the gallery I helped start, filled with 12 feet of water, just like every other building in that beloved town-of-Mermaids.
During. Mermaid. Season.
Now it’s Wisdom Keeper season, a detail that could also seem pretty rude to point out, because it is the season of ancestors.
And my god ya’ll, we’ve lost so much and so many.
How do I talk about it? I don’t. It’s not time yet.
But one day, when we’re ready, we’ll be able to sense a gentle presence, a crowding, beyond the veils — people, beloveds gone too soon and too horrifically.
Also towns, trees, and homes; communities, careers, and a sense of safety.
All gone. All ancestors now.
But it’s not time to feel that yet.
It’s too soon. Our eyes and mouths are filled with that acrid ash of undoing.
While we await the inevitable rising and transformation, what do we do?
We don’t-know.
We actively practice not-knowing.
This is Wisdom Keeper work, to Know and to not-know.
The Wisdom Keeper archetype Knows enough to know when there are things that are unknowable. We call this The Mystery.
We don’t-know when things will be ok again. We don’t-know when thunder and rain will cease triggering the ever-living shit out of us.
We don’t-know when the phoenix will stop stinking, stop burning and rise, or when we can even stomach the word “rise” again.
But we Know it’s autumn, because the leaves (the leaves that are left) are brilliant beacons of gold, russet, and red. We Know that there are long nights, and that dark and rest are helpful for frayed nervous systems. We know that Earth spins and tilts, still creating seasons.
When we get a little better rested and resourced, we will Know how to uniquely tend ourselves and recover — some of us in solitude and some of us with others, some here and some traveling away, some resting and some doing, some looking out and some looking within.
We Know these things.
We Know that as long as there’s an inhalation after the exhalation, we’re alive.
Breathe out. And breathe back in, alive. Proof.
Do it again. Still alive. More proof.
We might use that breath to blow on those coals, burning that phoenix’s fire hot, helping her transform instead of smolder.
(and PS, nobody’s calling in fire now that we’re a month without rain, to be clear. We’re squarely in the land of metaphor)
So, this is how things are.
There are breaths in and out, nervous systems, communities, and careers repairing with each one.
There are longer nights, guiding us sweetly toward the deep Dark of the year.
There is an archetype, The Wisdom Keeper, reaching out her hand, reading the room, and treading ever so carefully as we open our psyche up and tap her wisdom of ancestors, transmutation, and Knowing.
And I Know, without a doubt, that near and far we’re all doing this together.
love and gratitude,
xo
kv
